Intel just launched six new SSDs based on 3D NAND. One of the SSDs, the Intel DC P3520 we first heard was launched in March this year. Of the new SSDs, two of the six are SATA SSDs which speaks volumes as to where the market is moving. Only the Intel DC S3520 and the IoT focused Intel E 5420s SSDs are SATA. The two new client SSDs (Intel 600p and 6000p) are both PCIe which makes sense. The client market is dominated by notebook sales and there are generally single drive deployments. In the data center, the Intel S3500 and S3510 drives have been extremely popular. By transitioning these drives to 3D NAND, Intel is able to lower the cost of SSD storage making it even more competitive against lower capacity 2.5″ 10K / 15K RPM hard drives in terms of price/ performance.
Here is the Intel PR excerpt on the new drives:
Client
Intel SSD 600p Series is designed for the consumer client market for use in desktops and notebooks. SSD 600p Series brings PCIe* performance to mainstream price points while delivering exceptional performance that far exceeds traditional hard drives. SSD 600p Series uses a PCIe Gen3 x4, NVMe interface to deliver 17x the performance over HDD and up to 3x the performance of SATA SSDs.
Intel SSD Pro 6000p Series is aimed at the business client market for use in business notebooks and desktops. Power-efficient performance aligned with the current and future generation Intel Core vPro-based devices delivers enterprise-ready security and manageability features for IT administrators and corporate end-users. Pro 6000p Series utilizes PCIe for performance and is built with the highest quality and reliability standards, resulting in lower total cost of ownership.
Intel M2 SSD
Data Center
Intel SSD DC P3520 Series builds on Intel’s portfolio of data center PCIe SSDs and has been optimized for cost-effective performance. SSD DC P3520 Series is well-suited for read-intensive applications in cloud computing environments, such as storage virtualization and web hosting. Intel PCIe SSDs with 3D NAND technology are an affordable option when deploying multiple NVMe-enabled storage arrays that need to process large sets of data.
Intel SSD DC S3520 Series balances cost and performance for the data center and delivers significant latency and throughput improvements over traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) in the data center. SSD DC S3520 Series is ideal for those making the initial transition to SATA SSDs from HDDs.
Intel DC P3520 SSD
Internet of Things
Intel SSD E 6000p Series can be used use with the current and future generation Intel Core vPro processors to offer added security and manageability features for IoT applications, such as point-of-sale devices and digital signage. SSD E 6000p Series uses PCIe and comes in the M.2 form factor for added flexibility.
Intel SSD E 5420s Series provides additional data protection, helping to ensure data will be reliably read or written, even during moments of power loss, for complete confidence. SSD E 5420s Series utilizes SATA to improve performance over traditional HDDs in IoT applications.
What? The performance on almost all of these are really bad, especially the E 5420 (the S3520 “datacenter” drive isn’t much better either), the 150GB version has a read performance of 165 MB/s and write performance of 145MB/s, in 2016? That is almost as bad as the very first SSD:s released years and years back, there is even spinning drives that is faster, sure, not when it come to IOPS but still, to release a SATA SSD in late 2016 that is even far, far, far from hitting the SATA3 interface bottleneck which has basically been the norm for SSD:s for years (except for the Intel SATA SSD:s). Sure, you could argue to IoT focus but still, i am more impressed that anyone releases such slow SSD:s today.
The PCI based SSD:s did not have any impressive performance figures either, all of these drives, probably have very poor endurance figures too, well, the S3520 and E 5420 has an “increased” endurance of 1 DWPD, sure, compare it to a 0.3 DWPD drive and its increased but nope, not impressed.
I hope they release the S3720 and P3710/P3720 (whatever the P3700 replacement will be called) soon to make me feel a little better atleast.
