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An Intel ‘Sandforce Driven’ SSD you say?
Its almost like a play from a playbook but, once again, someone seems to have gotten their hands on an Intel Roadmap which discusses upcoming SSD releases.
All in all we may be seeing up to 5 releases by years end but there is one particularly interesting release in the bunch as shown on the below alleged Intel Roadmap published by Engadget.
Take a close look at the 520 Cherryville refresh and an even closer look at the capacities shown. Do we know of any other SATA 6Gbps SSDs presently available in capacities of 120, 240 and 480GB sizes? Well, in fact, the only SSDs that I know of that utilize such are SandForce SSDs which have those exact listed capacities strictly because of over provisioning.
Could a partnership have developed between Intel and SandForce as we suggested earlier in the year in our article here? In fact, we might not have been far off with the totally off hand guestimate that the drive would fall under the 520 series designation to match up with the SF-2000 series processor.
One things for sure and thats the fact that Intel has explored all angles to stake its claim in the SSD ring this year and they don’t seem to be anywhere close to finished. We are certain that just the thought of a new Intel release of the already famous Sandforce SF-2200 series drive capable of parallel read and write speeds of 500MB/s would have several manufacturers wondering just how big of a piece of the pie Intel will grab as a result.
In a way, its a bit amusing as so many had fallen prey to the belief that Intel was folding their tents in the SSD arena as the only talk was of a SATA 2 refresh which was divulged originally in last years leaked roadmap. I gotta wonder whether Intel itself is leaking the very similar looking roadmaps just to keep our interest at a peak.
At the end of the day, credit will have to go to the Intel boardroom for absolutely brilliant planning if this plays out as it seems. Their first release of the mSATA 310 will play its part in revolutionizing new notebooks with Lenovo already on board. Next came the 510 to grab a hold of the new SATA 3 crowd only to be followed by the 320 which keyed in on 99% of PC users that have SATA 2 systems. Now we are seeing a possible Intel SandForce drive in 6Gbps capacity along with slc drives, PCIe cards and even a new 710 series with new 25nm MLC HET memory which is going to bring prices down we will bet.