Intel 2011 SSD Roadmap Revealed, Features Five New Drives

Here:
Intel 2011 SSD Roadmap Revealed, Features Five New Drives - Softpedia

7 series targeted at enterprise market...must be pricey

520...wonder if random 4k will be improved

 

Thanks for the link
The Intel 710 Lyndonville looks indeed interesting although it is just 3gbps. And Cherryville with 6gbps. Me like.

 

If I hold on long enough, I think I have the patience enough to save my money and wait for a 120/128GB Cherryville from Intel.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Could be a smart move since the new SSDs don`t really have much improvement over the "old" SATA 3 drives. But who knows, Cherryville could be just as disappointing.

 

Well that could be because of the bandwidth limit in the SATA drives...but I'm wasting my money on a SATA II SSD when I already have a SATA III computer.

I expect a few SSDs to be at the Vertex 3 level with much better reliability by the end of 2011. If intel can release more than 1 SSD a year, why can't others?

Mr. Mysterious

 

because intel is 10x the company than all the others combined.

 

Now that's just fanboyism lol

Need I remind you about the Sandy Bridge embarassment?

We're getting off topic. How much of an improvement over the current 510's would Cherryville be? As in, what do you people think? (Speculation)

If it's not that much of an improvement, then I'll just buy a 510 when Cherryville comes out for a reduced price Or maybe a C4.

Mr. Mysterious

 

I doubt you'll see much difference in performance. The main selling point is supposed to be increased reliability for business users due to the higher specced eMLC and SLC NAND - but that comes at a pretty hefty premium.

 

While you're waiting for the next best thing, we'll be enjoying our SSDs

 

Personally i would recommend against waiting, i mean i bought my X25m almost a year and a half, if i knew how this gen3 would been i would bought the second x25m for my desktop the same day, but i hope to see dramatic differences, but i was wrong, that said, im still kinda playing the waiting game, i went with a cheap x25m 120gb and in hopes intel releases something worth while, but i dont have much hopes up, with 520 having a 480gb smells like Sanforce, so i might pass that also . Either way im super happy with both my ssds, they are far from the fastest now a days, but they work really well, and personally i doubt ill notice the difference. Dive in and enjoy whats available, SSDs imo are truly worthy investment.

 

not really in workforce-size. doesn't mean they're good or not. it just means they can produce more stuff than others, as they have more resources for it.


about your speculations.. well, if it's worth waiting, then wait. for me, it's never worth waiting. every month waited is a month wasted, too. which cost me more nerves than the money saved over time

but if you want to wait, then wait, and see what's out there, and take the best you can. if you can't wait, take the best you can of the current offerings. it's that simple.

 

Now that's just MEAN

I think money saved for bigger drives will make me come out looking smarter in the long run

Mr. Mysterious

 

If you're ok with waiting then of course SSD prices will drop and you'll get faster drives as time goes by. That's true for anything tech related. The question is how long can you wait before needing one?

 

no. i'm enjoying them since 2.5 years, so i have now 2.5 years of extremely snappy system performance that most others in here don't have as they just cry "they're too expensive, they're not worth the money". dunno. i payed much, but i did not payed for an expensive ssd. i payed for 2.5 years of fast systems. definitely massively worth it.

 

Dave- I'm with you on this.
Let's just say $600 or so for a decent 256 gig SSD for two years until computer or SSD is upgraded. This works out to $.82 or 82 cents a day. So about a quarter of the cost of a latte or daily Starbucks. I use my computer for at least 4 hours a day or 20 cents an hour for the SSD "privilege".

Probably the best 20 cents I've ever spent on anything.

Everytime I load Photoshop or load a 160 Mb TIFF HDR file into Lightroom I count myself lucky I was dumb enough to buy into the "SSD hype"

compare 20 cents an hour to the $2000 /hour escorts Charlie Sheen allegedly hires. He coulda bought TWO Intel 320 600 gig babies and have a fantastic time with his laptop

 

Anantech just released an article of Ivy Bridge, but has some ssd info,

Intel’s Roadmap: Ivy Bridge, Panther Point, and SSDs

I was hopping to see Intel Sata III controller on Lyndoville. But something interesting is according to the charts this should come out Q2 2011.

no 520 info. For this and that it seems there wont be any new intel sata III controller, im guessing the 520s are going to be Sanforce based.

 

Seems more and more likely. First there was the rumor, now a roadmap showing Sandforce similar sizes.

However it's also possible Intel develops a new own controller.

 

I don't know why intel is dragging their feet when making the change to SATA3. It seems like they don't want to get in the water when they should be cannonballing in...

