Well I guess the secrets out by now. Intel has this morning officially released it's new enthusiast level Intel 520 Series SSD and it is none other than 'SandForce Driven'. What's that, you say!?

Our report today is a complete analysis of the Intel 520 240GB 6Gbps SSD and I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this is only a prelude to the big event. As luck may have it, Intel has sent us three (3) Series 520 SSDs to do what only we can truly do for the drives. Get ready for some amazing RAID testing!

Intel's 'Cherryville' 520 Series SSDs are here, packing heat with SandForce SF-2281 controllers and custom firmware. We received a pair of 240GB drives to throw on our test bench and report our findings. With nearly a year to develop the firmware, will the 520 Series become the new gold standard for SSDs or just another drive in the SandForce pile? Read on to see.

"Intel has been one of the mainstays of the SSD world and are one of the most trusted names and respected leaders in the computer industry. Their groundbreaking X25-M SSDs were the gold standard for which all other drives were judged for quite some time. That said, the SandForce SF-2281 controller has been out for close to a year now and featured in drives from just about every SSD manufacturer - so why is Intel just now releasing their SF-2281 SSD, code named Cherryville? In one word, firmware...

This drive has been advertised as the fastest SSD to date. Does it really pack the punch Intel claims it does? Keep reading to find out!

Let’s take a look at the latest performance of the SATA-600 solid state drive from Intel to see how it compares to the models that competitors have to offer.

"There are a vast number of SATA-600 solid state drives on the market at the moment, so there have never been more choices for the people who want to give their system a performance boost. Today we are going to look at the latest SSD from Intel, the 520 Series 240 GB, which is designed with performance users in mind."

he heart of the performance of the Intel 520 series drive is the LSI Sandforce 2281 NAND controller. Intel partnered with LSI to develop a robust firmware specifically for this drive. Along with the firmware are AES 256-bit encryption and end to end data protection. Specifications for the drive mirror many of the Sandforce 2281 controlled drives with 550 megabytes-per-second (MB/s) sequential reads and up to 520MB/s sequential writes and 4 KB random reads and writes up to 50,000 and 80,000 (IOPS).

It's not the first time Intel is using third-party controllers, in fact it had previously favored the Marvell 88SS9174 for their SSD 510 Series. Since the days of the original X25-M SSD, Intel solid state storage products have been characterized for being the most stable and reliable around. With the company now willing to use the SandForce SF-2281, it proves that the controller has reached a certain desired level of maturity.

However, as the company has done with previous SSD products, Intel has adopted the SandForce SF-2281 controller but they have co-defined and validated the firmware for an Intel unique implementation. In other words, the SSD 520 Series drives will differ to similar products in terms of performance and reliability in spite of using the same controller. Read on to learn more about Intel's new premium consumer SSD.

For the past several years, consumers searching through the available selection of Solid State Drive (SSD) storage devices have noticed that capacity continues to favor the hard disk drive counterpart. While it could be a few more years before any SSD matches terabyte capacity with the HDD, Intel's NAND Flash produced at 20nm is closing that gap in terms of price and storage space. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the Intel SSD 520 Series Solid State Drive against the leading competition to see if it's capable of delivering SATA 6GB/s speeds up to 550 MB/s and 80,000 maximum 4K random write IOPS.

Intel is launching a brand new line of solid state drives today, built around SandForce's popular SF-2200 family of storage processors. The new SSD 520 Series solid state drives, as they are known, will supplant the Marvell-based 510 series at the top of Intel's consumer-targeted SSD lineup and be offered in capacities ranging from 60GB to 480GB.

Like other SandForce SF-2200-based drives, the new Intel SSD 520 series is outfitted with a SATA III interface with sequential reads and writes speeds in the 550MB/s to 520MB/s ranges, respectively. According to their specifications, 4K random reads peak at around 50K IOPS (QD32), with 4K random writes hovering around 80K IOPS for the 240GB model we'll be showing you here...

Today we take a look at Intel's newest 6Gb/sec SATA SSD - the 520 Series. This is the second non-Intel controller to appear in one of their products. The first was the Marvell controller, which appeared in the 510 Series last March. This time around, Intel has gone with
SandForce. This should leave at least one SATA 6Gb/sec model to be released. Taylorsville is the code name for the next SATA 6Gb/sec native-Intel controller, which has been on their roadmap since mid-2010 but has yet to actually materialize.

