Intel Launches New Ruler SSD Form Factor To Drive 1 Petabyte Enterprise Storage

There is a big push for solid state drive (SSDs) to transform the data center storage market, and Intel is banking on a new form-factor to help spur that transition. The company has announced its new “Ruler” SSD form-factor, which completely ditches legacy 2.5- and 3.5-inch formats.

These “long and skinny” SSDs are optimized to maximize storage capacity in targeted servers, while outperforming legacy form-factors in both cooling and power requirements. Using the Ruler form-factor, Intel says that it can infuse 1U servers with up to 1PB of storage, which would be enough to hold 300,000 HD movies. Intel also says that Ruler SSDs will be available with traditional 3D NAND or its new Optane Memory technology.

Unfortunately, Intel hasn’t given us additional information on these Ruler SSDs, so we don’t know how much they will cost, when they will be available, or what type of connector they will use.

However, ruler SSDs aren’t the only storage solutions that Intel is touting this week. It also has a new line of Dual Port SSDs on tap to replace SAS SSDs and HDDs. The drives feature dual SATA ports, allowing them to connect to two independent system simultaneously. The Dual Port SSDs are available today via the DC D4500, D4501 and D4600 Series, in capacities up to 7.68TB. Dual Port versions of Optane Memory SSDs are sampling now and will be available during the fourth quarter.

Wrapping things up, Intel is promoting its DC S4500 and S4600 SSDs, which use Intel’s own customer SATA controller, firmware and 32-layer 3D NAND for the data center market. The drives are currently available.

“We are in the midst of an era of major data center transformation, driven by Intel,” said Bill Leszinske, Intel vice president, Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group (NSG). “Data drives everything we do – from financial decisions to virtual reality gaming, and from autonomous driving to machine learning – and Intel storage innovations like these ensure incredibly quick, reliable access to that data.”