Intel is tidying up its naming scheme for data centre solid state drives, ranging from slow, entry-level drives to high-speed Optane near-memory speed products.
Data Centre drives from Intel are currently branded as SSD DC P4000 and SSD DC P3000 products, with Optane versions called Optane SSD DC P4000. There are also SSD DC S4000 and SSD DC S3000 products. It’s a bit of a mess.
Anandtech has published a slide showing the new five-level scheme:
The DC P4000, P3000, S4000 and S3000 scheme is transitioning to a D1, D3, D5, D7 Series and a separate Optane DC SS Series.
The entry level products will use SATA and PCIe interfaces and are renamed SSD D1 Series, or D1 Series for short.
The D3 Series will be SATA interface products for mixed workloads, and two exist already – the D3-S4610 (240GB to 3.84GB) and D3-S4510 (240GB to 3.84GB.)
The D5 Series products will be capacity-optimised, using QLC (4bits/cell) flash and NVMe interfaces, and are intended for read-intensive workloads. Intel has recently announced the D5-P4320, with 7.68TB of QLC flash capacity, using 64-layer 3D NAND. As 96-layer NAND is in development we can expect a 50 per cent capacity uplift to around 12TB (11.36TB ) in future.
D7 Series products will are designed for mixed workloads and use TLC (3bits/cell) flash with an NVMe interface.
The 3D XPoint-based Optane products are henceforth named the Optane DC SSD Series. This is bound to become the Optane series of products, until some other solid state technology base is used alongside Optane 3D XPoint.
