Background and Internals

A little over two weeks back, Intel briefed me on their new SSD 910 Series PCIe SSD. Since that day I've been patiently awaiting its arrival, which happened just a few short hours ago. I've burned the midnight oil for the sake of getting some greater details out there. Before we get into the goods, here's a quick recap of the specs for the 800 (or 400) GB model:

• PCIe 2.0 x8 LSI Falcon 2008 SAS HBA driving 4 (or 2) Hitachi Ultrastar SAS controllers, each in turn driving 200GB of IMFT 25nm High Endurance Technology flash memory, all on a triple stacked half-height PCB.
• 400GB model yields (r/w) 1GB/s / 750MB/s sequential and 90,000 / 38,000 4k IOPS.
• 800GB model yields (r/w) 2GB/s / 1GB/s sequential and 180,000 / 75,000 4k IOPS.
• 800GB 'performance mode' (r/w) 2GB/s / 1.5GB/s sequential and 180,000 / 75,000 4k IOPS.

"Performance Mode" is a feature that can be enabled through the Intel Data Center Tool Software. This feature is only possible on the 800GB model, but not for the reason you might think. The 400GB model is *always* in Performance Mode, since it can go full speed without drawing greater than the standard PCIe 25W power specification. The 800GB model has twice the components to drive yet it stays below the 25W limit so long as it is in its Default Mode. Switching the 800GB model to Performance Mode increases that draw to 38W (the initial press briefing stated 28W, which appears to have been a typo). Note that this increased draw is only seen during writes.

Ok, now into the goodies:

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