Indilinx Barefoot

The Indilinx Barefoot was arguably the controller that established OCZ as an important early SSD brand. Released in 2009, it was among the first SATA II SSD controllers to offer competitive performance against the then-dominant JMicron JMF602, which suffered from severe stuttering, and quickly became the preferred choice for performance-oriented builds before SandForce's arrival.

The Barefoot is a DRAM-equipped 4-channel design manufactured on TSMC's 130nm process. It supports AES-128 encryption and was paired primarily with MLC NAND. OCZ used it in the Vertex and Nova series. Several other brands also shipped Barefoot-based drives under their own labels. The controller was designed by Indilinx, a fabless semiconductor company that OCZ later acquired in 2011.