Computex 2015 - Day 1

Computex 2015 - OCZ Storage Solutions

A company that's had a troubled few years, OCZ is now on an upwards trajectory, with a decent set of SSD platforms under its belt, low RMA rates and access to quality NAND courtesy of owners Toshiba. The first thing it showed us at its booth was the new Trion 100 SSD, which will enter the market as the company's entry-level product underneath the mainstream Arc 100. Pricing is everything at the moment for 2.5in SSDs, and while the Trion 100's pricing hasn't been confirmed yet, OCZ expects it to retail at around $0.35 per GB when it launches this summer. It's the company's first SSD to make use of Toshiba's new 19nm TLC NAND and a new Toshiba controller too - they've moved away from Barefoot 3 in order to support the TLC NAND, which holds three bits per cell rather than two. The controller also features the low power DEVSLP idle state, so the Trion 100 is suitable for mobile use, unlike the company's higher end drives that use Barefoot 3, which doesn't suppport DEVSLP.


While it wasn't on show, OCZ also mentioned that it will be continuing its partnership with AMD and introducing an R5 series SSD to complement the existing R7 series one. AMD does very good volume on its R5 branded products so it's a sensible move. Features and specs weren't really discussed but it will keep the same 4 year ShieldPlus warranty.

The enterprise market is another important segment for OCZ, as the need for storage space in the industry is practically insatiable and the uptake of SSDs in data centres and the like is massive - Facebook is now entirely flash-based, apparently. The company has recently launched the Saber 1000, a read-intensive drive that utilises the Barefoot 3 controller and has full power loss protection, which also found its way into the Vector 180 SSD.


Also on show was the XD-JX M.2 SSD, which has it uses in embedded enterprise applications, as well as the already released 2.5in Z-Drive 6000 and upcoming Z-Drive 6300 PCI-E HHHL add-in card. All three of these drives use PCI-E lanes for high bandwidth and NVMe for super fast speeds. They all feature power loss protection, a must have feature for enterprise customers, and the Z-Drives will both have a whopping 6.4TB capacity option available soon.


We asked OCZ if it had plans to bring NVMe and M.2 products into its consumer line up and it certainly does, but isn't abe to share any further details at this stage.