The mSATA standard was issued back in 2009 and was specifically tailored for netbooks and notebooks with SSDs. The choice of SSDs with mSATA interface is still pretty small, but two new series from OCZ use mSATA in two varieties based on the own Indilinx controllers and SandForce.

The new series Strata and Nocti are not official yet, but have been listed by several european etailers with complete specifications. The Strata series use the older Indilinx Barefoot controller that OCZ owns, while the Nocti series is based on SandForce 2141/2181, which is also an older version. Both Strata and Nocti follow the specifications for SATA 3.0 Gbps, mSATA interface.

OCZ_Strata OCZ_Nocti
Model STR-MSATA-30G STR-MSATA-60G NOC-MSATA-30G NOC-MSATA-60G NOC-MSATA-120G
Series Strata Strata Nocti Nocti Nocti
Controller Indilinx Barefoot Indilinx Barefoot SandForce 2141/2181 SandForce 2141/2181 SandForce 2141/2181
NAND
MLC MLC MLC MLC MLC
Capacity 30 GB 60 GB 30 GB 60 GB 120 GB
Seq. read speed
125 MB/s 130 MB/s 280 MB/s 280 MB/s 280 MB/s
Seq. write speed
40 MB/s 85 MB/s 255 MB/s 260 MB/s 260 MB/s
Random 4K reads
11,000 IOPS 12,000 IOPS 6,000 IOPS 11,500 IOPS 11,500 IOPS
Random 4K writes
750 IOPS 1500 IOPS 12,500 IOPS 12,500 IOPS 32,000 IOPS

It is not clear when Strata and Nocti launches, but considering the early listings it should not take long now. While mSATA is not the most popular or used standard today it is slated to become more common in thinner computers, like Ultrabooks.

Source: TCMagazine

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