Intel's 3rd Generation X25-M SSD Specs Revealed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 5, 2010 12:04 PM ESTWhat's this? The long awaited specs for Intel's third generation SSD? Indeed.
Internally it’s called the Postville Refresh (the X25-M G2 carried the Postville codename), but externally it carries the same X25-M brand we’ve seen since 2008. The new drive uses 25nm IMFT Flash, which means we should get roughly twice the capacity at the same price. While Intel is sampling 25nm MLC NAND today it's unclear whether or not we'll see drives available this year. I've heard that there's still a lot of tuning that needs to be done on the 25nm process before we get to production quality NAND. The third generation drives will be available somewhere in the Q4 2010 - Q1 2011 timeframe in capacities ranging from 40GB (X25-V) all the way up to 600GB.
Despite the Q1 release of Intel’s 6-series chipsets, Intel is listing the new X25-M as being 3Gbps SATA only. The SATA implementation has been updated to support ATA8-ACS so it’s possible we may see official 6Gbps support once Intel has a chipset with native support.
The new drive’s performance specs are much improved. The comparison between old and new is below:
| Intel Consumer SSD Comparison | ||||
| Intel X25-M G2 (34nm) | Intel X25-M G3 (25nm) | |||
| Codename | Postville | Postville Refresh | ||
| Capacities | 80/160GB | 80/160/300/600GB | ||
| NAND | IMFT 34nm MLC | IMFT 25nm MLC | ||
| Sequential Performance Read/Write | Up to 250/100 MB/s | Up to 250/170 MB/s | ||
| Random 4KB Performance Read/Write | Up to 35K/8.6K IOPS | Up to 50K/40K IOPS | ||
| Max Power Consumption Active/Idle | 3.0/0.06W | 6.0/0.075W | ||
| Total 4KB Random Writes (Drive Lifespan) | 7.5TB - 15TB | 30TB - 60TB | ||
| Power Safe Write Cache | No | Yes | ||
| Form Factors | 1.8" & 2.5" | 1.8" & 2.5" | ||
| Security | ATA Password | ATA Password + AES-128 | ||
If these numbers are accurate, the new Intel drive should be roughly equal to Crucial’s RealSSD C300 and SandForce SF-1200 based drives. There are many different ways to measure this data however so the numbers may be higher or lower in our tests. Note that performance could also go up by the time drives are available as there's still a lot of tuning going on right now. I'd say that at these performance levels Intel had better be very aggressive with pricing because I'm expecting much better from the next-generation SandForce drives.
Write amplification appears to be more under control with the third gen X25-M. Intel upgraded the total 4KB random writes spec from 7.5TB - 15TB on the G2 to a much higher (and wider) range of 30TB to 60TB depending on drive and spare area.
Intel hasn’t disclosed any information about spare area, but given the huge increase in longevity of the drives I suspect that spare area has gone up as well (at least on the larger drives).
The G1 and G2 drives didn’t store any user data in the off-controller DRAM, the third gen drive changes that. A large part of why the C300 is so quick has to do with its large external DRAM, something Intel has avoided implementing in the past due to the associated risk of data loss. Intel refers to the 3rd gen X25-M has having a power safe write cache, which sounds to me like it has an external DRAM paired with a big enough capacitor to flush the cache in the case of sudden power loss.
Full disk encryption is the next big feature on the Postville Refresh. You get AES-128 support on the consumer drives. I’m guessing there’s a new version of the SSD Toolbox in the works as Intel is also promising Windows based firmware updates.
The new X25-M will be available in both 1.8” and 2.5” versions. The 1.8” drive tops out at 300GB, you’ll need the 2.5” form factor for 600GB.
In addition to the new X25-M there’s a new X25-E due out in Q1 2011. Codenamed Lyndonville, this will be the first Intel Enterprise SSD to use MLC flash. It’s not quite the same MLC used on the consumer drives but rather a modification of the 25nm process that trades data retention for longevity.
Standard MLC will last for 12 months after all erase/program cycles have been consumed. Enterprise grade MLC will last only 3 months after exhausting all erase/program cycles but will instead support many more cycles per cell.
