Intel SSD's in the works?

[Handruin]

Maybe old news, but I've been getting Intel Nehalem updates every night from google and this little bit about Intel SSD drives showed up in the article.

Also in the system were a pair of 80GB Intel-built solid state drives running in a RAID 0 configuration. After seeing these drives in action and talking with representatives from Intel, we now know why Intel is excited to bring these drives to market. The combination of an Intel designed SATA II controller with high speed flash has resulted in a wicked-fast SSD. Unfortunately, again, we were asked not to disclose benchmark scores, but we can say the sustained transfer speeds were significantly higher than anything else we have seen to date.

 

[MaxBurn]

This is some good news, at least they have the fab capacity to make something really happen.

 

[udaman]

Maybe old news, but I've been getting Intel Nehalem updates every night from google and this little bit about Intel SSD drives showed up in the article.

Yeah older news, think it might have been mentioned already in one of the hidden SSD' threads below

Intel to launch 80GB SSD by end of summer?


http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/05/23/intel.80gb.ssd.in.q3/

However, if you scroll down to the Samsung 256GB SSD's thread I started, you'll note the Samsung's *might* be faster still, in higher capacity to boot, using MLC tech.

Then if you look for the other hidden SSD's news under the $500 OCZ SSD, you'll see Mtron's got a new controller coming out that is supposed to go well beyond 200MBs (but of course these are for high-end industrial apps, so cost will be higher than the Samsung 256GB)...see June 19th entry here:

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd.html

 

[Handruin]

Intel is possibly ready to launch?

Expreview has slapped up an honest-to-goodness slide which looks like it came straight from the Intel deck. Assuming it's authentic, then we now know that Intel's 2.5-inch X25-M and 1.8-inch X18-M SSDs top out with a 240MBps sustained read and 70MBps write. That's just a bit slower than the blazing Micron RealSSD C20 but still seriously quick and hopefully priced for the mainstream audience they are targeting.

 

[ddrueding]

That slide shows the X25-E with a 170MB/s write, 240MB/s read and 35K IOPS. That is really friggin' fast.

 

[udaman]

Announced today..but. If only 1.8in size, then 80GB is still too low in capacity.

With OCZ and others stepping up performance and lowering prices, Intel in behind the 'game' already, IMHO.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10019696-1.html?hhTest=1&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crave

 

[ddrueding]

64GB is plenty for workstations. Even with a decent sized music collection. Typically if people need bigger than that, they need much bigger. Like no-way-an-SSD-will-work bigger.

 

[sechs]

I still run 32GB disks. Mass storage is on the network.

That's getting to be a tough row to hoe, tho'. They don't make 'em that small anymore!

 

[ddrueding]

You can get SSDs that small for ~$150

 

[timwhit]

You can get SSDs that small for ~$150

Dave, have you used that line of SuperTalent SSDs yet? Any real drawbacks?

 

[ddrueding]

Dave, have you used that line of SuperTalent SSDs yet? Any real drawbacks?

Not yet. I'm hoping to have some by the end of next week, we'll see how it goes...

 

[timwhit]

I tried to find a review, but couldn't. I probably didn't try hard enough.

They claim 80MB/s sequential writes, I wonder how it is for random reads and writes?

 

[ddrueding]

They claim 80MB/s sequential writes, I wonder how it is for random reads and writes?

I thought that one of the big things on SSDs is that random reads/writes aren't significantly slower than sequential?

 

[timwhit]

I thought that one of the big things on SSDs is that random reads/writes aren't significantly slower than sequential?

Maybe on one of the high-end SLC NAND memory models. I don't know how well these MLC models perform.

 

[sechs]

You can get SSDs that small for ~$150

This is starting to get competitive with 2.5" SAS drives for price. I'm a little skittish on that one year warranty.

 

[udaman]

Price for 80GB $595

I read that''s for quantities of 1000 , damn that's expensive, rather have greater capacity for lower price.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10034775-1.html

The drive uses NAND flash technology specifically built for computing with 10 parallel channels and optimized firmware. As stated previously, the drive will come in both 2.5 inch (X25-M) and 1.8 inch (X18-M) sizes that will fit in both desktops and laptops with the same performance specifications.
The 80GB drive will ship this week for $595...Our own CNET Labs is running tests on the 80GB 2.5 inch drive and we'll report our findings in a hands-on review coming later today.

