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Optiarc's VP series SSD comes in an eye-catching, blue and green box. The front advertises many of the drive's key features including its 480GB capacity, SATA 6Gbps interface and maximum read and write speeds. There is also a small, plastic window which lets you look inside the box and see what the VP looks like. The back of the box provides a bit more information, including the drive's full specifications. The VP does not come with any accessories or documentation which is most likely an attempt by Optiarc to make the drive as affordable as possible.
Physical Features:
The VP looks very similar to other 2.5-inch SSDs on the market today. The outer casing is made entirely out of black plastic with large, greenish-blue stickers on the top and bottom. Along with the Optiarc logo, these stickers show information like the capacity, rated speeds, part number and serial number.
The VP uses Phison's PS3111-S11 controller chip. This small, single core SSD controller supports two channels with up to 16 chip enables (CE) per channel. The S11 is also compatible with SLC, MLC, TLC and 3D NAND flash and features advanced technologies like end to end data path protection, SmartECC, SmartZIP and SmartFlush. The controller also supports Device Sleep (DEVSLP) but for whatever reason it is not enabled on the VP.
For the 480GB version of the VP, Optiarc has opted to use Toshiba's 64-layer BiCS3 3D TLC NAND flash. Looking at the picture above, you can see that there are two 128GB NAND flash packages on either side of the PCB. Also take note that there is no DRAM cache chip. Instead, there is 32MB of SDRAM embedded in the controller.
