Intel Adds PCIe Solutions To Its Data Center Family Of SSDs

Intel is announcing the addition of three PCIe solid-state drive (SSD) solutions to its well-established data center family of storage products.  Intel’s SSD Data Center Family will now be offering both SATA and PCIe solutions in multiple endurance levels and multiple capacities, all featuring enterprise-class RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability)  features.

The ongoing explosion of data storage requirements for data center and server customers is fueling rapid market growth for storage products that can fulfill their needs.  When working with IT departments with increasingly limited IT budgets, storage solutions that offer lower cost per IOP, and higher IOPS delivered  per watt is continuing to draw interest away from  HDDs and SATA SSDs.

Storage area network (SAN) latency from HBAs, switches, controllers and the network itself bottlenecks storage performance, while increasing CPU workloads.  By moving to a native NVMe/PCIe interface, server-based storage dramatically reduces latency while removing bandwidth restrictions.  Online transaction storage requirements and virtualization are creating extremely random workloads.  The ability to deliver consistent throughput with high IOPS and low latency accelerates these applications.

What is fueling the move to NVM Express (NVMe) as the standardized interface for non-volatile memory?  Higher performance is achieved via lowered latency and the ability to handle full duplex and process multiple outstanding requests simultaneously.  This means that no HBA or overhead protocol is required.  The direct attachment to CPU access completely eliminates HBA costs and their associated power requirements.  Power management is now facilitated right at link level.  The NVMe interface can provide up to six times the throughput of the SATA 6Gb/s interface.

Intel’s new SSD Data Center Family of PCIe solutions includes three product levels — the SSD DC P3500 series, the SSD DC P3600 series, and the flagship SSD DC P3700 series.

SSD DC P3500 SERIES

Intel’s SSD DC P3500 series features endurance of up to 0.3 drive writes per day (DWPD).  Sequential read and write speeds are stated as up to 2500 MB/s and up to 1700 MB/s, respectively.  Random 4K read speeds are up to 450,000 IOPS, with random 4K write speeds of up to 35,000 IOPS.  A 70/30 mixed read/write random 4K workload is able to sustain up to 85,000 IOPS.  The P3500 is offered in capacities of 400GB, 1.2TB and 2.0TB.

SSD DC P3600 SERIES

Moving one level up the product family brings us to the SSD DC P3600 series.  This series features ten times the endurance level of the P3500 series, bringing us to endurance of up to 3.0 drive writes per day (DWPD).   Sequential read and write speeds are stated as up to 2600 MB/s and 1700 MB/s, respectively.  Random 4K read speeds are up to 450,000 IOPS, with random 4K write speeds of up to 70,000 IOPS.  The 70/30 mixed read/write random 4K workload sustains up to 170,000 IOPS with the P3600 series.  Available capacities for the P3600 are 400GB, 800GB, 1.2TB, 1.6TB and 2.0TB.

SSD DC P3700 SERIES

The flagship offering of Intel’s new Data Center Family is the SSD DC P3700 series.  One Intel SSD DC P3700 series drive is able to deliver the equivalent performance of 6 to 8 SATA SSDs.   The P3700 series features top-level endurance of 10 drive writes per day (DWPD).  Sequential read and write speeds are stated as 2800 MB/s and 1900 MB/s, respectively.  Random 4K read speeds are up to 460,000 IOPS, with random 4K write speeds of up to 180,000 IOPS.  The 70/30 mixed read/write random 4K workload sustains up to an incredible 250,000 IOPS with the P3700 series.  The P3700 is to be offered in capacities of 400GB, 800GB, 1.6TB and 2.0TB.

The entire Intel SSD DC PCIe product family offers average read/write latency of 20 microseconds.  All also offer end-to-end data protection and power-loss protection.  Intel is backing the entire SSD DC PCIe lineup with a five-year warranty.

Pricing is so far only being given for the 400GB model of each series —  the P3500 400GB has an MSRP of $599.00, with the P3600 400GB at an MSRP of $783.00.   The flagship P3700 is MSRP’d at $1207.00.  Availability has not yet been announced.