Intel® Solid-State Drive 520 Series
February 2012 Product Specification
Order Number: 325968-001US 5
Intel® Solid-State Drive 520 Series
1.0 Overview
This document describes the specifications and capabilities of the Intel® Solid-State
Drive 520 Series (Intel® SSD 520 Series)1.
The Intel SSD 520 Series delivers leading performance for Serial Advanced Technology
Attachment (SATA)-based computers in capacities ranging up to 480 GB.
By combining Intel's leading 25nm NAND flash memory technology with SATA 6Gb/s
interface support, the Intel SSD 520 Series delivers sequential read speeds of up to
550 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 520 MB/s.
The industry-standard 2.5-inch form factor enables interchangeability with existing
hard disk drives (HDDs) and native SATA HDD drop-in replacement with the enhanced
performance, reliability, and ruggedness offered by an SSD.
As compared to standard SATA HDDs, Intel SSD 520 Series offers these key features:
High I/O and throughput performance
Increased system responsiveness
High reliability
Enhanced ruggedness
The Intel SSD 520 Series also offers additional key features such as:
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256-bit Encryption
AES 256-bit encryption is an industry standard in data security, providing a
hardware-based mechanism for encryption and decryption of user data. Utilizing a
256-bit encryption key, AES encryption — when combined with an ATA drive
password — helps protect user data.
End-to-End Data Protection
End-to-end data protection helps protect data from being corrupted across the data
path by using cyclic redundancy check (CRC), parity, and error correction code
(ECC) checks in the data path from the host interface to the NAND, and back.
Data Compression
Data compression helps improve performance and endurance by automatically
compressing information sent to the SSD so that less data has to be processed and
stored on the NAND. The amount of data that can be compressed depends on the
type of data.
1. The Intel SSD 520 Series is currently not validated for data center usage.