Mushkin Beefs Up SSD Portfolio With Performance, Size and Form Factor Selection – CES 2012 Update

Mushkin, well known for their high performance memory products, has announced the existence of their very first PCIe SSD.

Dubbed the “Mushkin Scorpion”, the new product will be offered in capacities of 240, 480 and 960 GB.

The drive will provide sequential read/write rates of up to 1275MB/s and 1500MB/s respectively, and will also deliver 120,000 4K random write IOPS.

Given that the company has used the SF-2281 in previous products, it’s no surprise that the same controller will be used in the Scorpion, albeit replicated 4 times in order to boost throughput using RAID.

Based on what is being shown at CES, it looks as though Mushkin will be using a single Marvell PCIe controller as the glue between the SATA and PCIe interfaces as opposed to a two chip solution like the one employed in OCZ’s first generation Revodrive products. Choices such as this can be critical in determining not only the final cost of such a product, but its performance as well.

In any case, it’s good to see more manufacturers releasing these types of high performance SSDs, as the extra competition will benefit not only consumers but the enterprise market as well, especially since PCIe SSDs have begun to see more and more use in server applications. From what’s been shown, it seems Mushkin has made wise hardware choices, and will be able to compete effectively and help lower prices in what is a very promising market segment.

Expect the “Scorpion” to be available in the first half of 2012.

Also being announced are Mushkin’s new Chronos Go and Atlas SSDs.

The SF-2281 driven Chronos Go will be available in a 1.8″ form factor and provide read/write rates of 560MB/s and 525MB/s respectively.

Mushkin’s Atlas SSDs will be available in an mSATA form factor and offer capacities ranging from 30 to 240GB. It will provide read/write speeds of 560MB/s and 535MB/s.

Both new drives are being offered in both synchronous and “value” asynchronous flash variants and will be available in the first half of 2012.

Based on the announcement of their Atlas mSATA drive, it seems as though Mushkin has been bitten by the Ultrabook bug along with many other SSD manufacturers. This comes as no surprise as Ultrabooks seem to be a focal point of the computer industry at the moment and Mushkin’s latest announcements seem to echo the wider industry’s commitment to this burgeoning market segment. As always, the more players the better. Be on the lookout for more innovative and small form factor SSD product announcements as this year’s CES rolls on!

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