Nope, not impressed, seems like Intel knows it to because their product brief on their website is filled with comparisons between SSD:s and HDD, even comparing them to 5400rpm drives (they cant even compare it to last years drive that these new drives are replacing since in some aspect, the older drives have better performance). Don’t see that type of marketing often nowadays but was really popular when SSD:s started to gain traction years back but now, it feels like this whole launch and marketing is a nostalgic homage to GEN1 SSD:s, maybe Intel have a time machine and forgot what time epoch they should drop these drives of in ;)
Maybe i am a little bit harsh but to release a datacenter focused SSD, that doesn’t even bottleneck the SATA3 interface? Also, last generation, the S3510, even the low size versions (120GB) had a read performance of 475MB/s, now, its replacement, the S3520 have a read performance of just 180MB/s (150GB version), almost 1/3, the S3520 has slightly better write performance but weird flip flopping performance figures compared to last years SSD:s
64 to 128GB+ NAND dies will drop performance obviously, but it’s needed to get into higher capacity… sadly the higher capacity, higher performing cost a TON. This isn’t new, and is why even last-gen NVME bump up huge in capacity and performance.
Intel ssds are not the fastest, but the most reliable and most durable ones.
I have used a lot of ssds from several brands, some died quite early and some had other problems, however all my intel ssds, even the oldest ones are still running strong at almost 40TBW (they show 95% life left and ZERO problems), I challenge any ssd from samsung, Crucial, Sandisk or any brand to beat the that!!!
Edit: Wow, don’t know why i wrote this much :S
What? The performance on almost all of these are really bad, especially the E 5420 (the S3520 “datacenter” drive isn’t much better either), the 150GB version has a read performance of 165 MB/s and write performance of 145MB/s, in 2016? That is almost as bad as the very first SSD:s released years and years back, there is even spinning drives that is faster, sure, not when it come to IOPS but still, to release a SATA SSD in late 2016 that is even far, far, far from hitting the SATA3 interface bottleneck which has basically been the norm for SSD:s for years (except for the Intel SATA SSD:s). Sure, you could argue to IoT focus but still, i am more impressed that anyone releases such slow SSD:s today.
The PCI based SSD:s did not have any impressive performance figures either, all of these drives, probably have very poor endurance figures too, well, the S3520 and E 5420 has an “increased” endurance of 1 DWPD, sure, compare it to a 0.3 DWPD drive and its increased but nope, not impressed.
I hope they release the S3720 and P3710/P3720 (whatever the P3700 replacement will be called) soon to make me feel a little better atleast.
Nope, not impressed, seems like Intel knows it to because their product brief on their website is filled with comparisons between SSD:s and HDD, even comparing them to 5400rpm drives (they cant even compare it to last years drive that these new drives are replacing since in some aspect, the older drives have better performance). Don’t see that type of marketing often nowadays but was really popular when SSD:s started to gain traction years back but now, it feels like this whole launch and marketing is a nostalgic homage to GEN1 SSD:s, maybe Intel have a time machine and forgot what time epoch they should drop these drives of in ;)
Maybe i am a little bit harsh but to release a datacenter focused SSD, that doesn’t even bottleneck the SATA3 interface? Also, last generation, the S3510, even the low size versions (120GB) had a read performance of 475MB/s, now, its replacement, the S3520 have a read performance of just 180MB/s (150GB version), almost 1/3, the S3520 has slightly better write performance but weird flip flopping performance figures compared to last years SSD:s
I agree that the 150GB drives are “slow” but then again, they are likely boot drives. On the 0.3 v 1 DWPD: http://www.servethehome.com/used-enterprise-ssds-dissecting-our-production-ssd-population/
64 to 128GB+ NAND dies will drop performance obviously, but it’s needed to get into higher capacity… sadly the higher capacity, higher performing cost a TON. This isn’t new, and is why even last-gen NVME bump up huge in capacity and performance.
Intel ssds are not the fastest, but the most reliable and most durable ones.
I have used a lot of ssds from several brands, some died quite early and some had other problems, however all my intel ssds, even the oldest ones are still running strong at almost 40TBW (they show 95% life left and ZERO problems), I challenge any ssd from samsung, Crucial, Sandisk or any brand to beat the that!!!