Intel’s QLC-powered 660p SSD will deliver NVMe performance with SATA-like pricing
Intel’s QLC-powered 660p SSD will deliver NVMe performance with SATA-like pricing
New 3D QLC NAND types are quickly gaining the attention of the industry, offering users a 33% increase in storage potential over TLC, which in turn will facilitate the production of low-cost, high-capacity SSD models. In the mainstream market, this could be transformative for SSD adoption, especially if this new NAND type can offer SATA surpassing performance on M.2 NVMe form factors.Â
Intel’s upcoming 660p SSD has reemerged via a listing at wpgholdings, using Intel’s 64-layer 3D QLC NAND to offer capacities of 512GB, 1TB and 2TB while providing sequential read/write performance of 1800MB/s and 1100MB/s respectively. This gives the 660p an almost 2x boost in write performance over Intel’s older 600p NVMe SSD, despite the fact that the 600p uses 3D TLC NAND.Â
The 660p will be Intel’s consumer-grade first QLC NAND product, which is designed to offer lower pricing by providing higher levels of capacity per storage cell. The 512GB, 1TB and 2TB models are expected to have price points of €113.90, €197.75 and €391.43 respectively, according to Computerbase.Â
3D QLC NAND has the potential to start a low-cost SSD revolution, offering SSD markers to create high-performance storage drives at lower prices than ever before. With these performance levels, we can also see that a hypothetical QLC-powered SATA SSD will be limited by the SATA interface, making the new NAND type ideal for low-cost SATA solid-state storage devices.Â
You can join the discussion on Intel’s QLC-powered 660P NVMe SSD on the OC3D Forums.Â