Adaptec bursts out with solid state drive controller

Partners with Intel for SLC technology

Adaptec this week stormed into the burgeoning solid state drive (SSD) space with the introduction of an I/O controller that speeds performance by as much 5x over traditional controller implementations.

The MaxIQ SSD Performance Cache is a PCI-e based controller that uses as many as four Intel X25-E 32GB single-level cell SSDs to offer 20,000 IOPs and 1.2GBps throughput. When used in a server and in the data path between server and storage the MaxIQ will speed performance for database applications, front end Web servers and virtual environments.

As data comes from applications, it is cached on the MaxIQ so that it can be retrieved quickly.

The MaxIQ features 3Gbps Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA support and works in Windows and Linux environments.

MaxIQ consists of Intel SSDs and software that can be paired with any Adaptec 5xxx or 2xxx controller. In a configuration with a MaxIQ Intel SSD and 12 Seagate 15,000RPM Serial Attached SCSI drives, testing of random reads showed 11x the performance of a traditionally configured Series 5xxx controller. In the same configuration, testing showed 5x performance increases for Web server workloads and 4x performance for both file server and online transaction processing.

The adapters will compete with Fusion-io's ioDrive. In a comparison, Adaptec claims that its controller costs $.31/GB and $0.14/IO compared to Fusion-io's cost of $15/GB and $0.15 per IO.

The MaxIQ Intel SSD is expected to be available mid-September starting at $1,300.

• Data Center
• adaptec
• solid state drivers