Intel Announces First 3D NAND SSDs Optimized For Cloud and Enterprise

Intel Corporation is announcing their first dual-port PCI Express (PCIe) SSDs that utilize the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol.  The dual-port design of the new Intel SSD DC D3700 and D3600 series provides failover and redundancy, which are critical in safeguarding against data loss.  Systems utilizing the D3700 can realize up to a 6 X performance increase as compared to current dual-port SAS offerings.

Also being announced are the Intel SSD DC P3320 and P3520 series, which are the first Intel SSDs built on the industry’s highest-density 3D NAND.  The DC P3320 series are optimized for more cost-effective performance, and are geared toward read-intensive usage scenarios common to cloud and data analytics. The DC P3320 features a PCIe Gen 3×4 interface to provide low latency and fast data access, to the tune of up to 5 X faster performance and up to 3.2 X faster sequential reads as compared to mainstream SATA SSDs.

Intel’s DC P3520 series provide significant latency and performance improvements over the DC P3320, creating an ideal solution for cloud computing environments requiring higher levels of performance, including web hosting and storage virtualizations.  Intel’s new 3D NAND SSDs are a more affordable alternative if deploying multiple NVMe storage arrays processing large data sets.

Intel’s SSD DC D3700 and D3600 series feature an active/active dual-port design that simultaneously connects to two host systems.  This simultaneous connection allows run-time recovery during failover if one of the hosts becomes unavailable.  Redundancy is a critical requirement for usage scenarios (such as online transaction processing (OTLP) and private cloud storage) where minimizing the threat of data loss due to a single failure point is essential.

The DC D3700 and D3600 series include features designed uniquely for 24/7 high-availability storage.  These features include Dynamic Multiple Namespaces Management with Reservations, scatter/gather IO list (SGL) support, consistently high throughput and IOPS with sustained low latency, power-loss data protection (with self-test), and thermal monitoring/throttling.

You can view Intel’s product pages for the DC P3320 here, the DC P3520 here, the Dc D3600 here, and the DC D3700 here.