Intel has taken another step forward in its perpetual march towards high-capacity, lower-cost solid state drives. Today’s release of the new Intel SSD 660p series of drives marks the first in the company’s line-up to pack its brand-new 64-layer QLC (quad-level cell) 3D NAND flash memory, which essentially doubles the capacities available within the same footprint of previous-gen technologies.

These drives are meant to finally put a nail in SATA’s coffin, thanks to their significantly better performance and aggressive pricing -- at under $0.20 per GiB in some configurations, believe it or not...