Intel Introduces The P3100, The First M.2 NVMe SSD For Data Centers

by Adam Armstrong October 25, 2016

written by Adam Armstrong October 25, 2016

Today Intel introduced its latest SSD series for the data center, the Intel SSD DC P3100 Series. Unlike most SSDs made for the data center, the P3100 is a single-sided M.2 form factor with an NVMe interface. The P3100 comes in capacities up to 1TB, endurance up to 580TBW, and performance up to 1.8GB/s sequential read.

Even though storage is getting increasingly denser, data centers are still growing. With this growth in data centers, companies are looking for different methods for saving costs while keeping data safe and performance high. NVMe has shown itself to be the highest performing interface and currently there isn’t a smaller form factor than M.2. The Intel SSD DC P3100 Series comes with the benefits one would expect from NVMe SSDs along with low power consumption (a power draw of only 10 milliwatts with an active power of 5.5 watts). The P3100 has been validated for the most common data center use cases including boot, search indexing, edge caching, and web hosting.

P3100 key specifications:

Capacity: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB
Form Factor: Single-sided M.2
Physical
- Height: up to 1.5mm
- Weight: up to 40g
NAND: 3D TLC
Performance
- Bandwidth
  - Sequential Read: 1,800MB/s
  - Sequential Write: 175MB/s
  - Random Read: 114K IOPS
  - Random Write: 10K IOPS
MTBF: 1.6 million hours
AFR: 0.73%
Operating Temperature: 0°C to 70°C

It remains to be seen how the M.2 form factor will be embraced in the enterprise. While a popular solution for thin and light notebooks and other personal computing devices, M.2 isn’t mainstream in the enterprise. While a few motherboards support it, the penetration is overall very low and something that will require more server support if M.2 is to gain mindshare in the enterprise.

Availability

The Intel SSD DC P3100 Series is available now.

Intel SSD DC P3100 Series

Discuss this story