If we consider companies like LSI and their competitors, like Adaptec and AMCC (3Ware), you'll note that they're in a unique position in this storage technology migration, in that they can almost take an agnostic stance, in terms of which media type and market opportunity they decide to resource development efforts in. For players like LSI, with a wealth of HBA controller IP at their disposal, they can relatively easily adapt and re-tool their technologies to service NAND Flash SSD memory structures and bring compelling solutions to market as market demand develops.

The LSI WarpDrive that we have on hand for you here is representative of LSI's efforts to capitalize on the company's strong SAS RAID controller technology base, combined with the most cutting-edge SSD technologies on the market today. We'll call to your attention early here that the WarpDrive means business though. With a $11,500 MSRP and street pricing in the $7400 - $8K range, end-user enthusiasts are likely not going to belly-up the justification to support the cost of a storage subsystem that is much more expensive than a typical entire system build...

...We've got some of the fastest PCI Express-based SSD technology money can buy on the test bench and we intend to light it up for you to see on the pages that follow.