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Wednesday, April 12, 2017
 Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X Series Could Help Intel maintain Its Lead in Server Storage Market
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Intel, which has been the top brand in the server SSD market for 2016, could maintain its position with the release of its Optane SSD DC P4800X Series this March, despite the high cost of the new device.

The Optane SSD DC P4800X Series is based the company's in-house 3D XPoint memory, and the first shipments are scheduled to start in the second half of 2017.

Intel lags behind Samsung and Toshiba in the production capacity for NAND Flash. Putting forward a new premium SSD line that uses a proprietary memory technology is a way for Intel to maintain high profit margin for its server business with limited NAND Flash capacity. Furthermore, the introduction of 3D XPoint could help Intel reduce the risk of being overly reliant on the high-end server SSD market.

SSDs using 3D XPoint have several advantages over NAND Flash-based counterparts. The random reading and random writing speeds of the former are faster and more consistent. DC P4800X products also vastly outperform conventional NAND Flash-based SSDs on the latency and endurance indicators. Disregarding the price difference, 3D XPoint-based SSDs are superior to NAND Flash-based SSDs in every aspect.

From the design perspective, SSDs from the DC P4800X Series use 128Gb 3D XPoint chips that are stacked together. The interface is PCIe and the controller chip is developed in house. In terms of capacity options, Intel will first release 375GB products and then roll out 750GB and 1.5TB models. According to the listed specifications, SSDs of this series is capable of reaching 2,400MB/s for sequential reading, 2,200MB/s for sequential writing and over 500,000 in IOPS. Furthermore, they have a typical latency of less than 10 microseconds and score 30 on the major endurance indicator DWPD (drive writes per day).

Based on the official recommended price, a 375GB SSD of the DC P4800X Series is set at around US$4/GB. Meanwhile, a NAND Flash-based SSD with similar specifications and PCIe interface can cost as low as US$1/GB. This four-fold difference means that the DC P4800X Series is probably targeting the high-end segment of the server SSD market during the initial release period.

The price per gigabyte (US$/GB) of a 375GB SSD from the DC P4800X Series is about four times as much as that of a NAND Flash-based SSD with similar specifications and PCIe interface. Whether 3D XPoint can penetrate into the mid-range and low-end product segments will be determined mainly by pricing. This new type of memory chips have to become more attractive cost-wise for OEMs in the client-grade SSD and SCM device markets.

DRAMeXchange's data show that Intel was the top brand in the global server SSD market for 2016 with more than 30% of the market share. Rival Samsung closely followed Intel with a roughly similar market share. So far, Intel's leadership in the server SSD market comes from leveraging the company's dominance in the CPU market. However, Samsung and later entrants to this field are gaining experience and have adopted aggressive pricing to erode Intel's market shares for mid-range and low-end server SSDs.

Intel's new 3D XPoint-based SSDs can expand the capacity of server DRAM via the company's proprietary virtualization software known as Intel Memory Drive Technology, which is a separate product and costs extra. The bundle price for the 375GB SSD of the DC P4800X Series and the virtualization software together comes to around US$5/GB. Considering the average sales price of server DRAM DIMMs (currently at about US$7/GB), the bundle price is actually competitive in this respect.

"Intel's new SSD line is between server DRAM DIMMs and NAND Flash server SSDs in terms of efficiency and pricing," noted Alan Chen, senior research manager of DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce. "3D XPoint-based SSDs lack the performance capability to fully substitute server DRAM DIMMs. However, products from the DC P4800X Series can take on the role of SCM devices and work with server DRAM DIMMs to improve the operation of the entire server system."

 
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