Intel Rolls Out SSD Drives For Cloud, Hosting

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A look at the Intel Solid-State Drive DC S3500 Series. (Photo: Intel)

Intel (INTC) has introduced the Solid-State Drive DC S3500 Series, its latest solid-state drive (SSD) for data centers and cloud computing. Designed for read-intensive applications such as web hosting, cloud computing and data center virtualization, Intel says the DC S3500 Series is an ideal replacement for traditional hard disk drives (HDD), allowing data centers to save significant costs by moving toward an all-SSD storage model.

"The Intel SSD DC S3500 Series breaks through barriers – like the need for high throughput/low latency storage with a low total cost of ownership – to deliver the storage solution that meets the needs of the cloud, and its demand for storage, which has exploded in recent years," said Rob Crooke, Intel corporate vice president and general manager for the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. "Intel's data center family of SSDs helps make cloud computing faster and more reliable, enabling more transactions and richer experiences."

Sequential read speeds of up to 500 MB per second and sequential write speeds of up to 450 MB per second are reached with the combination of 20nm Intel NAND Flash Memory technology and SATA 6 GB per second interface support. This is coupled with a tight distribution of input/output per second and low maximum latencies. Random read performance can go up to 75,000 input-output operations per second. The new SSDs will be offered in capacities ranging from 80 gigabyte (GB) to 800GB and both 2.5 and 1.8 inch form factors. The drives use 256-bit AES encryption for data protection, and feature built-in capacitors for a short period of backup power if needed.

"Intel SSDs have enabled our chip designers to gain up to 27 percent performance throughput in our massive design distributed computing environment," said Kim Stevenson, chief information officer at Intel. "In fact, we are increasing our deployment of Intel SSDs in our data centers from 10,000 units to 40,000 by the end of this year to enable our global design team to help bring products to market faster."