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Intel Launches SSD DC P3608 NVMe Solid State Drive With 5GB/Sec Performance

Posted by samzenpus on from the running-the-numbers dept.

MojoKid writes: Intel just launched a new NVMe-based solid state drive today dubbed the SSD DC P3608. As the DC in the product name suggests, this drive is designed for the data center and enterprise markets, where large capacities, maximum uptime, and top-end performance are paramount. The Intel SSD DC P3608 is somewhat different than the recent consumer-targeted NVMe PCI Express SSD 750 series, however. This drive essentially packs a pair of NVMe-based SSDs onto a single card, built for high endurance and high performance. There are currently three drives slated for the Intel SSD DC P3608 series, a 1.6TB model, a 3.2TB model, and a monstrous 4TB model. All of the drives feature dual Intel NVMe controllers paired to Intel 20nm MLC HET (High Endurance Technology) NAND flash memory. The 1.6TB drive's specifications list max read 4K IOPS in the 850K range, with sequential reads and writes of 5GB/s and 3GB/s respectively. In the benchmarks, the new SSD DC P3608 offers up just that level of performance as well and is one of the fastest SSDs on the market to date.

42 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Yawn... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    monstrous 4TB

    That's what they said about 4K, 4MB, and 4GB. Now 4PB in a single drive at 4GB pricing would be monstrous.

    1. Re:Yawn... by afidel · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it's not even that large by current standards, Samsung announced a 16TB 2.5" SSD last month, though at much lower performance numbers than these Intel units. It will come down to cost and workload profile as to which is a better fit, though for NVMe you really want the highest IOPS per slot that you can get because if all you need is capacity then SAS12 gives you the ability to attach MANY more drives per controller than NVMe which is limited to a handful of drives.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    2. Re:Yawn... by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      hard drive capacity grows by 100 X every ten years. Therefore, we'll be at 4 PB drives in about 12 years since we're at 8 TB now

    3. Re:Yawn... by Arkh89 · · Score: 1

      Meanwhile, bandwidth will grow by 20%...

    4. Re:Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      SSD size really isn't any special feat. (Chips are tiny little fuckers and you can cram lots of them in to something the volume of a 2.5" drive.

        You just stack more chips together and things more or less scale in a linear manner with little-to-no diminishing returns. Fuck, if you do it properly your speed goes /up/ because you can address multiple dies at a time. Your only limit is the speed at which you can funnel data in and out of the thing.

      Hard drives, on the other hand, have very real mechanical issues. Adding more platters becomes impossible because of weight and the strength of your materials becomes a problem. You can only assess one thing at a time,despite having multiple platters. (One arm!)

      You can scale up with arrays, but flash has you beat. Essentially every SSD is an array. But far faster, and far cheaper.

    5. Re:Yawn... by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 1

      Over 10 years? No. My cable speeds have gone from 4 Mbps to 50 Mbps, at the same price, over the past 8 years.

    6. Re:Yawn... by mlts · · Score: 1

      I remember one company that did a dog/pony show for an all-SSD SAN product that did this, although I forgot the name of the company.

      Their SAN had fast Intel SSD for the landing zone where the data had one pass at being deduplicated. Then, there was a background task that deduplicated the data a lot better (but took more CPU power) and moved the data to slower, but higher capacity solid-state drives. Both the faster Intel SSD and the slower (but bigger in capacity) Samsungs would definitely have a place in something like this.

      Only thing that made me scratch my head was the fact that (IIRC) they didn't factor in for failure on the landing zone SSD. If that failed, you would have to completely down that respective SAN controller to replaced the dead modules. At least they used some redundancy on the main storage array.

      I can see another use for these fast SSD units. Windows Server 2016 offers Storage Spaces Direct, which is similar in functionality to VMWare's Virtual SAN, where it presents all the compute nodes' hard disks as one backing storage (in MS's case, a CSV replacement.) Having a SSD like this on all the nodes in a cluster will wind up being useful, just to handle the ton of random I/O that virtualization requires.

    7. Re:Yawn... by rbrander · · Score: 1

      Ahem. The GP was actually being, and I'm using the word correctly, literal.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Tera is derived from Greek word teras, meaning “monster”. ...So TB is in fact monstrous...though PB and up are not.

    8. Re:Yawn... by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      not in the smarter parts of the world. Them 'merikins aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, they'll pay for crap

  2. SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid by lesincompetent · · Score: 1

    Do they feature an NSA-enriched firmware?

