Tom ' s hardware reported a leaked Intel storage roadmap. The roadmap confirms that Intel will launch a new PCIe Flash product and will update Chipzilla's three Flash product series.
Depending on what the slide shows:
The 700 series high-end products will launch a Ramsdale PRQ before the end of the year. It is a 200GB or 400GB capacity PCIe card using SLC (single layer unit) Flash memory. At the beginning of this year, there was speculation that Intel might launch its own PCIe card, possibly using a 34 nm process, the number of random reads may reach 180,000 times per second under 48KB blocks, Random writes may reach 56,000 times, and sequential writes may reach 2.2gb/seconds, The sequential write speed may reach 1.8gb/seconds.
In the second quarter of next year, we will see a ramsdale MLC (multi-layer unit) PCIe Flash drive. The slides do not show the details of the capacity. If it is 2 bit MLC, we think the capacity may be 400GB or 800GB.
Intel plans to launch a Taylorville Pro drive in the third quarter of next year. This is a 2.5-inch drive with a 6gb/sec SATA interface, with 800GB, 400GB, or 200GB capacity. We do not know whether it is an SLC or a MLC drive.
In the 500 series midrange, Intel will launch a Cherryville PRQ before the end of the year. This is a 2.5-inch MLC drive with a 6gb/sec SATA interface, with a capacity level of 60/120/180/240/480GB.
In the second quarter of 2012, Intel plans to launch a king Crest PRQ, another 6gb/SEC SATA Interface 2.5-inch drive with unknown capacity.
In the 300 series low-end consumer area, we will see a Hawley Creek PRQ before the end of the year. This drive will be divided into SLC and MLC specifications, using the 3gb/SEC SATA interface. The drive will be divided into the 24/20GB SLC version and the 40/80/128GB MLC version.
In the third quarter of 2012, Intel plans to launch a Lincoln Crest PRQ. This is a 2.5-inch MLC drive with a 6gb/sec SATA interface, with an unknown capacity.
Currently, Intel already has a Lydonville 3gb/sec SATA Interface 2.5-inch 700 series drive. This high-end market is expanding. Intel's competitors include PCIe Flash card leading manufacturer Fusion-io, Intel's own partner in the IMFT Flash foundry business, the US light, PCZ, and some other PCIe Flash card small and medium-sized manufacturers.
Fusion recently launched its own second-generation PCIe card. The performance of these cards looks much faster than the random IOPS (input output per second) reported previously by Intel PCIe card. Iodrive 2 Duo has 1.2TB capacity, uses 20-30 nm process SLC NAND, has 4KB block under 503,000 times/54,000 times random Read/write IOPS performance and 3gb/second bandwidth.
The p320h SLC PCIe card has 750,000/341,000 random Read/write IOPS performance, random read/write with 3/2gb/second bandwidth. It looks as if Intel is to compete with Fusion-io and its partners, and the PCIe card in Intel's report should be raised a little bit faster. However, Intel may not focus on this, and Intel may emphasize price, performance, and reliability more than simply speed.
These intel® PCIe cards appear to be faster than STEC basic Kronos cards (110,000 random read iops,1gb/seconds), slower than Stec Bi-turbo (440,000 random reads iops,4gb/seconds), and slower than OCZ z-drive R4 ( 410,000 times random iops,2.8gb/seconds). Intel PCIe products also lag behind TMS RamSan-70 on random ioPS.
OCZ announced a Deneva 2 mSATA interface product, capacity reached 128GB, and said the product "to provide 6gb/seconds throughput, 4K random write ioPS 80,000 times, with 550mb/second bandwidth." It also has a second msata drive, Intrepid, which offers a range of features: "The hyper-queuing (Super queue) Indilinx arowana Flash conversion layer improves sequential write speed and IOPS. "Indilinx is a flash controller company, OCZ bought the company early this year. These products appear to be direct competitors to the Intel 300 series.
PCIe server Flash will become the most competitive flash market next year. Intel will have to work harder to become a performance king, but it may pursue capacity to cede high-performance markets to its partners. It is hoped that Intel's vertical integration on flash production to the PCIe Flash memory card will give it a competitive advantage.
(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)