HighPoint introduced a RAID controller for 16 M.2 drives – up to 128 TB with speeds up to 28 GB/s

HighPoint has introduced the 16-channel SSD7749M2 PCIe 4.0 expansion card, which allows you to assemble an array of 16 M.2 2280 NVMe solid-state drives and achieve data transfer rates of 28 GB/s via the PCIe 4.0 x16 interface. The new product is designed to work with large volumes of data and AI-related workloads.

Image source: HighPoint

Last year, the manufacturer released a model of a similar RAID controller SSD7749E with support for installing up to 8 SSDs of E1.S format, capable of providing a maximum data transfer speed of up to 55 GB/s. The new SSD7749M2 model, although it offers almost half the bandwidth, is equipped with double-sided drive trays. The latter allow you to place up to sixteen SSDs of the usual consumer M.2 2280 format and create an array with a total capacity of up to 128 TB with the potential to expand the volume up to 256 TB in the future.

The manufacturer claims that the SSD7749M2 uses proven PCIe x48 switching technology, which distributes 16 upstream bandwidth lanes (for connecting to the host platform) and two downstream bandwidth lanes for each SSD. This optimizes signal integrity, reduces latency and provides very high levels of throughput.

To effectively cool the installed components, the HighPoint SSD7749M2 RAID controller is housed in an aluminum case that completely isolates the drives from surrounding system components, and is also equipped with a cooling system consisting of a large radiator and three fans. One of them is located directly on top of the cooling radiator, and the other two, smaller ones, are located at the rear of the device.

In addition, HighPoint has developed an intelligent real-time temperature monitoring and alerting system that is directly integrated into the storage management software and monitors the performance of each installed SSD.

The new product is also equipped with a package of information security systems, which includes SafeStorage for data encryption for disks and SED arrays compatible with OPAL SSC. Stored data is automatically locked whenever a drive is removed from the array, effectively preventing unauthorized access to sensitive information if physical drives are lost or stolen. The SSD7749M2 also features Hardware Secure Boot, which prevents unauthorized code from executing during system boot.

The HighPoint SSD7749M2 M.2 PCIe Gen 4 x16 NVMe RAID AIC RAID controller for 16 SSDs is priced at $1999. The new product will go on sale by the end of this month.