INTEL and SSD

lor77 · Post by **lor77** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 12:16 pm

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13924_1-9888760-64.html
Troy Winslow the Marketing Manager for NAND Product Group of Intel,stated that the SSD of Mtron and Samsung,that touch 100MB/sec average transfer rate,will not not be comparable with Intel,which will be faster . "What I can tell you is ours is much better than that" and "When Intel launches its...products, you'll see that not all SSDs are created equal"

Luminair · Post by **Luminair** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:49 pm

If I recall correctly, the press release for their SLC stuff said it could do 200mbps+

lor77 · Post by **lor77** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 10:30 am

Intel SSDs will have a read speed of 240MB/sec and a write speed of 170MB/s launching in Q3 2008.
Spectacular !!!
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=314715

Bar81 · Post by **Bar81** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:34 pm

Read it carefully, the slower performing (MLC?) drives will be released in Q3 with unknown speeds. The premiere drives (SLC?) won't be launched until Q4.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 1:51 pm

Designed in conjunction with Micron apparently although Micron have announced even faster drives! At this stage both sound pretty damn fast so pricing will be more of an issue.

NyteOwl · Post by **NyteOwl** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 5:47 pm

And will probably cost as if they were embedded in solid gold.

krille · Post by **krille** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 2:32 am

I thought Intel was partnering up with Micron already?
Micron's SLC SSD series called RealSSD P200 is coming out Q4 08 and is 250/250. The MLC line called RealSSD C200 series will feature a slower 100 MB/s write speed, but the same fast 250 MB/s reads.
http://www.micron.com/about/news/pressr ... 0DEFA2B68E

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 6:51 am

krille wrote:I thought Intel was partnering up with Micron already?
Micron's SLC SSD series called RealSSD P200 is coming out Q4 08 and is 250/250. The MLC line called RealSSD C200 series will feature a slower 100 MB/s write speed, but the same fast 250 MB/s reads.
http://www.micron.com/about/news/pressr ... 0DEFA2B68E

At this rate, within 12-18 months, SSD's will be hitting the limit for SATA 3.0gbit connecters, which top out at 300MB/sec. Anybody know when SATA 6.0gbit is supposed to be finalized?

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:54 am

AZBrandon wrote:
krille wrote:I thought Intel was partnering up with Micron already?
Micron's SLC SSD series called RealSSD P200 is coming out Q4 08 and is 250/250. The MLC line called RealSSD C200 series will feature a slower 100 MB/s write speed, but the same fast 250 MB/s reads.
http://www.micron.com/about/news/pressr ... 0DEFA2B68E
At this rate, within 12-18 months, SSD's will be hitting the limit for SATA 3.0gbit connecters, which top out at 300MB/sec. Anybody know when SATA 6.0gbit is supposed to be finalized?

The incredible rate at which SSD speeds are increasing has really caught people off guard. Sure these very high end drives are the small minority of a tiny sector, but that wont last long.

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:43 am

FartingBob wrote:The incredible rate at which SSD speeds are increasing has really caught people off guard. Sure these very high end drives are the small minority of a tiny sector, but that wont last long.

Yeah, I found the fastest SSD can't even be connected by SATA since it's rated at 700mb/sec! Instead, it's made on a PCI-Express card, since that's the only PC connection capable of moving the data at full speed.

Fusion IO card - 80/160/320 GB

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:25 am

The connection I use for my OS drive is fast enough by a factor of four (the DDR slots).

tuz · Post by **tuz** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 7:25 pm

Some info from Intel from IDF 2008 (via Anandtech). The article also mentions - "The mainstream drives promise up to 250MB/s reads, 70MB/s writes with a 0.15W active power and 0.06W idle power rating." - those are nice power figures! Overall throughput looks good but random reads & writes are also looking very promising, with graphs on the 2nd page, granted they're provided by Intel themselves. These drives are looking very promising for HTPC's (perhaps with a server streaming out files) and also for those wanting to install an OS on a 2nd drive without adding any more noise.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 9:08 pm

