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*Exclusive* Intel® 80GB X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive

SSD’s – or Solid State Drives, are now the buzz word which sits on everyone’s lips. Small in size though high in speed. Well small bundles do come in very fast surprises and today is no different. We have an exclusive look at Intel’s new 80GB X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive.

The recent Intel Developers Forum, had many aghast at what the performance would bring of this revolutionary new device would bring. Many old bitter hacks sceptically stating “no not possible” – others bit their tongues and quietly muttered “let’s wait and see”. The facts and figures shown certainly could be possible, though would this be an actual reality?

Whilst everyone has been sitting pondering over these facts we have been scurrying away actually putting to the test and seeing if the actual claims are founded. What we found with our initial investigations most certainly caught us with our guard down.

The array of SSD’s that are to come out from Intel are in 4 juicy flavours targeted at 2 differing markets, which is very sensible indeed maintaining a frontal attack on both the consumer & enterprise markets. Though it does not stop there as notebook tier one’s have already got their skews ready. Therefore we find a 3rd market heavily secured which is going to put under threat the 2 ½” hard disc makers that currently supply into the notebook manufacturers

Earlier on this year we sat down and looked face to face with many of the new SSD’s and felt that they just were not ready for reviewing articles as some write speeds had been quite slow we were to discover. Within this article we have seen so many places that Solid State Discs now will have a future in both consumer and enterprise scenarios. It would appear that Intel most certainly have completed their sums accurately within this department as all will unfold later on.

For now let’s take a brief refresh of the specifications of both sets of the Solid-State Drive out from Intel starting firstly with today’s consumer edition.

Our thanks to Intel's Public Relations department for the information below.

Consumer Edition Technical specifications

Model Name	Intel® X18-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive Intel® X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive
Capacity	80GB and 160GB
NAND Flash Components	Intel® Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory 10 Channel Parallel Architecture with 50nm MLC ONFI 1.0 NAND
Bandwidth	Sustained Sequential Read: up to 240 MB/s Sustained Sequential Write: up to 70 MB/s
Read Latency	85 microseconds
Interface	SATA 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s
Form factor	X18-M: 1.8" Industry Standard Hard Drive Form Factor X25-M: 2.5" Industry Standard Hard Drive Form Factor
Compatibility	SATA Revision 2.6 Compliant. Compatible with SATA 3.0 Gb/s with Native Command Queuing and SATA 1.5 Gb/s interface rates
Life expectancy	1.2 million hours Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF)
Power consumption	Active: 150mW Typical (PC workload¹) Idle (DIPM): 0.06W Typical
Operating shock	1,000G / 0.5ms
Operating temperature	0°C to +70°C
RoHS Compliance	Meets the requirements of EU RoHS Compliance Directives
Product health monitoring	Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) commands plus additional SSD monitoring

Enterprise Edition Technical specifications

Model name	Intel® X25-E Enterprise SATA Solid-State Drive
Capacity	32GB and 64GB
NAND Flash components	Intel® Single-Level Cell (SLC) NAND Flash Memory 10 Parallel Channel Architecture with 50nm SLC ONFI 1.0 NAND
Bandwidth	Sustained sequential read: up to 250 MB/s Sustained sequential write: up to 170 MB/s
Read Latency	75 microseconds
I/O Per Second (IOPS)	Random 4KB Reads: >35,000 IOPS Random 4KB Writes: >3,300 IOPS
Interface	SATA 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s
Form factor	2.5" industry standard hard drive form factor
Compatibility	SATA Revision 2.6 Compliant. Compatible with SATA 3 Gb/s with Native Command Queuing and SATA 1.5 Gb/s interface rates
Life expectancy	2 Million Hours Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF)
Power consumption	Active: 2.4W Typical (server workload¹) Idle (DIPM): 0.06 W Typical
Operating shock	1,000G / 0.5ms
Voltage	5V SATA supply rail
Operating temperature	0°C to +70°C
RoHS compliant	Meets the requirements of EU RoHS Compliance Directives
Product health monitoring	Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) commands, plus additional SSD monitoring

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - Pictures
Page 3 - System Set-Up and Benchmarks Used
Page 4 - Solid-State Drive Write Tests
Page 5 - Solid-State Drive Read Tests
Page 6 - PCMark 2005 Advanced and Everest Ultimate Ver 4.6
Page 7 - 3D Studio Max 9 SP2
Page 8 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™ & SPECviewperf® 10.0
Page 9 - Conclusions

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