Today we are looking at the latest Solid State Drive from Intel - the 520 series, codenamed 'Cherryville'. The drive is built around 'compute quality' 25 nanometer NAND flash memory and offers a claimed maximum sequential read speed of 550 MB/s.

Intel's newest solid-state drive pairs a SandForce controller with custom firmware and 25-nm NAND. We've tested the 60 and 240GB models to see how they fare against more than two dozen SSDs, hybrids, and mechanical drives.

Intel are today releasing the new 520 series based on SandForce technology. Today we have one of those new drives on our test bench and will be comparing it in real world and synthetic tests against drives based on the latest Sandforce, Indilinx, Marvell and Samsung controllers.

We review the Intel series 520 240GB SSD. They now have multiple SSDs on the market initially with their proprietary controller, then a Marvel controller, and today Intel releases the Series 520 SSDs based on SandForce, well LSI these days.

According to Intel that will increase sequential read and write performance to 520MB/s, which makes the Series 520 the fastest SSDs they have ever produced. Read the full article right here

If you thought that Intel had conceded the high-end SSD market to its competition, you were wrong. The company's new SSD 520 centers on SandForce's SF-2281 controller, incorporates top-bin IMFT NAND, and is protected by a five-year warranty.

Intel was rumored to be working on a SandForce based drive for several months now, but even the rumors couldn't encapsulate just how long Intel and SF has worked on this drive. According to Intel, the relationship began 1.5 years ago. Still lacking a 6Gbps controller of their own and wanting to remain competitive with the rest of the market, Intel approached SandForce about building a drive based on the (at the time) unreleased SF-2281 controller. Roughly six months later, initial testing and validation began on the drive. That's right, around the time that OCZ was previewing the first Vertex 3 Pro, Intel was just beginning its extensive validation process.

Codenamed Cherryville, Intel's SSD 520 would go through a full year of validation before Intel would sign off on the drive for release. In fact, it was some unresolved issues that cropped up during Intel's validation that pushed Cherryville back from the late 2011 release to today.

Intel's strenuous validation will eventually make SandForce's drives better for everyone, but for now the Cherryville firmware remains exclusive. Intel wouldn't go on record with details of its arrangement with SandForce, but from what I've managed to piece together the Intel Cherryville firmware is exclusive for a limited period of time. That exclusivity agreement likely expires sometime after the SF-2281 is replaced by a 3rd generation controller. There are some loopholes that allow SandForce to port bug fixes to general partner firmware but the specific terms aren't public information. The important takeaway is anything fixed in Intel's firmware isn't necessarily going to be fixed in other SF-2281 based drives in the near term. This is an important distinction because although Cherryville performs very similarly to other SF-2281 drives, it should be more reliable.

Read on for our full review of Intel's SSD 520.

Worth ditching the X25-M for

Neue SATA-6G-SSDs von Intel: Die heute vorgestellten Modelle der Serie SSD 520 (Codename: Cherryville) mit 60 bis 480 GByte Kapazität und NAND-Flash-Speicherchips aus der 25-Nanomenter-Fertigung lösen Intels SSD 510 ab.

Wie schon beim Vorgänger setzt Intel wieder auf fremde Controller-Technik und verwendet wie momentan viele andere SSD-Anbieter den Sandforce-Controller SF-2281. Dieser kann Daten im Flash-Speicher nach AES 256-Bit verschlüsseln und den Zugriff auf die SSD per ATA-Passwort schützen. Außerdem erreicht er per Datenkompression beim Schreiben sehr hohe Transfergeschwindigkeiten. Intel verspricht für die SSD 520 bei sequenziellen Zugriffen bis zu 520 MByte/s; beim Lesen sollen bis zu 550 MByte/s möglich sein. Die höchstmögliche Zahl an Ein- und Ausgabeoperationen (I/Os pro Sekunde) beim Zugriff auf verstreute 4-KByte-Datenblöcke beziffert der Hersteller auf bis zu 80.000 IOPS (Schreiben) und 50.000 IOPS (Lesen).

Bei weniger gut komprimierbaren Daten erreichte das 240-GByte-Modell, das c't bereits zum Test vorlag, beim sequenziellen Schreiben immerhin 292 MByte/s sowie 529 MByte/s beim Lesen. 63.000 IOPS waren beim Schreiben und 46.000 IOPS beim Lesen von 4-KByte-Datenblöcken mit zufällig verteilten Adressen möglich.