    1. Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Only if you are talking about the encryption algorithms that everyone uses and were designed by the NIST.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    2. Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid by lesincompetent · · Score: 1

      Show yourself, coward!

    3. Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid by dave420 · · Score: 1

      We know it's you, APK. Sockpuppetry is not held in particularly high regard, so you might want to knock it off. You are not helping your argument by pretending to be someone else, as it makes it patently clear no-one else agrees with your position.

  3. Re:SSDs are for cows. by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 2

    Solid state cows don't sound like they'd taste good with A1, so I am 100% against this idea.

  4. Re:TWB Anxiety And Price by Razed+By+TV · · Score: 2

    I have a feeling that you might not be in the target market for this particular item.

  5. Didn't they just announce some new flash tech? by swb · · Score: 2

    That was supposed to be consumer cheap and datacenter fast and durable?

    I don't know what market this thing is for, maybe the host caching or db stuff.

    1. Re:Didn't they just announce some new flash tech? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      3D XPoint is at least a year away. There are still plenty of people who need SSD now for whatever project they are working on.

      Question is, can they afford to buy cheap expendable SSD drives now to boost performance and then hopefully last over until they can spend a chunk of their budget money on risky 1st gen 3D XPoint tech.

    2. Re:Didn't they just announce some new flash tech? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Yes they did. They announced it will be ready sometime towards the end of next year.

      Just because you have something new around the corner doesn't mean everyone else isn't already working on something for right now.

    3. Re:Didn't they just announce some new flash tech? by swb · · Score: 1

      Question is, can they afford to buy cheap expendable SSD drives now to boost performance

      After reading about the SSD write endurance test:

      http://techreport.com/review/2...

      I'd be curious just to see how long they would last in real world (neither extremely brutal nor extremely mild) SAN/RAID applications. Like a shelf of 24 in a RAID-6 config with a couple of hot spares.

      What would the actual failure rate be? Would the relatively low cost of say a Samsung 850 Pro be worth a higher failure rate when you consider what the cost vs. performance of a shelf of 24 SSDs would be? Would $2k a year on replacement disks be worth a storage subsystem capable of that kind of performance?

      Or would it just overwhelm the SSDs and make the failure rate unsustainable?

  6. Re:SSDs are for cows. by CODiNE · · Score: 1

    A1 not so much, but I hear the A9 is delicious with them.

    --
    Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
  7. Re:TWB Anxiety And Price by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Total Bytes Written(TBW), the finite total life of the flash drive, and price are the big factors with SSDs.

    Two months old - Current wear leveling count 12 : Hmmm, I'm not sure that is enough.

    From the specs: Rated for up to 3 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) over 5 years. So thats roughly 365x3x5 = 5400 total drive writes, you are currently at 12/60 = 1 drive write per 5 days, do the math assuming same size disk and this will last you 74 years...

  8. Re:TWB Anxiety And Price by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    >They are already faster than anyone currently realistically needs.
    No. You don't need it, but other people do and will be happy to spend the money.
    This device is a perfect compromise for people who need excellent-but-not-DRAM-performance for a fraction of the cost of DRAM.
    Off the top of my head this drive will be useful for virtual machine servers, better/faster/more realtime analytics, large mmorpg servers, and computers in electronic markets (think HFT, market makers), a fast and large cache for a storage array, or databases.

  9. Order of magnitude price difference by mark-t · · Score: 1, Troll

    ... on high capacity SSD's being over what you'd pay for an equivalent amount of storage on a hard drive is the single biggest issue with flash storage, in general.

    Until that issue is settled, SSD's can really only replace the floppy, IMO... but not the hard drive.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by Moridineas · · Score: 2

      ... on high capacity SSD's being over what you'd pay for an equivalent amount of storage on a hard drive is the single biggest issue with flash storage, in general.

      There's a bit of an exponential curve where high capacity SSDs get much more expensive. Smaller SSDs are dirt cheap.

      Until that issue is settled, SSD's can really only replace the floppy, IMO... but not the hard drive.

      That battle is over. The SSD has ALREADY replaced the hard drive. We haven't bought a new computer with a spinning platter in our office in probably 3 years. We're a small business without huge data needs and our one server, built circa 2011, currently has a 4tb ZFS pool, and about 1/2 of that is snapshots and workstation backups (for which speed doesn't particularly matter). Next time I build a new server (another year or two I would guess), I'm expecting to put in only SSDs, because why not? A 1tb SATA SSD can be had for less than $400 today. I'll keep platters in the backup server.

