14 DAY TRIAL // Intel continues to release solid-state drives, even though its market share isn't as high as that of other companies.
Then again, Intel was far from the first to start making such things, so that's expected.
The new line of SSDs from the Santa Clara-based chip giant is called SSD 530 and is divided into 2.5-inch, 7mm-thick drives, 80 mm M.2 models, and mSATA units.
All of them have SATA 6.0 Gbps connectors and at least 80 GB capacity.
In fact, the 2.5-inch SSD 530 come in 80 to 480 GB variants, while the 80 mm M.2 and mSATA drives range from 80 GB to 360 GB.
Only the 2.5-inch units will be available through retail. The others will only ship as part of OEM PCs.
As for performance, the top sequential transfer rate is 540/490 MB/s read/write, and the random 4K write performance is of 80,000 IOPS. A SandForce SF-2281 controller with a few LSI refinements is responsible for the figures.