Intel first announced the SSD 540s Series at the end of March and now, according to Guru 3D, they are starting to become available. The Intel SSD 540S Series is aimed at the value end of the market and is the company's first to feature 16nm TLC NAND flash memory (made by SK hynix rather than Micron).
The Intel SSD 540s Series comes with the strapline 'Expect More. Do More'. Explaining that, partly, is Intel's assertion that the "SSD 540s Series delivers a low-power storage solution to meet the performance, quality, and reliability requirements demanded by today’s consumer devices," at a value price.
Capacities available range from 120GB to 1TB in both M.2 and 2.5-inch form factors. Performance offered by the SSD 540 range is quoted as being up to 560MB/s sequential read, up to 480MB/s sequential writes, and random read and write input/output operations (IOPS) of up to 78K and 85K respectively.
Intel says that it has optimised these drives for a 70/30 split in 4KB random read/write mixed work load which is typical usage for this type of drive. It has aimed to tweak performance and power consumption for this usage pattern. Furthermore it claims that combined with a 6th generation Intel Core-based platform the new SSD 540s range will reduce power consumption another order of magnitude "from milliwatts to microwatts".
Other important features present in the Intel SSD 540s Series include; a single level cell (SLC) cache, AES 256-bit self-encryption, use of a Silicon Motion SM2256 controller, a 1.6 million hours MTBF, and Intel's five year limited warranty.
Intel last updated the SSD 500 Series in the summer of 2013 when it launched the SSD 530 Series.
