Intel Smart Response Technology - SRT

Introduction

Intel is among a small list of solid state controller manufactures producing enthusiast class products. By nature, SSDs are still considered premium products with large performance benefits over traditional platter based hard drives but the performance isn’t what constitutes a premium category listing. SSDs cost considerably more than traditional spinners and the cost vs. capacity ratio is much higher. Technology improvements have brought this ratio down for SSDs but the same can also be said for traditional HDDs as well. For some, the imbalance is just too wide to consider a move to high speed, low capacity solid state technology.


Solid state technology improves the user experience two ways, one you can see and one you can feel. They say seeing is believing and it’s possible to show with graphs and plotted lines sequential performance. SSDs are now capable of delivering 500MB/s read and write speeds when asked to perform a straight sequence. This is a 3x increase over the highest performing traditional HDD. A 3x increase in what’s still the slowest performing component in your computer system is significant but it’s not what enhances the user experience in day to day tasks. To put this into a personal perspective, ask yourself how often you transfer a DVD, Blu-Ray ISO or other large file from one location to another. These are sequential tasks.


While you are questioning yourself go ahead and ask how often you open a web browser, application, turn on your PC and for that matter double click on anything found on your boot drive. SSDs sequential read and write speeds get most of the marketing attention because big numbers look better in advertisements. The user experience comes from small numbers, numbers measured in microseconds

Read More - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/05/11/intel_smart_response_technology_srt