    2. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by driblio · · Score: 1

      What issue? That they cost more per GB? Most people are far more happy with their iops/$ ratio, and you can keep a few local multi TB spinning platters around if cloud storage is not your thing.

    3. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by Moridineas · · Score: 1

      Did you miss where I said our current server holds 4tb (we have about 1tb free)? Why would I even want 8tb?

    4. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by mark-t · · Score: 1

      It apparently escaped your attention that I was referring to how much storage you could have otherwise purchased for the same amount as you spent on your ssd. Hey, it's your money, and you can spend it however you want, but don't assume that everyone is so indifferent about how far their dollars will actually go. For a quarter of what you spent on the ssd, one could buy 2tb of platter space, which is an entirely typical desktop configuration in 2015.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    5. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by Moridineas · · Score: 1

      Odd comment then, that I commented on how much much more expensive large SSDs are. Typical desktop-sized SSDs are dirt cheap. Like I said, we're a small business. We run typical business apps in addition to a few people doing graphical and multimedia production work. Out of about 25 desktops, I don't think a single user is using more than 250gb of local storage. We have absolutely no need for 2tb of space--it would just be totally wasted. a 200gb SSD makes for a _far_ better desktop experience and is well under $100.

    6. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      It is not so long ago that you could share a few hundred GB of HDD space among a number of users (home directories, group directories) now it gets economical to share a similar amount or more on SSD.
      And no need for silly RAID controller cards anymore..

      If the workstations run linux or BSD, why not forgo local storage : mount the root partitions from the network (they're mosly read-only, low level of activity anyway)
      Would be fun if they're on dedupe'd SSD storage, gigabit networking to the clients and 10Gbe "uplink" to the server.

    7. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      >... on high capacity SSD's being over what you'd pay for an equivalent amount of storage on a hard drive is the single biggest issue with flash storage, in general.
      How many times does some joker like you have to make this point every SSD article?
      You're bloody determined to try to convince people that they are making poor economic choices by buying solid state drives, as if you know and understand their needs.
      Paying the same amount of money to get 10x the storage space with HDDs would do us absolutely no good at all, because it would take up more power, more cabinet space, 90% of the storage wouldn't be used, and it would STILL perform more slowly than the solid state drive where we need it most: random seek r/w operations. We've been using server SSDs for years and every dollar was money well spent.
      You might as well say that RAM will never replace HDD storage because it costs 100x as much for the same storage capacity. So what? Having gobs of storage isn't always what's important. There's more to life than desktop computing.

    8. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by KGIII · · Score: 1

      The lowest amount of RAM I have, in any box that gets used on a regular basis, is 16 GB. The rest are around 32 and my regular desktop (which I'm sort of using at the moment) has 64. I'm not really using the desktop, I guess, but am connected via VNC and using the desktop remotely (I'm on hiatus/wanderlust for an undetermined duration and want to maintain my own encrypted connection and I like this route).

      I guess my point is that, yeah, as I save fewer and fewer things (I often don't even use the OS that is installed but just poke around with a Live USB/DVD/CD - usually the former) anywhere and I'm more a passive consumer, I really have, sort of, replaced HDD/SSDs with RAM. I might save a document, not often enough to matter. I usually don't even save many of those locally. Those get saved on a NAS that gets backed up to HDDs and, eventually, to SSDs that sit off-site and on-site in a backup scheme that a friend and I utilize. It's all automated and I don't really touch anything.

      To be frank, I'd really kind of sort of like to get back into using Remote Profiles. I don't use many Windows products (not any at the moment) but, honestly, it was easier for me to do with Windows. It's nice to just be able to have the compute power to be able to do things locally but also have the availability of a remote profile.

      I digress...

      Anyhow, in some ways, I have actually begun using RAM as my HDD. I know, it's pretty hybrid as I'm still loading the OS into RAM from a disk drive but it stays that way. Hell, I've got enough RAM that I no longer even bother with a /swap at all. I've yet to have any issues though, again, I am a much more passive user than I once was. A proper suspend state means that I don't even have to worry about keeping the USB drive in place. I've got enough RAM to throw at the problem. (I've never had this much compute power, these many resources, so readily available - my desktop that I'm connected through has more resources than many servers that I've used.)

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    9. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by Overzeetop · · Score: 1

      Yes, but you've made the classic error of starting a land war in...no, wait, the classic error of equating capacity with value, and initial cost with lifetime cost.

