Intel Corp. has unveiled its new 910-series solid-state drives that are compatible with PCI Express bus and are designed to provide extreme performance, endurance and reliability for rigorous data center demands.

Intel 910-series solid-state drives are powered by Intel's multi-level cell NAND flash memory with high-endurance technology (HET) produced using 25nm process technology and will be available in 400GB and 800GB capacities. The SSDs utilize PCI Express 2.0 x8 interface and consume up to 25W while delivering performance significantly higher than that of 10K or 15K hard disk drives. Thanks to Intel HET, firmware and controller, the new drives allow up to 10 full drive writes a day for 5 years, or a 30 times endurance improvement over its standard MLC-based flash products.

Engineered for the most demanding environments, Intel 910 SSD 800GB provides up to 2GB/s sustained sequential read speed and 1GB/s sequential write speed (up to 1GB/s and 0.75GB/s for 400GB model, respectively); up to 180 thousand 4K random read input-output operations per second (IOPS) and 75 thousand 4K random write IOPS (up to 90K and 38K for 400GB model).

"The Intel SSD 910 Series is a complete solution that delivers on all fronts: highperformance, endurance and reliability, making it ideal for replacing I/O-intensive HDDs. As a leader in SSD technology, data center IT professionals can have confidence in a tier-one, easy-to-install SSD solution backed by Intel quality, reliability and technical support," said Roger Peene, director of data center SSD marketing for the Intel non-volatile memory solutions group.

The Intel SSD 910 is PCIe-based and offers an easy-to-install, seamless post-deployment server storage upgrade that requires no changes to existing server design. It can be used in storage tiering and caching of hot files for high-performance processing and access to mission-critical data. One Intel 910 SSD can replace multiple 15K rpm hard disk drives (HDDs) to not only save on space and power consumption, but also improve sequential performance and storage scalability and reduce latencies. It is built using an Intel controller and Intel SSD management firmware. The firmware is optimized for less wear and includes NAND error reduction and system error management.

Samples of Intel 910-series drives are now available for data center customers to begin quality and validation cycles. General production availability is scheduled for mid-2012. Pricing for the Intel SSD 910-series is $1929 for the 400GB capacity and $3859 for 800GB. It comes with a 5-year limited warranty.

Tags: Intel, SSD, NAND, Flash, MLC, MLC HET, eMLC, 25nm