CES – More than a handful of SSD manufacturers have released drives built around Silicon Motion's SM2246EN controller, including Mushkin and its Reactor 1TB SSD. An updated SM2246EN now supports 3D NAND and drive capacities up to 2TB, and Mushkin is using that updated controller to expand the Reactor to 2TB.

Mushkin says it's designed this drive with 3D MLC flash, which should offer a good mix of performance and affordability. Mushkin couldn't tell us where it's sourcing that flash, but it does say to expect a cost of about $0.25 per gigabyte when this drive hits shelves sometime in Q2 this year.

How do you increase drive capacity further when your controller tops out at 2TB? By using JBOD. To construct a 4TB drive, Mushkin is basically putting two Reactor 2TB SSDs on a single PCB. Those drives are then joined into a JBOD with a separate controller. This dual-drive solution will function as a single volume, but spanning drives isn't without its costs. Mushkin tells us to expect random read and write performance of about 10K IOPS. This jumbo-sized Reactor could do well in applications that tend to be heavy on sequential workloads, like video recording or bulk media storage.

This formidably sized drive hasn't been formally named just yet, but we do know that it may be relatively affordable. Mushkin is targeting a $500 price point for this massive SSD when it becomes available after the release of the Reactor 2TB.

In addition to the two new Reactor drives, Mushkin is adding to its higher-end Striker series with a 1.92TB drive built with the Phison PS3110-S10 controller. This high-performance MLC drive is targeted towards the datacenter world, but it could find purchase as an enthusiast-class drive, too.