Solid State Drives:
Incredible speed +
mind-blowing performance = WOW.


We love Solid State Drives, also known as SSDs.
They are flash-based storage devices.

Once you try one, or an entire RAID set of them, there’s just no going back to Hard Drive Disks!
What SSDs lack in raw storage space they more than make up for in the following areas.
The performance delivered by dedicated server processors has scaled dramatically to help meet these needs:
Since 1996, CPU performance has increased 175x, accelerating with the introduction of multi-core processors. However, hard disk drive (HDD) performance lags far behind and has increased only 1.3x in the same period of time.

This imbalance between processor and HDD performance can result in I/O bottlenecks that may limit the ability of organizations to take full advantage of processor performance improvements.

HDD performance problems stem from inherent HDD performance problems stem from inherent mechanical latency due to moving parts such as disks and disk heads. Mechanical latency can account for more than 95 percent of the total time required to retrieve data from HDDs.

Traditional ways to overcome latency include:
• Adding more spindles, which increases the total number of I/O operations per second (IOPS) that an HDD can achieve.
• Adding more RAM to store working datasets, which reduces the need to access the HDD.

However, these methods both have the disadvantages of increasing server total cost of ownership and electrical power consumption.
Solid-state drives (SSDs) have emerged as a high-performance alternative to traditional HDDs, with the potential to influence the economics of the data center.

SSD Technology Overview

SSDs are data storage devices that use NAND solid-state non-volatile memory to persistently store information. They offer much faster I/O performance than HDDs, with no mechanical latency because there are no moving parts.

SSDs emulate HDDs; they are manufactured in the same form factors as HDDs and use standard HDD interfaces such as Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA). Since SSDs are plug-compatible with HDDs and support standard disk interfaces, they can be installed in most dedicated server platforms and disk arrays just like HDDs.

As SSD capacities increase and prices drop, SSDs are becoming an increasingly attractive alternative. Because of their faster performance, SSDs cost much less per I/O operations per second than HDDs. They are also becoming more cost-effective over time in terms of cost per gigabyte (GB).

Analysts expect that SSD prices will continue to fall steadily, resulting in increasing enterprise adoption of the technology.

Advantages of SDDs in Data Centers

Replacing HDDs with SSDs can offer several advantages for enterprise data centers.


• Lower total cost of ownership for I/O intensive applications. SSDs cost less per I/O operations per second than HDDs, so replacing HDDs with SSDs can reduce storage total cost of ownership for I/O-intensive applications. Because fewer SSDs may be needed to deliver the required performance and capacity, organizations may not have to spend as much on related infrastructure such as cables, switches, and controllers.
• More performance in less space. A single SSD provides much higher I/O operations per second than a single HDD; so for I/O-intensive applications, organizations can replace HDDs with fewer SSDs and still obtain higher I/O performance while using less data center space.
• Greener data centers. SSDs consume much less power than HDDs, so replacing HDDs with SSDs can reduce overall data center power consumption and cooling requirements.
• Higher system reliability. SSDs are inherently more reliable than HDDs due to the absence of moving parts. HDDs experience continual wear and tear due to disk rotation and head movement, which can lead to hard drive failure. In addition, fewer SSDs are required to deliver the same or better I/O performance; fewer drives also leads to greater overall reliability because there is less supporting infrastructure such as switches, controllers, and racks.

Advantages for Applications

SSDs can potentially offer advantages in a wide range of I/O-intensive SSDs can potentially offer advantages in a wide range of I/O-intensive applications. These applications fall into two broad categories: high I/O operations per second and high bandwidth.

High I/O operations per second

High-I/O operations per second applications require high read and write I/O operations per second rates.
Typically, they use smaller I/O block sizes of 4 KB to 16 KB. I/O access is predominantly random rather than sequential.

Applications that may have I/O-intensive workloads include:

• Enterprise applications. Enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise database, and other transaction processing applications.
• High-performance computing. Computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided engineering (CAE), biotechnology simulation, weather forecasting, climate research, seismic analysis in the energy industry, visualization, digital content creation, and nonlinear video editing.
• Office productivity. Messaging; database including indexes, logs, and journals; and file system metadata acceleration.

High Bandwidth

For high-bandwidth applications, the focus is on very high throughput rather than on maximizing the number of I/O operations per second. Typically, they use larger block sizes of 32 KB to 128 KB, with random or sequential I/O access.

Applications that may have bandwidth-intensive workloads include:
• Enterprise. Business intelligence, data mining, data warehousing.
• Internet and multimedia. Video delivery, video editing, Web serving.

High-Performance Storage


Intel® Solid-State Drives represent a revolutionary breakthrough that delivers a giant leap in storage performance. Intel Solid-State Drives are designed to satisfy the most demanding gamers, media creators, and technology enthusiasts.

These new drives bring a high level of performance and reliability to notebook and desktop PC storage, at a fraction of the cost of the previous generation of Intel® SSD products.

Wait Less. Do More.

Why wait for a traditional hard disk drive to spin up? Unlike traditional hard disk drives, Intel Solid-State Drives have no moving parts, resulting in a quiet, cool, highly rugged storage solution that also offers faster system responsiveness.

Better by Design

Intel® SSD Toolbox with Intel® SSD Optimizer Drawing from decades of memory engineering experience, and new industry leading, compute-quality 34nm NAND Flash memory manufacturing processes, Intel® SSDs are designed to deliver outstanding performance. They feature the latest generation native SATA interface with an advanced architecture employing 10 parallel NAND flash channels equipped with multi-level cell NAND flash memory.

With powerful Native Command Queuing to enable up to 32 concurrent operations, Intel® SSDs deliver higher input/output per second and throughput performance than other SSDs on the market today and drastically outperform traditional hard disk drives.
These drives also feature low write amplification and a unique wear-leveling design for higher reliability; meaning Intel drives not only perform better, they last longer.

Intel® Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive (34nm NAND Flash Memory Product Line)
Model Name Intel® X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive
Capacity 80 GB
NAND Flash Components Intel® Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory
10 Parallel Channel Architecture with 34nm MLC ONFI 1.0 NAND
Bandwidth Sustained Sequential Read: up to 250 MB/s
Sustained Sequential Write: up to 70 MB/s (80 GB drive) and up to 100 MB/s (160 GB drive)
Read Latency 65 microseconds
Write Latency 85 microseconds
Random I/O Operations Per Second (IOPS)1 Random 4 KB Reads: up to 35,000 I/O operations per second
Random 4 KB Writes: 80 G X25/X18-M – up to 6,600 I/O operations per second
Random 4 KB Writes: 160 G X25/X18-M – up to 8,600 I/O operations per second
Interface SATA 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s
Form Factor, Height, and Weight X25-M: 2.5 Industry Standard Hard Drive Form Factor
• 7 mm – 76 grams +/- 2 grams
• 9.5 mm – 80 grams +/- 2 grams
Compatibility SATA revision 2.6 compliant. Compatible with SATA 3 Gb/s with Native Command Queuing and SATA 1.5 Gb/s interface rates
Life Expectancy 1.2 million hours Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF)
Power Consumption Active: 150 mW Typical (PC workload2)
Idle (DIPM): 75 mW Typical
Operating Shock 1,500 G/0.5 ms
Operating Temperature 0°C to +70°C
RoHS and Halogen Free Compliance Meets the requirements of EU Lead Free and Halogen Free Compliance Directives
Product Health Monitoring Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) commands, plus additional SSD monitoring