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Intel P3100 M.2 SSD has datacenters in mind

Eric Frederiksen
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When it comes to datacenters, not all storage is created equal. Datacenters move more data around in an hour than most of us will in a lifetime, and they need storage that can handle that. SSDs are already in wide use in datacenters, but the M.2 form factor isn't widely adopted yet. Intel wants to help with that, and it's giving businesses an M.2 option in the form of the P3100 NVMe SSD, which it calls the first M.2 SSD designed with datacenter use in mind.

The P3100 comes in capacities of up to 1TB. Intel says these SSDs' power and endurance ratings will save their owners money in the long run. Intel says the P3100 operates at about half the power draw of standard enterprise hard drives, while enduring up to 580TB of writes in its largest incarnation. Here's what the full specs look like.

Capacity Sequential reads (MB/s) Sequential writes (MB/s) Random 4K reads (IOPS) Random 4K write (IOPS) Endurance rating (TBW)
128GB 720 55 27,000 2,200 72
256GB 1400 100 52,500 5,500 145
512GB 1200 145 88,000 10,000 300
1TB 1800 175 114,000 9,000 580

The biggest hurdle the product has to overcome is that M.2 is more or less a new thing in datacenters. As Storage Reviews notes, there are a few server boards out there with M.2 slots, but not many. If the cost savings the drive offers live up to Intel's promise, datacenter demand for M.2 may increase, meaning we might see more drives like these in the future.