OCZ have recently been tinkering with the idea of using internal RAID 0 in some of their upcoming SSDs. This would allow for significantly faster transfer rates whilst not really costing much more to manufacture. OCZ hope to implement this RAID concept in superseeding lineups that replace the existing Core series of drives.

The folks at Nordic Hardware have obtained some early test results of the technology being used in their higher end Vertex SSDs, which OCZ is currently calling the Vertex 2. These results are just mind blowing with read and write speeds of up to 480MB/sec and 550MB/sec respectively; accomplished by using a quad-RAID config.

That is substantially higher than the maximum capabilities of SATA-II (around 250MB/sec actual) and even if you get hold of a SATA-III (6Gbps) setup you'll still be pushing its boundaries with those amazing write speeds.

Nonetheless, OCZ is pushing to get these into a full production run by the end of Q1. We have no idea on capacities or pricing, but it's a safe bet kidneys, arms and legs will be the most common method of exchange.