Intel's SSD 710 and 720 Series Specifications Leak
Intel's Solid-State Drive (SSD) roadmap for 2011 includes five new SSDs and the specifications of the 700 Series of SSDs have already appeared online.
According to an Intel SSD roadmap for 2011, Intel plans to release a PCIe-based 400GB/200GB single-level cell (34nm SLC) solid state drive with PCIe 6GB/s interfaces as part of the new "Ramsdale" SSD 720 Series. The company will also ship a new "Lyndonville" SSD 710 series that uses 25nm MLC-HET memory and have a SATA 3Gb/s interface.
The German site ComputerBase.de today posted some more details on the new SSDs:
Intel SSD 700 Series | ||
Series | 710 | 720 |
Codename | Lyndonville | Ramsdale |
Capacities (GB) | 100/200/300 | 200/400 |
NAND type | 25nm MLC-HET | 34nm SLC |
Cache (DRAM) | 64MB | 512MB |
Interface | SATA 3Gb/s | PCIe 2.0 |
Read speed | 270MB/s | 2200MB/s |
Write speed | 210MB/s | 1800MB/s |
4KB read | 35 000 IOPs | 180 000 IOPs |
4KB write | 3 300 IOPs | 56 000 IOPs |
Power (active/standby) | 4W/0.095W | 25W/8W |
Security | AES-128 encryption | AES-256 encryption |
Endurance (TB) | 100GB: 500/900 (20% OP) 200GB: 1000/1300 (20% OP) |
200GB: 18000 400GB:36000 |
Reliability (MTBF-hours) | 2.0 million | |
Data path protection | LBA tag checking | End to end data protection |
Compared to the company's 320 Series of SSDs, the 710 Series seems to be not very different in terms of specifications, but the latter features MLC-HET NANDs, which generally offers more write cycles per cell so longetivity is increased.
The 720 Series will be Intel's first PCIe SSD designed for for enterprise use. The new series is exected to compete with OCZ's PCIe SSD offerings.
Intel's 2011 SSD roadmap also includes the 520 Series (Cherryville"), which will be available in capacities of 480G/240G/120G (25nm MLC) and will come with a 6Gb/s interface.
Intel also expects to release a lower-capacity drive called Paint Creek in the fourth quarter, which with only 40GB and 80GB models (25nm MLC, mSATA 3Gb/s).
Intel's roadmap also includes the "Larsen Creek" SSDs, which will most probably built for caching data from existing HDDs. It's slated to come in both 2.5-inch SATA and mSATA configurations in Q3 and uses SLC NAND. In combination with its the Z68 chipset these new SSDs could be used as performance-boosting cache in combination with a standard hard disk drive (HDD). The SSD would act as a cache, increasing performance for operations such as OS and application load times.