Intel bakes smaller, slower flash memory. Aah, now that's progress

Intel has produced a solid-state flash drive, the DC S3500, using a 20nm process - potentially replacing the DC S3700 and its 25nm tech. In NAND technology-land a 20nm process means you get get more NAND dies out of a silicon wafer than if you use a 25nm process, which is more chips to flog and more cash in the bank. The S3500 …

[Danny 14]

cost effective?

The price scales then; that seems pretty decent of intel. Normally after a point the price starts to hit a curve making the top end drives less than practical for most. Since speed is also (usually) better due to parallel circuitry behind the scenes it seems even better.

[Russ Tarbox]

Re: cost effective?

I've always thought SSD drives prices scale well (unlike spinning discs which tend to have a sweet spot in terms of price/capacity). Though I think the very top end drives are just too pricey for most (because they double in price as they double in capacity), and because the lower capacities shift more, the middle-men are probably getting a bulk discount so the price is skewed slightly.

[Jack Douglas]

The s3500 does *not* "potentially replace its DC S3700"

They are very different beasts. The 3500 is for read-intensive workloads and the 3700 for write-intensive. Other than write IOPs the major difference between the two is write endurance (and the difference is huge)

[Mikel]

SATA attached flash still?

Come on Intel. You know better than this. PCIe attached flash is where you want to go. Cut out at least one level of abstraction between the CPU and the storage, and eliminate the unnatural bandwidth and latency limitations of SATA/SAS. This was a great answer five years ago.

Oh, yeah. Windows doesn't support it. You're not going to let that go, are you? Even as they sling ARM tablets. Fine. Reap what you sow. We'll get our stuff somewhere else.

Thunderbolt though, that's your baby right? Could you at least put some flash cache in a Thunderbolt 2.0 attached DAS array for the consumer? Something with 10 bays and RAID 50 at least? Now that they have Android tablets the kids are generating about 40GB a week of HD video - most of which nobody is ever going to see but we'd love to save it so we can pick through it for the embarrassing bits to include in their wedding reception video some fifteen years hence. It's sad to have to keep deleting those precious moments. Slip your new Atom in there.

[TeeCee]

Re: SATA attached flash still?

Oh, yeah. Windows doesn't support it.

Sez who?

I just went to look and OCZ's RevoDrive specs beg to differ....

[Mikel]

Re: SATA attached flash still?

Does it boot?

[Tim Parker]

Re: SATA attached flash still?

"http://ocz.com/consumer/pci-express-ssd"

Bootable - but still stupidly over-priced (aren't they all) and similar stuff is far from common.

[Tchou]

Re: SATA attached flash still?

No wonder the WIndows user icon is a drunken homeless

[Wibble]

Struth

That's over twice as expensive as the Crucial SSD I've just bought. I'm glad I didn't wait!