Intel Announces QLC PCIe 3D NAND PCIe SSDs For Client and Datacenters

Intel is announcing a new range of PCIe SSD 660p for consumers. It is world’s first PCIe QLC (Qual-Level-Cell) SSD for consumer use. Intel has targeted this device for entry and mainstream storage. The 660p SSD utilizes Intel’s 64 layer 3D NAND that is industry’s highest density NAND storage in production. Producing SSD in such high capacities allow 2TB on single-sided M.2 form factor in the thing and lightweight design.

Ruler SSDs For Datacenters Come With Up To 32 TB Capacity

New Optane and QLC NAND driven PCIe SSD includes two products, the SSD 660p is for clients and SSD D5-P4320 for data centres. The client SSD would ship with 2TB of storage capacities in M.2 form factor while D5-P4320 would ship with 8TB capacities in 2.5inch U.2 form factor. Here are a few uses of these drives.

• Intel Optane SSDs integrated into IBM Cloud’s bare metal servers have enabled up to 7.5 times improvement — especially for applications that have high write-intensive operations.
• Using Intel Optane Technology, the University of Pisa has reduced MRI scan times from 42 minutes to 4 minutes.
• Intel Optane has enabled IFLYTEK, a Chinese information technology company, to enable faster voice and facial recognition services.

SEE ALSO: Samsung Announces Latest 970 Pro and 970 Evo NVMe M.2 SSDs

QLC + Optane drives would pack a 64 Layer 3D QLC NAND flash that is capable of delivering reads and writing speeds of 3000 MB/s and 1000 MB/s respectively. These drives will have 5 years warranty and prices will be announced later.

Intel’s newest solid-state drive, the Intel SSD DC P4500, is about the size of an old-fashioned 12-inch ruler and can store 32 terabytes. That’s equivalent to triple the entire printed collection of the U.S. Library of Congress.

The new SSD is Intel’s densest drive ever and is built on Intel 3D NAND technology, which stacks memory cells atop each other in multiple extremely thin layers, instead of just one. Memory cells in the P4500 are stacked 64 layers deep.

Older disk drives produce a great deal of heat. In most data centers today, the single biggest cost is air conditioning to keep them cool. This is one of the reasons some of the world’s biggest data companies — IBM, Microsoft, Tencent — are using the new “ruler” SSD to support their cloud and data center operations.

In data centers, the no-moving-parts ruler-shaped SSDs can be lined up 32 side-by-side, to hold up to a petabyte in a single server slot. Compared with a traditional SSD, the “ruler” requires half the airflow to keep cool. And compared with hard disk storage, the new 3D NAND SSD sips one-tenth the power and requires just one-twentieth space. via Intel

Intel is releasing their updated TLC NAND based legacy SATA drives for data centres in 240 GB and up to 3.84 TB capacities. The 7.68 TB models of the same series are also expected to arrive later on.

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