Intel has released a new series of enterprise-class SSDs that boast huge capacities, extremely fast speeds and price tags high enough to put them well out of reach of even enthusiast PC builders.
The DC P3608 SSD series from Intel boast dual NVMe controllers and a PCIe 3.0 x8 interface in a half-height, half-length expansion card form factor. Due to the two on-board controllers and insanely fast speeds, the DC P3608 consumes more power than your average SSD (11.5 W at idle) and prevents the drive from being available in a 2.5-inch version.
There are three capacities of the DC P3608 that Intel are producing: 4 TB, 3.2 TB and 1.6 TB. The top-end 4 TB model boasts 5,000 MB/s sequential reads, 3,000 MB/s sequential writes, and 850K/50K IOPS performing 4kB random reads/writes respectively.
The staggering performance of these drives isn't consistent across the line, however. You get 850K IOPS random reads across all drives, but random write performance increases as capacities decrease (80K and 150K IOPS in the 3.2 and 1.6 TB models respectively). On the other hand, sequential write performance decreases as capacities decrease (2,600 MB/s and 2,000 MB/s respectively).
Huge performance and huge capacities in an enterprise setting means an appropriately-huge price tag. The 1.6 TB model starts at a relatively modest $3,509, while moving up to the 3.2 TB will set you back $7,009. If you want the 4 TB model you'll be forking out $8,759, which is more expensive than the best consumer-grade gaming desktops out there.
However for enterprise system builders, $2.19 per GB is an acceptable price to pay for high-density, high-performance storage, and as such, the Intel DC P3608 will be an attractive option in the right situations.