Most SSDs are designed to be interface- and form-factor-compatible with existing rotating mass storage devices (aka: hard drives or HDDs). However, that need not be the case. Many SSD vendors are making significant sales by offering SSDs with alternate interfaces. Fusionio’s SSDs are based on PCIe for example. Perhaps the SSDs with the highest unit volume are lowly USB sticks, although their performance leaves a lot to be desired—even with the USB 2.0 interface’s maximum transfer rate of 480 Mbits/sec. However, USB 2.0 is no longer the zenith of USB performance. Now we have USB 3.0 with its 4.7 Gbits/sec maximum transfer rate starting to appear on some of the most advanced PCs and high-performance PC component vendor OCZ aims to capitalize on the USB 3.0 speed boost. OCZ has announced that it plans to sell a USB 3.0 SSD. The product’s name is Enyo and it’s housed in a futuristic milled aluminum package. Beyond the fashionable stylistic flash however are some impressive Flash memory performance specs.

First, the specs vary depending on drive capacity, which indicates how adding flash devices to the SSD improves parallelism and therefore boosts performance. OCZ’s Enyo drive will be available in capacities of 64, 128, and 256 Gbytes. The 64-Gbyte Enyo SSD’s maximum read performance is 225 Mbytes/sec while the maximum read performance for the 128- and 256-Gbyte drives is 260 Mbytes/sec. Maximum write performance for the 64- and 128/256-Gbyte drives is 135 and 200 Mbytes/sec respectively. For sustained writes, the maximum write performance for the 64- and 128/256-Gbyte drives is 40 and 150 Mbytes/sec respectively. Most of these transfer rates are well beyond the abilities of the USB 2.0 spec (and somewhat beyond the ability of the original 1.5-Gbits/sec SATA interface), hence the need for a USB 3.0 interface on the external Enyo drive.

OCZ’s Enyo SSD is an early indication of the kind of ingenuity that will be unleashed by the USB 3.0 SuperSpeed interface. You should expect rapid adoption of the USB 3.0 interface in laptop, notebook, netbook, and desktop PCs. In fact, PC World’s prediction is that next year’s CES will be crawling with products sporting USB 3.0 devices. No doubt, OCZ’s Enyo will be one of those.