COMPUTEX Taipei 2010 - Indilinx, a leader in consumer performance solid state controllers has a product that we have all been waiting to see. Code Named Jet Stream, this SATA 6G controller was once thought to be hitting e-tail shelves in early 2010 but has been pushed back to 2011, possibly late 2011.

Replacing the 16 channel Jet Stream in 2010 will be Barefoot 2, a product we know little about. Barefoot 2 will be an 8 channel controller with a maximum capacity of 512GB and well…that is really all I have at this time other than 2010 is the ETA and the words very soon came to the surface a few times.

The move to push Jet Stream back actually has more to do with Intel moving support for native ICH SATA 6G than anything else. With Intel out of the 6Gbps game now Indilinx doesn't want the headaches currently playing out with other SATA 6G products on the market already. We have experienced more than a few of those in our test lab already so even though we don't like hearing about a product delay we can understand the reasoning behind the move.

Over the next few weeks we should start hearing more about Barefoot 2 and even see samples before Santa visits in December. We are crossing our fingers hoping Indilinx will be able to fill Santa's sleigh with Barefoot 2 drives from "Team SSD" drive manufactures. A new 512GB SSD would make a nice stocking stuffer.

Indilinx had a strong year in 2009 with around 60% of the SSD market share. This may be one of the reasons why we are seeing SandForce products starting to tumble in price. Consumer SF-1200 drives are much faster than Barefoot drives now but what is going to happen once we see Barefoot 2.0?

As you can imagine we have much more SSD coverage to come from Computex and tomorrow we will introduce a new SSD controller to you with a full run of benchmarks and a preview article! To get the full overview of the market you will need to wait until the next installment of The State of Solid State coming in just a few weeks, an article that has seens its own fair share of delays. Hang in there with us as we finishing gathering all of the pieces to the rapidly changing puzzle.