Intel Corp. is working on its next-generation 750-series solid-state drives aimed at performance enthusiasts and professionals that will sport PCI Express interface in order to maximize its speeds, according to a source with knowledge of Intel’s plans. The new drives will be available late this year.

It is not a secret that performance of modern solid-state drives is limited by Serial ATA-6Gb/s interconnection. In a bid to further boost performance of SSDs, manufacturers need to adopt different interfaces, such as PCI Express, SATA Express, M.2, SAS-12Gb/s and so on. In all the cases except SATA Express, change of the interconnection technology affects physical dimensions and forms, which is why mainstream SSDs use Serial ATA and traditional 2.5” form-factor. Nonetheless, many SSD makers are working on new products with fast interfaces to deliver higher performance to their customers

Later this year Intel plans to release 750-series solid-state drives code-named “August Ridge” based on the current-generation multi-level cell NAND flash memory (made using 20nm manufacturing process) and sporting PCI Express 2.0 x8 interface. The drives will be available as M.2 cards as well as in PCIe add-in-card form-factors. The upcoming SSDs will come in 180, 240, 360, 480 and 600GB capacities.

Intel 910-series SSD with PCI Express 2.0 x8 interface. 

Target performance of Intel 750-series SSDs is impressive: up to 1500MB/s read speed and up to 1100MB/s write speed. Random 4K IOPS [input/output operations per second] performance is projected to be 180/24 thousand for reads and writes.

The upcoming Intel 750-series SSDs are forecasted to be available in the fourth quarter of the year.

Intel did not comment on the news-story.

KitGuru Says: Thanks to PCI Express 2.0 x8 interface, the upcoming Intel SSDs 750-series will almost triple performance compared to existing drives. The only question that remains is how high will be their price? Consumer-oriented SSDs are not that expensive, but given the performance, they can still be sold at a hefty premium.

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