Intel on Monday announced the release of its third-generation family of solid-state drives (SSDs): the 320 Series. The drives will replace Intel's current X25-M SSD.
The 320 Series drives are based on 25nm NAND Flash memory process Intel and Micron announced last year, and run over 3-Gbps SATA connections. The drives are available in a number of capacities ranging from 40GB to 160GB, and 300GB and 600GB models are also available. Intel boasts that the new drives are more reliable, and offer price reductions of up to 30 percent compared to the X-25M drives.
Proprietary firmware and Intel's own controller are still in use in the 320 Series; Intel said it has also added redundancies to protect data, even in the event of a loss of power. The drives also sport 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) capabilities, to protect data if a drive is lost or stolen.
Intel claimed in its announcement today that the 320 Series drives produce up to 39,500 input/output operations per second (IOPS) with random reads and 23,000 IOPS with random writes; and that it's doubled sequential write speeds, to 220 Mbps, and has maintained high sequential reads of up to 270 MBps.
Intel SSD 320 Series drives come with a limited three-year warranty, and the Intel SSD Optimizer utility, which provides Windows users with a set of tools for managing and diagnosing drives.
Drives in the 320 Series are slated to be priced for retailers as follows, assuming 1,000-unit quantities (consumer prices will vary somewhat): 40GB for $89, 80GB for $159, 120GB for $209, 160GB for $289, 300GB for $529, and 600GB for $1,069.
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