HighPoint introduces its new Rocket Gen5 NVMe Switch & RAID AIC/Adapter series

The company HighPoint is not an unknown name, as it is known for the production of RAID storage and NVMe data carriers. Now, with its new Rocket Gen5 NVMe switch controller and RAID AIC/adapter series, the company is presenting a range of new products. The company is presenting its new Rocket 1608A and Rocket 7608A with the respective adapters, which should be of interest to some customers. But let’s start from the beginning.

The Rocket 1608A has a bus type of PCIe 5.0 x16 and offers support up to a form factor of 2280. The new NVMe has a connector count of 8x Gen NVMe ports. The whole is available in a full length single slot design. The switch adapter is equipped with a full length aluminum heatsink with a cooler. It has an MCIO port count of 4 and a form factor of U.2/U.3, E3.S. This new NVMe is supported by systems that have native NVMe support.

Rocket NVMe

Image Source: HighPoint

Rocket Adapter

Image Source: HighPoint

Rocket Side

Image Source: HighPoint

Alarm Buzzer

Image Source: HighPoint

Next up is the Rocket 7608A, which is also based on PCIe 5.0 x 16. The form factor does not change either, as it is also possible up to 2280. The whole thing also comes in a single-slot design. The difference to the Rocket 1608A is the operating system support. Here, only Windows and Linux users can enjoy this new NVMe. The adapter is equipped with a full-length aluminum frame to regulate the thermal heat, which is cooled by a fan. Its form factors are U.2/U.3, E3.S.

Both Rocket Gen5 NVMe switches are controlled by the Broadcom PEX89048. This is a 48-channel switch with 16 PCIe Gen5 lanes and offers a high transmission bandwidth. Accordingly, it should be possible to achieve a speed of 64 GB/s on a single PCIe Gen5 x16 slot. 32 lanes are distributed evenly across all eight device channels. What does this mean in concrete terms? This means that 4 dedicated lanes of Gen5 bandwidth are available for each SSD.

The products will be delivered in the third quarter of 2024. The price of the Rocket 1628A is listed at 1499 dollars and for the 7608 a value of 1999 US dollars is given.

Source: HighPoint