Intel has announced the Intel Solid-State Drive DC S3500 Series, its latest solid-state drive (SSD) for data centers and cloud computing.

Designed for read-intensive applications such as Web hosting, cloud computing and data center virtualization, the Intel DC S3500 Series is designed as a replacement for traditional hard disk drives (HDD). Intel SSDs, including the Intel SSD DC S3500 Series, enable transformational improvements in cloud infrastructure, fostering new and enriching Web experiences, says Rob Crooke, Intel corporate vice president and general manager for the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group.

"Intel SSDs have enabled our chip designers to gain up to 27% performance throughput in our massive design distributed computing environment," adds Kim Stevenson, chief information officer at Intel. "In fact, we are increasing our deployment of Intel SSDs in our data centers from 10,000 units to 40,000 by the end of this year to enable our global design team to help bring products to market faster."
By combining 20nm Intel NAND Flash Memory technology with SATA 6 Gb/s interface support, the Intel SSD DC S3500 Series delivers sequential read speeds of up to 500 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 450 MB/s and a tight distribution of input/outputs per second with low maximum latencies. Random read performance can go up to 75,000 input-output operations per second.

The Intel SSD DC S3500 Series also includes data protection features to address IT and data center professional's concerns of data loss. Built-in capacitors provide a short period of backup power to the drive allowing it to finish operations in the event of power loss. The drives also use 256-bit AES encryption for data protection.

The new SSDs will be offered in capacities ranging from 80GB to 800GB and both 2.5 and 1.8 inch form factors. Available through Intel distributors and resellers, the Intel DC S3500 Series is offered at the suggested channel price of US$115 for a 1.8-inch 80GB drive and $979 for a 2.5-inch 800GB drive. It is also accompanied by a 5-year warranty. For more info go to www.intel.com/go/ssd .