Holy overpricing, Batman!

"You can use the 2U case for 1.5TB, 3TB or 6TB of flash, multi-level cell (MLC) flash that is." ... "Pricing starts at $60,000 for a 1.5TB system. That is a $40/GB price which should be below the Violin Memory pricing."

Wow. Don't get me wrong, I know that it has more than just the MLC flash disks, but $60,000 can buy a LOT of SLC disks which could be bought and arrayed for that price. The Intel X-25 Extreme 64GB SLC SATA II SSD goes for about $700. Assuming one parity disk for each three data disks, that'd be $2800 for 192GB. To reach 1.5TB, it'd cost $22,400 for the top-of-the-line SLC disks.

WhipTail's product is using MLC disks where a 128GB MLC SSD goes for about $300-350. Assuming one parity disk for each three data disks, that'd be $1400 for 384GB. To reach 1.5TB, it'd cost $5,600 for the disks. Even if you did RAID1, it'd only cost $8,400 for the disks. Does the rest of that device (controllers, NICs, power supply, etc) came anywhere close to $54,400 or $51,600? I highly doubt it.

I know that these devices are more than a simple RAID1 or RAID5 array, and I know that the companies have to recoup their R&D, and I even know that these types of devices have large profit margins built in. But still, based on the cost of the disks, it seems like they could have done an SLC array and still come in at a much lower cost (not to mention a massively increased lifespan).