Mr. Mysterious

 

why should they? it's not like a sata3 ssd is amazingly much more fast than a sata2 ssd in real life. yes they are a bit faster, but no, it's not a massive improvement (yet). i guess they enjoy maxing out sata2 and thus providing an awesome performing ssd for everyone, instead of going sata3 without real gain.

maybe their target for sata3 is to bring out an ssd that really goes to the limits of sata3? maybe they go pcie next, with the ability to boot from there, and remove the hdd-like look of it (making it more like a ram-dim). what ever, they sure have their reason.

but their biggest reason is, for most consumers, it would not matter to have a sata2 or sata3 ssd. and that's in the end where the money is.

 

I agree. I think they didn't have their own controller ready yet so they jumped at the Marvell controller as sort of a stop-gap solution.

Now they might be going Sandforce 2281 too. Well better late than never.

 

i hope they get away from this me-too that is absolute nonsense except for "we got high benchmark numbers, too" and work on their own stuff, so we get some different options. no interest in tons of different branded sandforce drives.

 

Intel firmware and reliability on a Sandforce drive. Sounds good to me.

More competition could lead to lower prices.

 

it's not competition for sandforce. how does it lower their prices?

that would be like intel selling athlons with an own firmware. not really competition. at least not hw competition.

 

I thought with sanforce all get the same firmware, like the manufacters cant tweak it, idk thats what i read somewhere..... this would make it trivial, well they could still use Intels flash, but idk, not that attractive, im willling to pay good money if its all intel.

 

no, Vertex 2, Agility 2, Corsair Force have always performed slightly different.

There is a generic Sandforce fw but as far as I know it's only used by some low profile brands like A-DATA.

I meant it can lower prices of complete SSDs. Not of controllers. (well it could if production goes up because of it)

 

and how does it drive the sandforce chip/licence/whatever price down? exactly.. not at all.

it's not competition on the hardware level => it's no competition. just lipstick on pigs (sandforce pigs)

 

Like I said, if Intel starts selling Sandforce SSDs in large quantities it would ramp up production for Sandforce and prices could go down.

And there's margin on SSDs too, so sure there can be lower margins on SSDs because of increased competition.

 

because of decreased competition you mean.

yes, prices can go down due to higher production rates. but it would essentially give sandforce a monopole. there's no competition there at all anymore, if intel moves to sandforce.

 

No if I would mean that I would say it

More manufacturers offering Sandforce based SSDs will put the margins under pressure. Guess what will happen to the price of Vertex 3 Maxiops if Intel releases an SSD that's the same price and equally fast. Or better yet... if Intel releases an SSD that's faster.

The SATA III SSD market will continue to be a fight between Marvell and Sandforce. Whether Intel joins the Sandforce crowd or not.

 

We all lose because we are almost forced to use Sandforce.

 

Why? How will Intel putting one Sandforce based SSD in their range force you to choose Sandforce?

Intel, Crucial and Corsair are continuing to produce Marvell based SSDs.

 

How do you know that they will continue to use Marvell? What if they jump to the allmighty SF train instead with SATA 3 SSDs?
And i said "almost.." meaning that Crucial is an alternative. And i couldn`t care less about Corsair

 

It's funny... we don't know. We don't even know if Intel will ever use a Sandforce based SSD.

Who knows Cherryville might be their own controller.

Anyway, Sandforce will only become a monopolist if they produce the best controller. Similar to how Intel dominates the high end moblie CPU market.

 

Yeah it is all guessing. I`d love it if Intel continued with their own controllers.

Wonder if Intel could tweak the performance and reliability of a SF drive if they wrote the firmware for it?

 

I hope they do change it to sandforce. Maybe they can make it more reliable while also increasing the speed.

 

even then, having them at a monopole isn't good. intel being one of the few companies that pushes further and further even while being dominant. most just stop and stagnate, enjoy making money for nothing, chicks for free.

 

SSD controller is a much simpler thing than CPU/GPU so nothing to worry about monopoly. It really is just a specialized OS with some MIPS based CPU if you dig deeper into what SF is about.

 

doesn't matter what it is. does matter that all buy the same one.

 

it does matter. a simple thing like this, people would come in fast if they see an opportunity(i.e. price hike after monopoly). The barrier of entry is too low for any kind of monopoly situation to build up.

If everyone is using the same one and no one jumps in, it means this particular market is uninteresting, both from the seller or the buyer side and again, no one would care.

 

whatever. if intel goes sandforce that just means one thing: no sandforce killer soon. and that means we're stuck with that, instead of seeing further innovation driving the performance up.

 

marvell is still there, samsung is still there.

To me, SSD is already an uninteresting device, ever since the x25m G2 gen.