What about consumers?
Consumers
The X25-M and X-18-M, shipping in laptop-friendly 2.5in and 1.8in form factors, will make up the mainstream models. Released in capacities of 80GB and, just a little later this year, 160GB, the multi-level-cell-based drives have read/write speeds of 250MB/s and 70MB/s, together with a read latency of 85 microseconds. Intel quoted a 30-to-90-day window with respect to availability for 80GB drives.
Power-consumption figures are lower than the enterprise drive, with Intel stating numbers of 0.15W load and 0.06W idle. Internal research indicates that battery-life can be enhanced by up to 34 minutes, and we'll put the assertion to the test when we receive samples shortly.
Much like the enterprise drive, the 'M' series will be capacity-expanded in Q1 2009, based on 34nm NAND.
Intel reckons that its SSDs are faster than any of the competitions' - no names given, however - stating that mainstream drives can hit 12,000 operations per second for random 4k reads, whilst the enterprise model jumps to around 35,000 iops. As a comparison, competitors' drives manage around 500 iops, but they're Intel-provided numbers, of course, and should be taken with a pinch of salt.
The biggest question that remains unanswered is price, and we'll know that for the initial batch of drives to be released in the next 30 days. A figure of $600 was quietly bandied about for the 80GB mainstream model.
As the storage subsystem is often the slowest part of any system, especially with respect to servers, Intel is looking to eradicate the I/O bottleneck imposed by mechanical drives, and high-speed SSDs look to be the answer, we reckon.
