Chinese storage startup uses ancient, controversial technique to deliver 'extraordinarily fast and resilient' SSD: this weirdly-named Roealsen6 unlocks hardware compression to deliver incredible PCIe SSD speeds

Compression based SSD pushes PCIe Gen5 performance past conventional flash limitsExtreme benchmark results rely on workloads that compress cleanly and predictablyRoealsen6 R6101C trades fixed capacity assumptions for speed and efficiency

DapuStor is a Chinese startup which develops and makes very large - and very fast - enterprise-grade SSDs.

These include the DapuStor J5060 61.44TB and the Roealsen6 R6101 7.68TB. The latest drive from the firm is the Roealsen6 R6101C 7.68TB SDD, which TweakTown reviewed and raved over.

Testing showed the drive delivering record sequential and mixed workload throughput when compression was enabled - and TweakTown wrote, “This is by far the fastest rate we’ve encountered from any single PCIe Gen5 x4 SSD.”

Highest sequential throughput and mixed workload

Part of DapuStor’s Roealsen6 series, the new SSD is built around the company’s in house DP800 controller and firmware. It uses a PCIe 5.0 interface and 3D eTLC NAND flash, while supporting the NVMe 2.0 protocol.

Unlike standard SSDs, the R6101C includes an application processor paired with a transparent hardware compression engine.

This allows data to be compressed before being written to flash, reducing the amount of physical storage accessed.

Performance and usable capacity depend, naturally, on how compressible the data is. Users can favor raw speed or effective capacity, although both are tied directly to workload characteristics.

Under ideal conditions, the compression system can reach up to a 4:1 ratio. This allows a 7.68TB drive to present several times its physical capacity to the host.

This echoes long standing practices in tape storage, where LTO media lists native and compressed capacities.

At a 2:1 compression ratio, TweakTown measured up to 14,200MB/s sequential writes and 15,050MB/s sequential reads. Both figures exceeded factory specifications.

Random write testing also set records. Results reached around 1.27 million IOPS in 4K workloads at the same compression level.

The SSD draws roughly 18W under load and uses a U.2 form factor. It’s rated for 1 DWPD and supports common enterprise platforms.

Compression based SSDs aren’t new of course, with products from ScaleFlux already on the market, but the new Roealsen6 adds another option for buyers.

TweakTown rated it 99/100, while noting that real world results will depend on achieving compression levels that won’t apply to all data types.

Senior Hardware Editor Jon Coulter concluded, “DapuStor’s Roealsen6 R6101C 7.68TB has delivered the highest sequential throughput and the highest mixed workload throughput we’ve ever encountered from any flash based SSD.”