Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Icy News: Intel 6Gb SATA SSD 520 Using 25nm Arriving

"With LSI SandForce controller, 480GB at $999 in Q1,000
Intel Corporation announced its fastest, most robust client/consumer SSD, the Solid-State Drive 520 Series, a 6 gigabit-per-second SATA III SSD produced using Intel compute-quality 25-nanometer NAND memory process technology.

intel_ssd_520

Aimed at delivering performance for the PC enthusiasts, gamers, SMBs, the SSD 520 has throughput performance, new security features and reliability to meet the intensive user requirements.

Any consumer application requiring high throughput and bandwidth, low latencies and accelerated speed will benefit from the SSD 520. Software developers, architects, accountants, engineers, musicians, media creators and artists are just some of the professionals that will find that the SSD 520's package of features can make an impact on their productivity. With faster performance for graphic renderings, compiling, data transfers and system boot-ups, users can speed through multi-tasking or once-cumbersome application wait times with SSD 520 Series.

"We tapped Intel engineering to create a client SSD that delivers performance on all fronts with obsessively high reliability," said Rob Crooke, Intel vice president and general manager of the Intel Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. "The Intel SSD 520 once again raises the industry bar on SSD performance, quality and reliability to dramatically improve user experience."

Unlike a traditional HDD with spinning disks and moveable parts, an SSD is based on silicon, NAND flash memory specifically, to create a lower power, more reliable and faster storage solution that can keep up with today's most demanding applications, Internet streaming and intense multi-tasking.

Based on its own 25nm Intel compute-quality NAND flash memory and a 6gbps SATA III interface, the SSD 520 uses an LSI SandForce Flash Storage Processor with an Intel co-defined and validated firmware release, to create an SSD that sets new industry performance benchmarks. It delivers up to 80,000 maximum 4K random write IOPS and up to 50,000 4K random read IOPS. Sequential read performance of up to 550MB/s and up to 520MB/s sequential writes also accelerate and improve user productivity. This is backed by thousands of hours of Intel testing and validation, including more than 5,000 individual tests.

"We worked closely with Intel to leverage their deep understanding of the NAND flash, ultimately providing a unique and optimized solution for client computing applications with the LSI SandForce Flash Storage Processor," said Michael Raam, vice president and general manager of LSI's Flash Components Division, formed by LSI's acquisition of SandForce. "Working through Intel's extensive validation process ensures the Intel 520 SSD will raise the bar in delivering top-tier performance and superior quality and reliability over the life of the drive."

The SSD 520 will mark the high end of its client SSD offerings and include these new features: a range of user capacities from 60GB to 480GB, AES 256 bit encryption capabilities and password protection for added security in the event of theft or power loss.

According to PCMark Vantage benchmarking, users of the SSD 520 may see productivity gains through an up to 78 percent boost in overall PC responsiveness, and gamers will see an up to 88 percent jump in performance to enhance their gaming experience. IT professionals will not only provide this additional performance and productivity to their customers/employees, but find that the Intel SSD 520 also delivers on reliability, improved security, smoother operations and lower total operational costs.

"Our game development workflow involves a combination of large batch process and aggressive interactive pre-visualization, all highly parallelized to the point that the storage performance becomes a major bottleneck," said John Carmack, founder and technical director of id Software, a gaming software developer and creators of Doom and Quake. "For many of our workloads, Intel SSDs have doubled throughput, and in some cases involving mapping tens of gigabytes of image data, we have seen an honest order of magnitude performance improvement, which is a rare and wonderful thing."

The SSD 520 Series is priced as follows, based on 1,000-unit quantities: 60GB for $149, 120GB at $229, 180GB at $369, 240GB at $509 and 480GB at $999.

It comes with a 5-year limited warranty." - via storagenewsletter.com

Intel is always on the cutting edge of technology and their new 520 series is no different. Their new 520 series is offered in 60GB for $149, 120GB at $229, 180GB at $369, 240GB at $509 and 480GB at $999. Perfect for anyone wanting to make the switch to SSDS or a company making the major change over to flash memory. Let us know what you think about Intel's new SSD series. 





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