Intel Releases Its 665P QLC SSD

Today Intel announced the release of its latest QLC SSD, the 665P. This new 96-Layer SSD comes in capacities as high as 2TB and performance numbers quoted at 2GB/s sequential read and write and 250K IOPS. The new drive comes with 1.5x endurance compared to the Intel SSD 660P.

Today Intel announced the release of its latest QLC SSD, the 665P. This new 96-Layer SSD comes in capacities as high as 2TB and performance numbers quoted at 2GB/s sequential read and write and 250K IOPS. The new drive comes with 1.5x endurance compared to the Intel SSD 660P.

As we stated at the time of the Intel announcement around QLC, QLC stands for quad-level cells and is the next step beyond the already common triple level cells (TLC). As the name indicates, QLC packs in 4 bits per cell, one more than TLC. Alongside packing in 33% more bits per cell, we can reasonably expect a further decrease in write speeds and program-erase cycles as well as an increase in power consumption and error-rates; likely necessitating the development of new error-correcting code and controls.

In our review of the 660P, the drive didn’t look great by comparison. QLC is more of a value play versus a performance one. The Intel 665P promises better performance and much better endurance than its predecessor. The new SSD also comes with a large 2TB capacity in a M.2 form factor. The 665P also comes with what the company is calling a dynamic SLC cache. This should give the drive a higher cache capacity to stave off performance drops. 

The 665P leverages AES-256 encryption and supports Pyrite 2.0. The SSD comes with a 5-year warranty and up to 600 TBW. 

Availability

The Intel SSD 665P 1TB is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2019 and the 2TB is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2020. 

Intel SSD 665P

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