Fujitsu Quadro-M Series PCIe SSD Preview

Introduction

We started our Fujitsu F100 review out with this statement:

Fujitsu Asia Pacific Ltd is a subsidiary of Fujitsu, and a company large enough to need no introduction. This subsidiary of Fujitsu has made a lot of noise in Asian computer DIY markets with a trio of SATA III, and a unique PCIe SSD for the consumer market.

The same holds true for today, but instead of testing a run of the mill SATA III SSD with a Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller, we're testing the unique PCIe SSD from Fujitsu.

Fujitsu calls their adaptation to PCIe All-in-One RAID SSD the Quadro-M PCIe. The drive uses a Marvell PCIe 2.0 four-lane RAID controller to four SATA III. To keep things simple, the Quadro-M comes equipped with four Intel mSATA SSDs with eMLC NAND flash, all packaged in an easy to install configuration.

The drive we're testing today is an early sample. At this time, the Quadro-M is not available for sale, but that should change in the coming months.

Specifications, Pricing, and Availability

Fujitsu plans to release the Quadro-M in three capacities: 240GB, 480GB, and 720GB. The first two capacities are easy to get to - just four 64GB drives for the 240GB, and four 120GB drives for the 480GB. The 720GB model will use 180GB mSATA SSDs in RAID 0.

The largest capacity model should deliver Fujitsu's claimed 880 MB/s sequential read and 840 MB/s sequential write. When we tested all five capacities from Intel's 525 Series, we learned that the 180GB models performed very closely to the 240GB models, but the 120GB was slower than both by a decent margin. That means the 480GB Quadro-M we're testing today should be a bit slower than the claimed 'up to' performance.

Users looking for a certain level of data protection can configure the array in RAID 10, but will lose half of the overall capacity when doing so. Using RAID 10 will also come with a performance penalty. The Quadro-M uses a Marvell 88SE9230 PCIe to SATA controller. This ARM based processor allows users to configure the RAID functionality in BIOS, just like any enterprise grade RAID controller. Several motherboard manufacturers also use the 9230 on upper-tier motherboards designed for the enthusiast market.

At this time, we don't know much about pricing, but we do know the Fujitsu Quadro-M will have a three-year warranty, and will mainly be available in the APAC region.