 

[udaman]

Intel X25-M 80GB SATA Solid State Drive, Intel Ups The Ante


http://hothardware.com/Articles/Intel-X25M-80GB-SATA-Solid-State-Drive-Intel-Ups-The-Ante/?page=10

Performance Summary: A quick run-through of our benchmark data showed us that this new Intel Solid State Disk, in terms of standard synthetic benchmarks, offered exactly what its specifications claimed it would. Read bandwidth of 225MB/sec and Write bandwidth of 74MB/sec on average was measured in a number of tests and the Intel SSD showed itself to be roughly twice as fast in terms of read performance and about on par with other MLC-based SSDs, in terms of write performance. However, when it came to specific application usage models within our PCMark Vantage testing, the Intel X25-M SSD showed a performance lead well in excess of its specifications and what we saw in our synthetic benchmark testing. In many cases the Intel SSD was two to three times faster than the fastest competitive SSDs in our test group


...you can be sure other memory and storage manufacturers will continue to release faster and higher density product in the weeks ahead that will likely offer better competition for Intel's new line of high performance SSDs, and we're expecting new releases to arrive here shortly. We'll provide continuing coverage of the SSD product landscape of course and keep you up to speed with what's HOT in Solid State Disk technologies. In the mean time, in typical fashion, Intel has stepped up big behind SSD technology and once again upped the ante with a breakout product that literally leaves the current competitors folding at the table, at least for this round.

Four-Way SSD Round-Up, OCZ, Super Talent, Mtron


http://hothardware.com/Articles/FourWay-SSD-RoundUp-OCZ-Super-Talent-Mtron/?page=4

 

[udaman]

For those who don't click on my links to read the articles (that's most of you ), in the link above, there is an image of the Intel Roadmap which mentiones the SLC 'Extreme' versions due out Q4, I'll let you read the specs.

Interesting for 2009 Intel "plans" to go to 34nm process (still I see, most all SSD's are stuck at 50nm and have been such for several years now, just think what capacity levels, let alone performance can be potentially obtained, with lower costs too, when moving to 40nm or smaller).

 

[ddrueding]

Has anyone gotten an X25 yet? I see a number of sites selling them on google, but none that I recognize.

 

[udaman]

Has anyone gotten an X25 yet? I see a number of sites selling them on google, but none that I recognize.

Why would you want to get an X25 for $600+, if you can *double*....

why not just buy Samsung's 1st gen SSD, if all you want is slower performance (oops, I forgot, you already did that ).


let me point that out to again, *double* to *triple* the thoroughput of the X25, by waiting 3-6mo for similarly priced Fusionio @80GB?

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7321



http://www.fusionio.com/PressDetails.aspx?id=46

Fusion-io offers several magnitudes of breakthrough performance at a fraction of the cost of today's traditional disk-based storage systems. The company’s ioMemory architecture creates a new tier in the memory hierarchy – one that has 100 times the capacity density and 10 times the capacity per dollar of DRAM. NAND flash-based ioMemory makes it possible to have terabytes of near-memory-speed storage within each node – bringing extremely large memory problems and I/O bound analysis to a new level of cost effectiveness.... The ioXtreme will be priced at under $1000 and be available for home and consumer use in Q1, 2009.

 

[jtr1962]

Unless you're one of the early adopters who absolutely always must have the latest and greatest (and is willing to lose tons of money beta testing new technology), the best thing to do is play the waiting game. The situation today with SSDs is what existed with power LEDs 3 years ago. Luxeon was pretty much the only game in town. And then Cree and Seoul came along with LEDs with twice the efficiency, and dropped prices as well. In about two years you'll probably have a geat selection of very fast, capacious, and reasonably-priced SSDs. Instead of Intel's $599 for 80 GB, you'll probably be able to get 256GB with similar performance for half that or less in two years. And most of the kinks will probably be worked out by then.

 

[ddrueding]

I now have a RAID-0 of 3 1st Gen SSDs and a RAID-0 of 3 VelociRaptors. In real world photo editing stuff, the 10k disks win hands down. Within the month I'll order the X25s, and by the end of the year I'll have some FusionIO cards (tricky to RAID them, how many PCI-E slots do you have?