Intel ruler SSD sneaks out into the wild

Intel watchers at Tom’s Hardware have picked up a DC P4510 ruler-format drive available from an online Etailer.

Intel’s DC P4510 is a U.2 (2.5-inch) data centre SSD with a PCIe 3 x 4 lane, NVMe interface. It was announced in January, 2019, comes in 1, 2, 4, and 8TB capacities and is built using 64-layer 3D NAND in TLC format. It pumps out up to 641,000 random read IOPS and 134,500 random write IOPS. The sequential read and write bandwidth numbers are up to 3.2GB/sec and 3.0GB/sec.

Intel ruler format.

Now there is a 15.36TB  capacity version, using the same NAND, in the EDSFF E1.L format, L meaning long. You can cram more of these ruler drives into server chassis than U.2 format SSDs, thus gaining more storage density in the same server chassis space.

You can have either a 9mm or an 18mm heat sink with the drive and its random read/write IOPS numbers are 583,800 and 131,400 IOPS; both less than the U.2 drive with its 8TB maximum capacity. There must be a reason for this performance drop, despite the drive logically having more dies and thus more parallel access headroom, meaning more performance ought to be possible.

On the sequential read and write front the 15.56TB version performs at 3.1GB/sec each; more or less the same as the U.2 version.

The endurance is 1.92, 2.61, 6.3, 13.88 and 22.7 PBW (petabytes written) as capacity rises from 1TB to 15.36TB, with a limited 5-year warranty.

You can check out an Intel DC P4510 data sheet for more information. 

Blocks & Files expects major server manufacturers such as Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo to embrace the EDSFF format from now on, with EDSFF servers becoming mainstream in 2021. We might also expect 32 and 64TB ruler capacity point to come onto the scene.