The X25-E improves specs compared to its predecessor:
| Intel Enterprise SSD Comparison | ||||
| Intel X25-E (50nm) | Intel X25-E (25nm) | |||
| Codename | Ephraim | Lyndonville | ||
| Capacities | 32/64GB | 100/200/400GB | ||
| NAND | IMFT 50nm SLC | IMFT 25nm eMLC | ||
| Sequential Performance Read/Write | Up to 250/170 MB/s | Up to 250/200 MB/s | ||
| Random 4KB Performance Read/Write | Up to 35K/3.3K IOPS | Up to 50K/5K IOPS | ||
| Max Power Consumption Active/Idle | 3.0/0.06W | 5.0/0.095W | ||
| Total 4KB Random Writes (Drive Lifespan) |
32GB: 1PB 64GB: 2PB |
100GB: 900TB - 1PB 200GB: 1PB - 2PB 400GB: 1.4PB |
||
| Power Safe Write Cache | No | Yes | ||
| Form Factors | 2.5" | 2.5" | ||
| Security | ATA Password | ATA Password + AES-128 | ||
Larger capacities, higher performance, AES-128 support and comparable lifespans to the old X25-Es are all in store early next year. Note that Intel tests 4KB random write performance differently on enterprise vs. consumer drivers so you can’t directly compare the numbers between the X25-M and X25-E. The X25-E will be 2.5” only.
Intel isn’t the only one working on a controller update. SandForce and Indilinx are both heading towards production versions of their next-generation controllers. I expect we’ll see preview class hardware before the end of the year, with mainstream availability in Q1 2011.
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Iketh - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
"The SATA implementation has been updated to support ATA8-ACS so it’s possible we may see official 6Gbps support once Intel has a chipset with native support."My whole point is the argument about not having 6Gbps atm really doesn't matter, both from the above statement and jonup's point below
therealnickdanger - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
The sentence before that seems to imply that he was talking about the new motherboards, not the SSDs:"Despite the Q1 release of Intel’s 6-series chipsets, Intel is listing the new X25-M as being 3Gbps SATA only."
Hey, I hope they are 6Gbps, but even so, why release official numbers that are so slow? (by comparison, of course)
jonup - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
But that will not have an effect on the average user. 250MB/s sequential is more then enough unless you bench freak. I think the weakest point of the G2 and the G1 for that matter was the sequential write and it appears the G3 is addressing the issue. I also believe that the G3 will be superior in random writes at the time of the lunch. As for the sequential read, anyone that is not satisfied with 250MB/s is more than likely running a RAID array so the cost per GB will be more important than the max sequential read per hard drive. At least these are my 2 cents.therealnickdanger - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
Most people won't notice, you're right, but some people do. But that's not really the point, is it? Why should anyone settle for the low end or middle of the road?Ever use multiple 50Mbps 1080p streams in Premeire Pro while mixing multi-track audio? Throughput is king. The more I can get, the happier I'll be, especially in a single-drive scenario for when I'm mobile.
erple2 - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
So you have multiple 50Mbps streams? To saturate 250MBps, you'd need roughly 40 of those running simultaneously. Maybe that's a realistic scenario. Audio doesn't use nearly as much bandwidth as that. Even a 96KHz 24bit audio stream is only about 300 KB/s. Mixing 100 of those together is only roughly 30 MB/s. I suppose that limits your total number of multiple 50Mbps streams to only 32 video streams (with leftover bandwidth).I suppose you also have the writing to take care of, so you could halve the above numbers (50 audio tracks plus 16 video streams). Is that too few? I don't work in the music or video processing business, but based on what you threw out there, and some simple math, the 250 MB/s is more than adequate for the scenario.
I suppose that's why we have people filling up 93 Octane Gas for their cars that don't require it - they don't mind throwing their money away.
<shrug>
eanazag - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
I noticed the power doubling but figure that is the max power for the largest drive (600 GB). I assume the power for the smaller drives should be about the same as original G2's.OneArmedScissorB - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
The speed went up, and so did the power use. It's been the same case with many SSDs.Flash chips use hardly anything. The amount of flash chips may not actually be higher for the 600GB drive, but even when it's less, like the current 40GB drives, the change in power use is negligible.
What bothers me is that everyone is still marketing SSDs as "more power efficient," but some of them actually use more than HDDs because they're pretty much brute forcing it.
Where are the SSDs for laptops that actually increase battery life? That would have been possible even before SSDs started blowing HDDs out of the water in sequential speeds.
tipoo - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Not really. They can have all the capacity they want, but as long as the cost/gigabytes is still prohibitively high mechanical hard drives will remain.B3an - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Dont be stupid. You can now get 3TB HDD's. And you can bet these 600GB's SSD's are still going to cost more than any 2TB or 3TB HDD.I want HDD's to die already but it wont happen any time soon.
nitrousoxide - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
That's true. For $900 we can get four 2TB HDDs to build a superfast RAID 0 array :)