Intel has revealed its budget 600p NVMe SSD series that will be available in capacities of 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB. The chip giant has posted a page on its website that shows the NVMe drives will have a maximum sequential read speed of up to 1,8GB/s and a maximum sequential read speed of up to 560MB/s.
The 600p series come in a M.2 formfactor and connect to the computer over the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. They contain 3D TLC NAND about which Intel writes in the product brief, "delivered by a proven and trusted provider". We expect that it's 3D NAND from the fabs of the Intel and Micron joint venture, IM Flash. Intel hasn't disclosed any information about the used controller.
The drives have a MSRP of $69 for the 128GB model, $104 for the 256GB model, $189 for the 512GB model and $359 for the 1 TB drive. This means the average price per GB for the 1TB drive is about $0.36. That is still far more expensive than a SATA-3 SSD such as e.g. the Crucial MX300 of which the average price of the 1TB drive is about $0.28 per GB.
While the 1.8GB/s maximum sequential read speed is much faster than any SATA-3 SSD, the maximum sequential write speed of 560MB/s is strangely enough close to what we would expect of a SATA-3 SSD. The drives do make up the relative slow sequential writes when it comes to random read and writes, maximum random reads are specified at 155,000 IOPS and maximum random writes at 128,000 IOPS.
The 600p SSDs have a typical power consumption of 100 milliwatts while active, 40 milliwatts when idle and 5 milliwatts during sleep.
