HoTWiReZ's DoMaiN

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<p align="center"></p><p><p>A little over a year OCZ introduced its first in-house designed enterprise SSD series called the Intrepid 3000. What separated the Intrepid from OCZ's earlier enterprise SSDs was the fact that it utilized a fully custom OCZ firmware with a Marvell silicon, whereas in the past OCZ's enterprise SSDs relied mostly on SandForce controllers with limited customization. Today OCZ is refreshing the lineup by superseding the 3600 with a new 3700 model.</p>

<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="width: 700px;">
<tbody>
<tr class="tgrey">
<td align="center" colspan="3">OCZ Intrepid 3000 Specifications</td>
</tr>
<tr class="tlblue">
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>Intrepid 3700</td>
<td>Intrepid 3800</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Capacities (GB)</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">240, 480, 960, 1920</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">100, 200, 400, 800</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Controller</td>
<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">Marvell 88SS9187 (OCZ Everest 2)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">NAND</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Toshiba A19nm 128Gbit eMLC</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Toshiba 19nm 64Gbit eMLC</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Steady-State 128KB Sequential Read</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Up to 540MB/s</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Up to 510MB/s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Steady-State 128KB Sequential Write</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Up to 470MB/s</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Up to 465MB/s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Steady-State 4KB Random Read</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Up to 91K IOPS</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Up to 92K IOPS</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Steady-State 4KB Random Write</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Up to 13K IOPS</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Up to 40K IOPS</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Endurance</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">1 DWPD (0.5 for 1920GB)</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">4 DWPD</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Active Power Consumption</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">3.4W</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">3.7W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Power Loss Protection</td>
<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Encryption</td>
<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">AES-256</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tlgrey">Warranty</td>
<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">5 years</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

<p>Compared to the Intrepid 3600, the biggest change in the 3700 is the switch to A19nm NAND and the addition of a 1.92TB model. The over-provisioning has also been reduced from 28% to 12%, which yields a higher usable capacity and hence lowers the cost per gigabyte. I suspect that due to the lower over-provisioning OCZ had to go with eMLC to keep the endurance the same (one&nbsp;drive write per day), but now that OCZ is under Toshiba the company has better access to NAND and can source eMLC parts at a much more reasonable price.</p>

<p>As usual to enterprise drives, the Intrepid 3700 features full power loss protection (yes, even data in flight is protected), AES-256 hardware encryption and end-to-end data path protection. There is an internal RAID-like functionality too to protect against NAND-level failures&nbsp;that cannot be fixed using traditional ECC methods.&nbsp;</p>

<p align="center"></p>

<p>Because of the one drive write per day endurance, the Intrepid 3700 is more geared towards read-intensive workloads and the slide above includes some example use scenarios. For mixed workloads, OCZ offers the Intrepid 3800, which has more over-provisioning and larger lithography NAND to provide higher endurance that's needed for more write-centric workloads.</p>

<p>As guidance, OCZ told me that the MSRP for the 240GB model is about $245, but the higher capacities should retail at somewhere between $0.60 and $0.70 per gigabyte, which is fair for an enterprise SSD with full enterprise-grade feature set.</p>
</p><p align="center"><img src='http://dynamic1.anandtech.com/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=24&cb=915555428&n=a1f2f01f' border='0' alt='' /></p>

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Source: AnandTech
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