Intel unveils next gen SSDs with 6Gbps throughput
New 510 SSD series doubles throughput by taking advantage of high-speed SATA bus interfaces on new Intel Core platforms — Intel announced on Monday a new line of SSDs (solid-state drives) that are based on the SATA (serial ATA) …
Context & Ripple Effects
Intel's SSD line has carried a pricing asterisk since the 160GB drive it shipped in late 2008, when CNET flagged cost as the main thing nagging buyers. The new 510 series attacks a different constraint: throughput, which until now has been capped by the 3Gbps SATA generation most drives and chipsets were built around.
The timing is deliberate. Days after jointly unveiling Thunderbolt with Apple and while rolling out Sandy Bridge-based Core platforms, Intel is pairing its own chipsets' 6Gbps SATA support with its own drives — so the first machines able to actually exploit the faster bus are the ones running Intel silicon end to end.
First-order effects
- Buyers of new Intel Core (Sandy Bridge) systems get roughly double SSD throughput out of the box, since both the 6Gbps controller and the 510 drive come from the same vendor.
- SSD vendors still shipping 3Gbps-class drives find their products bottlenecked on exactly the newest, highest-margin Intel platforms where upgrade demand concentrates.
Second-order effects
- Competing drive makers are pushed onto 6Gbps SATA controllers to stay spec-matched on Intel's platform cycle, compressing the window in which Intel's 510 holds a throughput lead.
- Coupling drive launches to chipset generations gives Intel another lever — alongside Thunderbolt — for steering OEM storage and I/O choices toward its own silicon.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the host interface rather than NAND itself becomes the pacing item for consumer SSD performance, with each bus transition resetting the competitive field.
- Storage drifts from being a commodity add-on toward a platform component co-engineered with the CPU and chipset, favoring vertically integrated players over standalone drive specialists.
The trend: PC storage is becoming an extension of the chipset roadmap, with interface transitions like SATA 6Gbps setting the cadence at which Intel and its rivals re-race each other on SSD speed.