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