Intel Flash-Based Drives For Servers
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Intel has begun shipping its solid-state drive (SSD) aimed at server, workstation and storage systems.


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Unlike hard drives that contain moving parts, the Intel X-25E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive features a 50nm single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory technology.

According to Intel, systems equipped with these drives will not suffer from the performance bottlenecks associated with conventional drives, can reduce infrastructure, cooling and energy costs, and untimately ‘lower total cost of ownership for enterprise application by more than five times.’
 
Intel Server Platforms Group’s General Manager, Kirk Skaugen said, “Hard disk drive performance has not kept pace with Moore’s Law. Intel’s high-performance SSDs unleash the full performance of the latest Intel Xeon processor-based systems while increasing reliability and lowering the total cost of ownership for a broad range of server and storage workloads.”

 

The Intel X25-E claims to increases server, workstation and storage system performance by 100 times over hard disk drives as measured in Input/Output Per Second (IOPS). A storage model which includes SSDs can also lower energy costs by up to five times, an added benefit for businesses focused on electricity savings.
 
The product was designed for intense computing workloads which benefit primarily from high random read and write performance, as measured in IOPS. Key technical performance specifications of the 32 GB Intel X-25E SATA SSD include 35,000 IOPS (4KB Random Read), 3,300 IOPS (4KB Random Write) and 75 microsecond read latency. This performance, combined with low active power of 2.4 watts, delivers up to 14,000 IOPS per watt for optimal performance/power output.

The product also achieves up to 250 megabytes per second (MB/s) sequential read speeds and up to 170 MB/s sequential write speeds, all in a compact 2.5-inch form factor.
 
Pricing and Availability

The 32GB capacity drive is in production and priced at US$695 for quantities up to 1,000. The 64GB version is expected to sample in the fourth quarter with production estimated for the first quarter of 2009.

See: www.intel.com/go/ssd