Intel's Future SSD Plans Detailed

[Cristian_25H]

After asking around Taiwan, Digitimes has apparently found out Intel's SSD intentions for the rest of this year. As soon as May the Santa Clara-based chip giant is said to bring out the 300 Series ' Maple Crest' drives, as well as the 720 Series (Ramsdale). The 300s are consumer-grade solutions, while the 720s target enterprises and feature a PCIe interface.

The 720 Series SSDs will come in 400 GB and 800 GB capacities and, like the 300 Series, will utilize 25 nm MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory.

In Q3 Intel is set to be making the transition to 20 nm NAND and will release the 500 Series 'King Crest' models, while later on, in Q4 we should see the arrival of the 100 GB, 200 GB, 400 GB and 800 GB Taylorsville drives part of the 700 Series, and the Jay Crest and Oak Crest SSDs bearing the 300 Series banner.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[v12dock]

Using sandforce again?

 

[MeanBruce]

I heard Intel will finally (again) be utilizing their own controllers on all ssd models released 2012 Q3 and Q4. That is good news, good for healthy competition and good for us consumers. If SandForce hadn’t come along and really shaken things up, we would still be on Intel’s 10% speed increase per annum roadmap and may have been up to 350/350 Read/Writes by now. Luckily little SandForce with all 83 of its employees, comprise some very innovative minds. When they release their first IPO, buy all you can.

My Intel X-25M has been just amazing but by Q4 could use a refresh, the 720 series PCIe 200GB and the new 500 series both sound like perfect replacements.

Ok, I am just a dumb Yank, what do the gold stars mean?

 

[Prima.Vera]

Not to be rude, but Intel's SSD are unreliable, slow and over priced. Did I miss anything?

 

[FierceRed]

Not to be rude, but Intel's SSD are unreliable, slow and over priced. Did I miss anything?

Hahahahahahahahaha... oh that's funny.

Oh wait... you were serious?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA~

 

[ASharp]

Hahahahahahahahaha... oh that's funny.

Oh wait... you were serious?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA~

+1 Maybe he's mad because he bought OCZ.

 

[boogerlad]

Prima.Vera is right about them being slow and overpriced. Many ssds using the marvell controller are significantly faster in all aspects and are cheaper as well. Intel ssds are quite reliable as seen in the xs nand endurance thread though.

 

[FierceRed]

Not to be rude either, but slow is relative when you're talking about SSDs. I'm not arguing that 'Intel = Slower' isn't a fact, I'm arguing that no one can justifiably cry when 'lightspeed' isn't as fast as 'hyperspeed'. What kind of first world problem is that to point out like it's a fault?

Secondly, whether we're talking about SSDs, HDDs, PSUs or any other acronym, reliability has never been overpriced. RAID 1 being "twice" as expensive as a single drive isn't an unjustified expense, and if we here on this forum were capable of engineering an extremely reliable storage solution that also performed lightning fast but not lightningstorm fast compared to our competitors far less reliable efforts, we wouldn't be on this forum whingeing as we would be millionaires many times over. We don't even have to be talking about computer hardware in order to invoke "you get what you pay for" metaphors. If I were Intel, I'd price it that way too, as would many many others.

So yes, while "Slow" and "Overpriced" are subjective... for the kind of reliability provided, whoever claims such needs their subjective scale rebalanced, allowing of course for financial realities. Especially in an era of all too common BSODs and data partition resets creeping their way past validation phases.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Hahahahahahahahaha... oh that's funny.

Oh wait... you were serious?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA~

Yet another very mature and educated user of those forums...

+1 Maybe he's mad because he bought OCZ.

For another million time...I am a SHE !!!!!

 

[FierceRed]

Yet another very mature and educated user of those forums...

Hey, it was funny when I read that. Literally, ha-ha's and a "whaaaaaat?~" were coming out of my mouth when I'd processed it! Thank you for the natural health product of laughter. Not trolling. Relieved some stress I was under.

And I did substantiate my position with a respectful and factual counter-argument. If you must judge me by one post, so be it, but I wouldn't reciprocate were our positions reversed. Just don't call SSDs slow or Intel SSDs unreliable roll and we'll get along swimmingly.

 

[Aquinus]

Just don't call SSDs slow or Intel SSDs unreliable () and we'll get along swimmingly.

Well, they don't tend to keep up with other SandForce solutions so there are plenty of cheaper and faster solutions. Also I have to agree, I have seen and heard nothing that says Intel's SSDs are unreliable. Hell, even their read speeds are really good, it's their write speeds that has much to be desired.

 

[MeanBruce]

Intel SSDs have set the mark for reliability, just search the Anandtech reviews, they are far and away the most reliable solid state drives, and now they offer a 5year warranty better than any other manufacturer.

But I think what SHE was saying was Intel did put out a few SSD series that were slower at the time of release than other offerings in the market!

The 310series and the 510series were nothing to get excited about. Later this year though things might get very interesting!

 

[Aquinus]

Intel SSDs have set the mark for reliability, just search the Anandtech reviews, they are far and away the most reliable solid state drives, and now they offer a 5year warranty better than any other manufacturer.

But I think what SHE was saying was Intel did put out a few SSD series that were slower at the time of release than other offerings in the market!

The 310series and the 510series were nothing to get excited about. Later this year though things might get very interesting!

