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@ 2011/06/29Although consumer SSDs are far from a mature technology, PCIe SSDs are even further behind on the growth curve. The upside is huge. As SandForce has already demonstrated with the right dataset a single SSD can nearly saturate the 6Gbps SATA bus. Rather than force OEMs into putting yet another very high bandwidth bus on the motherboard, SSD vendors everywhere (Intel included) turn their attention to PCIe as a solution to the problem.
The holy grail is a native PCIe solution. Recently Micron announced such a thing: the P320h. However the estimated price tag on the P320h could be in the $5000 - $10000 range depending on capacity.
Manufacturers in the consumer SSD space are attracted to PCIe solutions simply because margins are higher. For the most part, client storage is a commodity and if you don't make the NAND and controller going into an SSD you're not making a ton of money selling drives to end users. Sell to an enterprise customer and all of the sudden a couple thousand dollars per drive seems like a bargain.
The holy grail is a native PCIe solution. Recently Micron announced such a thing: the P320h. However the estimated price tag on the P320h could be in the $5000 - $10000 range depending on capacity.
Manufacturers in the consumer SSD space are attracted to PCIe solutions simply because margins are higher. For the most part, client storage is a commodity and if you don't make the NAND and controller going into an SSD you're not making a ton of money selling drives to end users. Sell to an enterprise customer and all of the sudden a couple thousand dollars per drive seems like a bargain.
