Storage

AnandTech Participates in Roundtable Discussion with Intel and Supermicro about P3700 and NVMe
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AnandTech Participates in Roundtable Discussion with Intel and Supermicro about P3700 and NVMe

Earlier this evening, Intel announced a new family of NVMe based PCIe SSDs, including the P3700. I reviewed a 1.6TB version of the P3700 here. A few weeks ago I was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion with Intel and Supermicro about the P3700 and NVMe in general. Intel posted the video which I’ve embedded below:

The video is a bit higher level than what you’ll find in our review, but it’s short and we hit on a lot of the key points about the drive and NVMe in general. Check it out if you’re interested in the future of SSDs and what NVMe has to offer.

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Intel SSD DC P3700 Review: The PCIe SSD Transition Begins with NVMe

In 2008 Intel introduced its first SSD, the X25-M, and with it Intel ushered in a new era of primary storage based on non-volatile memory. Intel may have been there at the beginning, but it missed out on most of the evolution that followed. It wasn’t until late 2012, four years later, that Intel showed up with another major controller innovation. The Intel SSD DC S3700 added a focus on IO consistency, which had a remarkable impact on both enterprise and consumer workloads. Once again Intel found itself at the forefront of innovation in the SSD space, only to let others catch up in the coming years. Now, roughly two years later, Intel is back again with another significant evolution of its solid state storage architecture.

 

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Crucial MX100 (256GB & 512GB) Review

Computex is officially kicking off today and unlike many of the products announced at trade shows, we actually have a full review of the Crucial MX100 that is launching today at Computex. The MX100 is Crucial’s new mainstream drive, replacing the popular M500 while the M550 will continue to serve the higher performance market. With the MX100 Crucial is aiming even lower in terms of price per gigabyte by utilizing Micron’s (i.e. Crucial’s parent company’s) state-of-the-art 16nm 128Gbit MLC NAND. Read on the see how the MX100 stands out with its new 16nm NAND!

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Crucial MX100 (256GB & 512GB) Review

Computex is officially kicking off today and unlike many of the products announced at trade shows, we actually have a full review of the Crucial MX100 that is launching today at Computex. The MX100 is Crucial’s new mainstream drive, replacing the popular M500 while the M550 will continue to serve the higher performance market. With the MX100 Crucial is aiming even lower in terms of price per gigabyte by utilizing Micron’s (i.e. Crucial’s parent company’s) state-of-the-art 16nm 128Gbit MLC NAND. Read on the see how the MX100 stands out with its new 16nm NAND!

Intel to Announce new SSDs at Computex on June 4th
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Intel to Announce new SSDs at Computex on June 4th

Intel caught the modern SSD wave early with the X25-M back in 2008. It was the X25-M that brought me into covering SSDs and made me a convert. Since then however the SSD space has been engaged in a full blown race to the bottom. Storage is viewed by most OEMs to be a commodity, and Intel as a whole likes playing in higher margin areas of the PC business. 

We’re heading towards the next phase in SSD evolution however with the transition away from SATA to PCIe. This year is when we’ll see NVMe start to gain traction, and with that comes a new playing field for SSD competitors.

Intel let us know that there will be a big announcement from its Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group (NSG) next Wednesday (June 4th) at 2AM ET. The timing coincides with Intel’s Computex keynote, so I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’ll see the next big SSD from Intel announced at that point. Intel already announced that it would be bringing NVMe based drives to market this year, Computex would make for a great event to launch at. 

With NVMe, storage gets treated like a first class citizen. No longer hanging off of a host bus adaptor, NVMe based SSDs interface directly via PCIe to the host system. Combined with a new interface spec, the result is much lower latency access to NAND (as well as an increase in bandwidth from ditching SATA). There are other benefits like lower CPU utilization as well. NVMe support is baked into Windows 8.1 as well as Windows Server 2012 R2.

Ian, Kristian and myself will all be at Computex next week, so expect coverage on this announcement and more.