Intel Announces Third-Generation Solid-State Drive Series Targeted to Data Centers

Intel (News - Alert) has announced a third-generation solid-state drive with the DC S3700 SSD series.

It is targeted for data centers. It can be used for big data, high-performance computing and cloud applications.

“The DC S3700 series is designed to offer high performance at an extremely predictable rate, ensure end-to-end data protection, and keep total power consumption low,” according to a review in Hot Hardware.

Also, Intel says the SSD can “withstand being filled and erased 10x a day for five years. That comes out to 14.6 petabytes of data,” Hot Hardware added.

Computerworld reports the new SSD series “adds 15 times the maximum sequential write performance and twice the read performance of its predecessor.”

"Fundamentally, this drive has higher performance, more predictable performance, with the highest quality of service and high endurance technology," Roger Peene, director of data center SSD marketing for Intel, told Computerworld. "When we set out to design this drive for the data center, we really focused on getting the best IOPS consistency for superior quality of service."

Also, the SSD has a new data loss protection feature. It notifies an administrator about possible power loss. “If power is lost, the drive automatically redirects writes in progress from the cache directly to the NAND flash, avoiding data loss,” Computerworld said.

It eliminates storage bottlenecks and increases multi-core CPU performance, as well, Intel said.

"Today's data explosion creates unique storage challenges for data center professionals," Rob Crooke, Intel vice president and general manager for the Intel Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) Solutions Group, said in a recent statement carried on TMCnet. "High latencies and slow storage I/O can cripple data centers' ability to deliver exciting big data or cloud-computing applications with fast, low latency data access. Intel's next-generation Intel SSD DC S3700 Series breaks through SSD limitations for the data center on all fronts – fast, consistent performance, strong data protection and high endurance – so IT professionals can deliver on their most demanding technology initiatives."

Intel is shipping samples of the DC S3700 to manufacturers. It will start production in the first quarter of 2013.

The price for the DC S3700 Series is 40 percent lower per gigabyte when compared to the 710 series SSD, Computerworld said.

Suggested retail prices range from $235 for a 100GB, 2.5-inch form factor to $965 for a 400GB, 1.8-inch form factor, the company said.