OCZ HSDL card

[Kaygee]

Saw one of the on that auction site...

Looks suspiciously like a 16 port SATA/SAS card...can't be can it?

 

Anyone seen or heard of them?

http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-ibis-series-4-port-hsdl-adaptor-card.html 

 

 

[bcbgboy13]

Not seen or heard but look for the IBIS drivers:

 

; This INF file installs the Silicon Image Serial ATA Raid 5 driver

; for the SiI 3124 controller on systems using the AMD 64-bit

; processor.

;

; Copyright © 2006 by Silicon Image, Inc.

; All rights reserved

 

and

 

; This INF file installs the Silicon Image Serial ATA Pseudo Processor

; device on systems running Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

;

; Copyright © 2004 - 2005 by Silicon Image, Inc.

; All rights reserved

[Kaygee]

That is about as much as I could find, the question is just how psuedo is the sil3124? A single PCIe card with four sil3124 controllers supporting 16 devices for $100 is just too much to ask for...

 

The Sil3124 is a PCI-X device not PCIe yet I cant see a PCIe to PCI-x bridge present.

The only other obvious device present is a HSCL 8 channel clock buffer device.

 

So Sil must be delivering a SiP with at least one psuedo Sil3124 device and PCIe/x bridge. Given the sil3124 supports port multipliers. We have a new PCIe derived HS clock buffer offering 8 channels of PCIe derived clock signals. Perhaps sil have upped the port multipler technology to multi channel offering four lanes between port multipliers rather than the original one lane? 1.2Gb/s rather than 300Mb/s.

 

I cant see anything new here or exiting here for RoW but for unraid would be excellent technology.

 

16 device HBA support for $100. You would need to add an additional high speed port multiplier (HSPM) module for each four devices. If they could do those for $30ea. Looks like a real winnner. $220 dollars for 16 ports. Only uses one x8 PCIe slot and can be purchased 4 ports at a time. First four ports are $130 but next 12 are only $90 in $30 installments.

 

Anyone got a contact at SIL ot OCZ?

 

   

[Johnm]

I have not played with an IBIS drive yet. but it looks susiciously like 4 SSDs shoved into a 3.5" dive running raid0 with a sas card for an interface.

[BRiT]

Review of earlier HSDL setups -- http://hothardware.com/Reviews/OCZ-IBIS-HSDL-Solid-State-Drive-Preview/?page=1

 

From the review setups, it does NOT provide 16 SATA ports, but 4 HSDL ports.

[bcbgboy13]

The "SIL3124 bit" I got from the OCZ drivers package is for a single IBIS drive.

 

From the BRiT post we can see that this is indeed four SSD HDs in a 3.5" HD housing. It also uses a "Industry standard SAS cable" - aka SFF8087 to SFF8087.

 

Then there is another bit of interesting info in the OCZ support forums in regards to updating the firmware on the REVO and IBIS drives:

 

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?86688-flashing-revo-and-Ibis-to-new-drive-firmware

 

Pay attention to the user HBA adapters (especially the first two  )

 

So in reality it looks like the IBIS is a REVO in a 3.5" HD form factor. They realized that with REVO they are limited to 1 or 2 drives per motherboard and in order to sell more they need to allow the users to add more in a similar way as users can add HDs.

 

So the OCZ HDSL controller may be able to be used for 16 HDs (with the appropriate SFF8087 to 4 SATA forward cables) but will the current firmware looks for OCZ in the HD names?

[Kaygee]

Review of earlier HSDL setups -- http://hothardware.com/Reviews/OCZ-IBIS-HSDL-Solid-State-Drive-Preview/?page=1

From the review setups, it does NOT provide 16 SATA ports, but 4 HSDL ports.

 

To quote PE - "don't believe the hype".

 

Simple facts are it works as a SIL3124 PCI-X controller under Windows and Linux (tick the unraid box).

IBIS drives are either dual or quad SATA SSD drives linked to a controller. (tick the unraid box).

 

The 4 ports HBAs are shipping for a $100 each.

 

Doesnt matter what the technology is as long as we can plug 16 sata drives into it and they are presented as individual SATA drives unraid could work. The trouble is getting hold of a few 4 port sata bridges to try them. I dont believe a simple fan out cable will work, that would be far too easy/cheap.

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

[BRiT]

I dont believe a simple fan out cable will work, that would be far too easy/cheap.

 

Hence why I said "From the review setups, it does NOT provide 16 SATA ports, but 4 HSDL ports."