Can't wait until we get more info on the Intel SSDs. The higher random write performance is probably due to write caching. Not only does this increase performance, but it also extends the effective life of the flash chips. Can make MLC as durable as SLC.

kel · Post by **kel** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 10:51 pm

Sounds interesting, but searching a bit around these are going to be rather pricey:

Intel's keeping the announcements coming at this year's IDF -- today we got word that the company will launch its first SSDs in a month or so just as we expected. The 1.8-inch X-18M and 2.5-inch X-25M drives will be targeted at laptops and MIDs and come in 80GB and 160GB sizes using MLC tech, while the 32GB and 64GB SLC-based X-25E is aimed at servers and will be out in 90 days. Intel hasn't locked down pricing, but the M-series drives should cost about $8/GB, which would put the 160GB unit at a whopping $1,280 and the 80GB at $640. We're hoping those estimates are skewed a little high -- and Intel says there might be a cheaper 40GB unit on the way as well. We'll see in a month, we suppose.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/19/inte ... n-a-month/

They're high performance, but around double the price of competitors is still a hefty premium...

Bar81 · Post by **Bar81** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 5:52 am

Gee, what a shock

MLC on the cheap ones with severely compromised performance and SLC on the real SSDs. At least their pricing is reasonable

lor77 · Post by **lor77** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 8:29 am

Intel starts shipping the X18-M and X25-M solid state drives.
An 80GB drive costs $595 (price for quantities of up to 1000 units).
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=324872

walkingjohn · Post by **walkingjohn** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 9:23 am

Some reviews are out (dailytech has links). Verdict: wow!

Intel appears to have completely fixed the inconsistent random write problems that other MLC ssds (like OCZ core) have. The write speeds are still on the slow side, but perfectly respectable. And reads are through the roof.

I just wish they'd release smaller sizes. I'd happily pay $250 for a 30 gig version, but $600 is too much. Only larger sizes are on their roadmap.

http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Int ... te/?page=1
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=61 ... pert&pid=1
http://techreport.com/articles.x/15433

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 12:31 pm

Here's a review on Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3403

Print version: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3403

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 9:33 pm

Fantastic performance on the MLC drive. That controller will really fly with SLC chips, though.

lor77 · Post by **lor77** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:41 am

Intel has begun shipping its highest- performing SSD X-25E.
http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/intel-s ... /6109.html
32GB capacity drive is priced at $695 for quantities up to 1,000,64GB to follow.
Nice price for the performance its achieves and compared to MTRON SSD's!!

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 6:54 am

www.nowdirect.com says they have them in stock for $770 each.

Cheapest X25-M i've seen is $640.

Also note however that the X25-E is 32GB, while the X25-M is 80GB.

Samsung clone 32gb SLC drives can be had for as little as $265 from newegg for the A-Data branded model. So you could have almost 3 of the SLC samsung drives for the price of the one Intel drive.

bgiddins · Post by **bgiddins** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:40 pm

AZBrandon wrote:Yeah, I found the fastest SSD can't even be connected by SATA since it's rated at 700mb/sec! Instead, it's made on a PCI-Express card, since that's the only PC connection capable of moving the data at full speed.

Fusion IO card - 80/160/320 GB

I'm surprised that there hasn't been more mention of this card on SPCR - obviously they're far too expensive for the average punter, but an 80GB consumer model named the ioXtreme has been announced as being available Q1 09 - but still at about $1000, or $12.50/GB.

Wonder how much heat they generate....

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:32 am

bgiddins wrote:
AZBrandon wrote:Yeah, I found the fastest SSD can't even be connected by SATA since it's rated at 700mb/sec! Instead, it's made on a PCI-Express card, since that's the only PC connection capable of moving the data at full speed.

Fusion IO card - 80/160/320 GB
I'm surprised that there hasn't been more mention of this card on SPCR - obviously they're far too expensive for the average punter, but an 80GB consumer model named the ioXtreme has been announced as being available Q1 09 - but still at about $1000, or $12.50/GB.

Wonder how much heat they generate....

Calculating price / GB is really pointless with this product.
It's not meant to store movies.
$0.01 / IOPS.
$1.25 / MBps.