Intel Set to Enable Overclocking of Solid-State Drives

It is possible to overclock nearly everything these days. Microprocessors, graphics cards, memory; even game consoles and smartphones can be overclocked. As it appears, it is also possible to overclock solid-state drives (SSDs). In fact, Intel Corp. plans to demonstrate how to boost performance of SSDs yourself at the upcoming Intel Developer Forum next month.

During a session (AIOS001) dedicated to overclocking of unlocked Intel Core processors for high-performance gaming and content creation, Intel will reveal peculiarities of boosting performance of the new Core i7-4000-series “Ivy Bridge-E” microprocessors on Intel X79 platforms as well as talk about overclocking in general. Among other things, Intel plans to carry out first public demonstration of overclocking Intel SSDs.

Overclocking of solid-state drives may sound odd, yet it is something that can absolutely be done. For example, clock-rate of SSD controllers can be increased, data rates of NAND flash memory can also be boosted. The main thing that needs to be ensured is that data integrity is maintained in overclocked condition of a storage device.

One thing that should be noted is that modern SSDs are so fast that the bottleneck is not their read, write speeds or IOPS performance, but the Serial ATA-6Gb/s interface itself. Boosting the interface will most likely result in considerably lower reliability. Therefore, overclocking of today’s SSDs hardly makes sense. However, next year Intel plans to roll out chipsets with SATA Express interface support, which provide transfer rates of 8Gb/s or 16Gb/s. For next-generation solid-state drives, especially when overclocked, the new interface speeds are just what the doctor ordered.

Intel Developer Forum 2013 will take place in San Francisco, California, from September 10 to September 12. The event will be held at the Moscone Convention Center.

:story: X-bit labs