Thread: Intel SSD Five Hundred and Twenty Series Solid State Drive

Intel is establishing a latest line of solid state drives now, constructed around SandForce’s popular SF-2200 family of storage processors. The latest solid-state drive Five Hundred and Twenty Series solid state drives, as they are familiar, will supplant the Marvell-founded 510 series at the top of Intel’s client-targeted SSD lineup and be extended in capacities ranging from 60GB to 480GB.

Like added SandForce SF-2200-based drives, the new Intel SSD 520 alternation is outfitted with a SATA III interface with consecutive reads and writes speeds in the 550MB/s to 520MB/s ranges, respectively. According to their specifications, 4K accidental reads aiguille at about 50K IOPS (QD32), with 4K accidental writes aerial about 80K IOPS for the 240GB archetypal (lower accommodation drives, action somewhat lower performance).

In agreement of their blueprint and features, the Intel SSD 520 alternation drives should attending agnate to added SandForce-based counterparts. Intel has, however, formed a bit abracadabra with the SSD 520 Series’ firmware to



advance performance, reliability, and compatibility. To that end, the ambassador has additionally been commutual to selectively-binned 25nm NAND beam anamnesis which reportedly offers optimal achievement and constancy as well.

The Intel SSD 520 alternation drives action the aforementioned 2.5” anatomy agency that’s accepted with added SATA solid accompaniment drives on the market. In fact, the drives attending about identical to Intel’s earlier SSD 510 and 320 alternation products, save for the decal on top. We should additionally point out that SSD 520 alternation drives will be offered in both 7mm (120GB – 240GB) and 9.5mm z-height flavors.

Crack an Intel SSD 520 alternation drive accessible by removing the four screws about its bend and the aliment that lie aural are anon visible. As we have mentioned, the SSD 520 alternation is congenital about one of SandForce’s accepted controllers—the SF-2281 to be exact.

Paired to the SF-2281 in the 240GB drive you see pictured actuality are sixteen Intel 25nm ancillary NAND beam anamnesis chips, eight on anniversary side. The absolute NAND accommodation on this drive is absolutely 256GB (16x16GB), the actual 16GB is provisioned for abrasion leveling, debris collection, and added SandForce proprietary appearance to ensure abiding believability and added constant performance.