SLC, MLC, TLC and here comes QLC. Cheap NAND flash for the masses, and guess what happened? Specs from Intel’s next-generation consumer NVMe products are spotted online. Some TLC M2 based unit, but one QLC M2 unit is listed as well.
So basically there are two new M.2 product series are tagged under the 760p and 660p branding, as spotted at Toms hardware, the screenshot below are courtesy of them. That last one is based on all new QLC NAND. Basically, this type of NAND writes 4 bits per cell. For example, a 500 GB TLC based SSD could manage a 300TB written before NAND cells start to die off. TLC has roughly a 1000 PE cycles, that is now the claim for QLC as well, a 1000 PE cycles.
Okay, that said, back to Intel. The 760p, 700p, and 660p are yet to be released products, however, have surfaced on the web in a table spec sheet. Have a closer look at that 660P, that’s the one with QLC NAND flash memory.
Intel 760p (TLC)
The Intel SSD 760p is TLC based, in 128GB up-to 2TB volume sizes (M.2). The performance is rated at 3,200 MB/s sequential read and 1,600 MB/s sequential write speeds. The random performance comes to 350,000 IOPS read and 280,000 IOPS write.
Intel 700p (TLC)
The Intel 700p BGA SSD reveals volume sizes between 128GB and 512GB. BGA SSDs are embedded in products like laptops.
Intel 660p (QLC)
Smackdown in the middle of the table you can spot the Intel SSD 660p, this one has the new 4-bit per cell (QLC) flash. The SSD 660p listing shows three capacities (512GB, 1TB and 2TB). The performance good, rated up to 1,800 MB/s sequential read and 1,100 sequential write speeds. The random performance is roughly 150,000 IOPS for both reads and writes.
The company lists the SSD 760p 128GB for ~ $95.The pricing and availability for QLC remains to be a question mark.
