CES 2015: Mushkin Launches STRIKER SSD and Previews M.2, PCIe Drives

Mushkin has been busy this year putting together a new line of solid state drives and high-end DDR4 memory kits. That’s not all, they have plans to launch M.2 and PCIe storage devices in the next few months to really round out their family of products.

STRIKER Solid State Drive

Mushkin launched a new solid state drive called STRIKER. The performance looks impressive. According to the press release, “The STRIKER SSD provides sequential read and write throughput of up to 565 and 550MB/s respectively, with random performance of up to 90,000 4K IOPS.” STRIKER solid state drives will be available starting at 240GB all the way up to 960GB capacity. Look for these drives to hit the shelves sometime in Q1. They should be priced at a very competitive cost per GB, and eventually will be up to 2TB capacity.

Here are the full specifications (courtesy Mushkin):

• Phison PS3110-S10 controller
  • Quad core, 8-channel
  • 256-bit AES encryption support, Opal 2.0
  • End-to-End data path protection, SmartECC, SmartRefresh, SmartFlush, GuaranteedFlush
• SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s) interface (backwards compatible with SATA 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s)
• Top-tier performance specifications
• TRIM/SMART support (OS/driver support required)
• DEVSLP support for ultra-low power consumption
• 120 bit per 2KB ECC strength
• High-speed MLC NAND
• 2.5” 7mm form factor
• User-upgradeable firmware

Scorpion XC Series Solid State Drive

This PCIe solution has already been released with two cards, but with some connector changes, Mushkin has a new version that can house up to four cards. The standard configuration will allow up to 2TB, with 4TB being possible with a different controller. The Scorpion XC will fall somewhere in the $0.50 per GB range.

Hyperion M.2 Solid State Drive

Next up, we had a look at a prototype PCIe M.2 drive based on a PS5007 controller, which was hidden below a sticker. Mushkin was not able to show us the controller just yet, as it’s not quite ready for release. The most impressive stat had to be the 300,000 IOPS.

Last but certainly not least, Mushkin showed us their new DDR4 Ridgeback prototype. These kits will be available at speeds up to 3333 MHz. Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to check these out!

– Matt Ring (mdcomp)