      If you're application is operation-bound, you have to stripe or partition hundreds of spinning disks to get the same performance as an SSD. It's like owning a UPS van vs a fleet of motorcycles to deliver packages. The truck is by far the most efficient for carrying lots of packages, but if you have to deliver 1000 boxes an hour, you'd much rather have 100 motorcycles delivery than a single truck, even though the truck would cost less.

      Plus SSDs take less power to run - less than 10% at idle (though enterprise drives rarely idle), and less than 25% at full tilt. It may not seem like much, but for a data center, you have the direct cost of power, and then an equivalent amount of cooling to remove the heat from the building, so the cost is doubled. It won't make up for the cost difference by itself, but in combination with the speed advantage it could easily pay back in less than a year or two.

      --
      Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    10. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by mark-t · · Score: 1

      It's not about getting 10x the storage space for the same money as much as it is spending 10x the money for the same amount of storage space (which can spell the difference between economically viable and not) when your storage needs are much more demanding than just a couple of hundred gigabytes.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    11. Re:Order of magnitude price difference by mark-t · · Score: 1

      If 200gb is all you need, sure.... My mac, which my (grown) kids use quite a bit for movie editing for their film projects, has 2TB of storage and they use well over 50% of the hard drive.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  10. Great for Virtualization by nuckfuts · · Score: 3, Informative

    People often comment that only a datacentre or intensive database operation needs this kind of speed, but virtualization another application where IOPS are important.

    I recently put together a small ESXi server with a couple of Intel 750 Series PCIe SSD's for VM storage, rated at 460,000 random read, 290,000 random write (4k) IOPS. Even with multiple VM's running, the responsiveness is like nothing I've experienced before.

    1. Re:Great for Virtualization by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      rated at 460,000 random read, 290,000 random write (4k) IOPS.

      No, they're not. They're rated at up to 460,000 random read, up to 290,000 random write 4k IOPS.
      Which is a major difference between consumer and datacenter SSDs, consumer drive specs list burst performance, DC list sustained.
      And that difference is quite significant.

    2. Re:Great for Virtualization by Wolfrider · · Score: 1

      > I recently put together a small ESXi server with a couple of Intel 750 Series [intel.com] PCIe SSD's for VM storage

      --Could you please expand on your server specs? I am interested in putting together a small ESXi server for personal use and would like to keep the budget under $800 or so if possible... TIA

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    3. Re:Great for Virtualization by nuckfuts · · Score: 1

      My server spec's likely won't be helpful for you. One of the SSD's alone would pretty much use up your budget. Here are the details anyway:

      Intel S2600CP Motherboard
      2 of E5-2620 v2 @ 2.10GHz
      64GB of DDR3L 1600MHz RAM
      1000W Power Supply
      Intel RMS25KB040 RAID Controller
      AXXCBL740MS7P RAID/SAS Cable Kit
      2 of 500GB SATA HDD in RAID1 for OS/Boot
      2 of Intel 750 Series PCIe 1.2TB SSD for VM storage

      Software installed includes:
      VMware ESXi 6.0.0
      Intel-nvme-1.0e.1.1-1OEM.550.0.0.1391871.x86_64.vib
      Scsi-mpt2sas-20.00.00.00.1vmw-1OEM.550.0.0.1331820.x86_64.vib
      Vmware-esx-provider-lsiprovider.vib

  11. I alwas wondered... by ooshna · · Score: 1

    I always wondered why they never disk this with HDDs and just make them 5 1/4in in size to use up all those empty bays in the front of my computer even if you had to connect to sata cables to it. Or back in the day two ide cables.

  12. Re:TWB Anxiety And Price by KGIII · · Score: 1

    I kind of want a couple of them to put in my home server and, maybe, one in a laptop and a couple in a desktop. I've had good luck buying and using enterprise rated equipment for home use. It has meant a much lower MTBF and a higher ROI if I've done the math properly. Because of my choices, I still have hardware that is older than most and, often, am able to donate it to a worthy cause when I'm no longer using it and don't want to keep it as an example.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  13. Re:SSDs are for cows. by Kjella · · Score: 1

    Solid state cows don't sound like they'd taste good with A1, so I am 100% against this idea.

    You'd prefer liquid state cows? Or worse yet, cow gas?

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  14. Re:last month. by dave420 · · Score: 1

    Not just that, but from HotHardware.com's Editor-in-Chief himself.