Well, my Force GTs are maxing out my SATA6 bus, so unless SATA 12gb comes out, I'll be content with what I have.

 

[MeanBruce]

Well, my Force GTs are maxing out my SATA6 bus, so unless SATA 12gb comes out, I'll be content with what I have.

I am dying to jump on a Force GT, more RED for my new build, but I might just go brand-happy if I buy another Corsair product!

The Intel 700 series sounds like it will be using PCIe interface so no SATA6 bottlenecks.


My Intel X-25M seems slow by todays standards.

 

[entropy13]

Ok, I am just a dumb Yank, what do the gold stars mean?

Under your username? Post count. 25, 50, 75, 100, 500, 1000, 2000, etc. are the increments iirc.

 

[MeanBruce]

Hearing now the Taylorsburg additions in Q4 will not only be PCIe but also over 1GB/s Read/Writes, wow, and we have the replacement for the Noctua NH-D14, new Corsair platinum PSUs, and Ivy Bridge, it's gonna be a great year for gear!


now if Corsair would only announce a new and improved H100, with a stronger quieter pump, the H110, that would make this year amazing!

 

[Delta6326]

... Did I miss something? Where is 600 Series?

 

[MeanBruce]

... Did I miss something? Where is 600 Series?

Intel is using 300, 500, and 700 nomenclature for the SSDs, like i3, i5, i7, because prime numbers Rock!

 

[AsRock]

Not to be rude, but Intel's SSD are unreliable, slow and over priced. Did I miss anything?

Spoken like some one who has never had one.. In fact the 1st ones of INTEL SSD's are known as one of the best SSD's you could buy..


I hope they use their own controller once again..

 

[Prima.Vera]

Just don't call SSDs slow or Intel SSDs unreliable roll and we'll get along swimmingly.

Than what do you call this? Straight from Intel forums:

http://communities.intel.com/message/125652
http://communities.intel.com/message/122877
http://communities.intel.com/thread/21587
or you forgot about this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-bug-ssd-320-series,13076.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-SSD-320-Series-reportedly-failing-due-to-major-bug.57387.0.html
?

And YES, I also had an Intel SSD also, died after 2 years. Very reliable in-deeed! :shadedshu

 

[WhiteLotus]

Than what do you call this? Straight from Intel forums:

http://communities.intel.com/message/125652
http://communities.intel.com/message/122877
http://communities.intel.com/thread/21587
or you forgot about this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-bug-ssd-320-series,13076.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-SSD-320-Series-reportedly-failing-due-to-major-bug.57387.0.html
?

And YES, I also had an Intel SSD also, died after 2 years. Very reliable in-deeed! :shadedshu

Not to start an argument. But two years ago the drives were all pretty new technology? I'd be surprised if most drives from back then are as good as they were.

 

[nt300]

ssd overall are overpriced and slow. This is 2012, harddrives should be as fast if not faster than the fastest performing DDR3 ram. We can all agree harddrives (companies) over the past several (many) years all have dragged the feet and didn't improve drive speed. The harddrive is still the slowest piece of hardware in the PC today.

Today we should have been hitting at least 7,000 MB/s to 15,000 MB/s read/write speeds by now at an affordable price.
We gone from IDE, EIDE, UDMA, Standard ATA, SCSI etc, with speeds of 33MHz, 66MHz, 100MHz, 133MHz etc. SATA150, SATA300, SATA600 etc.

 

[Aquinus]

ssd overall are overpriced and slow. This is 2012, harddrives should be as fast if not faster than the fastest performing DDR3 ram. We can all agree harddrives (companies) over the past several (many) years all have dragged the feet and didn't improve drive speed. The harddrive is still the slowest piece of hardware in the PC today.

I wouldn't start saying things unless you have sources to back up such extreme claims. I bet you a bottle of whiskey that this is completely BS. Maybe if you understood how rotational magnetic media works you wouldn't make such claims. SSD has the best possibility of hitting such speeds, but it will never happen this year. Even SSDs that use PCI-E 8x don't even get close to those kinds of speeds.

Also finally, if a system has DDR3, how do you expect a CPU and chipset to move as much data as DDR3 can transfer? First of all, any copy that goes from drive to drive hits the CPU and main memory first. There simply isn't enough bandwidth to pull this off and the added latency of having a disk that far away from the CPU is completely unrealistic... and more is not physically possible with how computers are designed, and that isn't all changing in 2012.

oday we should have been hitting at least 7,000 MB/s to 15,000 MB/s read/write speeds by now at an affordable price.

...and what standard or math formula are you using to determine this? I bet you that your ram on your phenom ii barely hits 15gb/s to show how borked your claim is.

Edit: It sounds like someone needs to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hierarchy

 

[Prima.Vera]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths#Random_access_memory

Todays SSDs are performing as RAMs in 1993. Maybe after 20 years we can have the same speed of today's DDR3@1866Mhz. ~ 15GB/s

 

[Darkrealms]

As far as the old X25 SSDs I've had mine for over 2 1/2 years in a laptop that is bounced around every work day and have had no problems. I agree the write speeds are painful with a large install but the read speeds on it have been great.

Perhaps nt300 would be willing to pay the $5.5k for 2800/2800 MB/s claimed by OCZ here:
OCZ Z-Drive R4 CM88 800GB PCI-E PCI-Express 2.0 x8...