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Micron Starts Production of Super-Fast RealSSD Solid-State Drives
Posted by Kit Eaton at 6:23 PM on August 5, 2008
The inexorable march of solid-state drive technology continues forward with news from Micron Technology (one of the worlds leading semiconductor suppliers) that they're going to produce SSD's with a read speed of 250MBps. That's more than twice the speed of the drives Samsung announced last month (90MBps.)
Micron's P200 RealSSD drives will use single-level cell technology for the Enterprise market, and the C200 versions use multi-level cell tech for the home PC market. The P200 will be available in 16GB to 128GB sizes in a 2.5-inch form factor, while the C200 will come in a 2.5-inch format up to 256GB. Clearly aiming at the UMPC market, the C200 will also come in a 1.8-inch drive with up to 128GB capacity. The drives peak read speed is that impressive-sounding 250MBps, with a write speed of 100MBps. They'll operate at around 0.3 to 2.5 W, and be SATA compatible.
Micron claims the usual power consumption benefits, and that the drives are "10 times faster at accessing transactional data" compared to HDDs. The drives will ship in the fourth quarter of this year, price to be decided. [PC Watch]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
scarbrtj
Posted 7:42 PM 5/8/08
It's exciting to think how much faster, and reliable, RAID is going to be with SSDs. But the cost is going to be so painful for us early adopters.
scarbrtj
OMG! Ponies!
Posted 8:31 PM 5/8/08
Isn't Micron one of the douchebag companies that pled guilty to price-fixing? Thank you, no thank you, but I won't be buying any SSDs from these crooks.
OMG! Ponies!
Kymeira
Posted 8:24 PM 5/8/08
I love the bleeding edge, too bad my wallet doesn't agree.
Kymeira
Joseph
Posted 10:36 PM 5/8/08
In current computer systems is the hard drive the slowest component, outside of the optical drive?
Joseph
Z4N5H1N
Posted 10:18 PM 5/8/08
I am affronted. You have ignored long-standing Giz tradition by not photoshopping solid snake into a picture attached to a post regarding SSDs.
Z4N5H1N
Zyren
Posted 11:02 PM 5/8/08
im assuming you mean 250MB/s and 90MB/s (megabytes, not megabits), because 250mbps is just plain wrong and very slow for the "fastest" SSD around.
Zyren
craighyatt
Posted 10:51 PM 5/8/08
I am not up on SSD tech... How do the drives get around the limited number of FLASH write cycles? Big RAM cache? Extra spare blocks? I think modern FLASH parts are good for maybe a million erase cycles. So maybe the huge capacity means a particular sector doesn't get written that much due to wear levelling algorithms.
craighyatt
stryder100
Posted 11:20 PM 5/8/08
I want my 256 gigabyte iPhone!
stryder100
ps61318
Posted 12:06 AM 6/8/08
@OMG! Ponies!: I looked (for all of five minutes) and found only that one of the Micron execs pleaded guilty to obstructing the price-fixing investigation. Not quite the same thing - but the nature of what he was hiding seems to have been quite the "smoking DIMM."
Having said that, right, I never do business with companies that have gotten in trouble for anti-competitive practices *cough*microsoft*cough*.
ps61318
Log1c
Posted 12:33 AM 6/8/08
@craighyatt: I don't think the high performance drives use flash, these are based on DRAM that have some sort of internal battery to keep the data intact.
Log1c
ps61318
Posted 1:09 AM 6/8/08
@Slartibartfast: Platter spin? Head motion? Let's keep it clean, here.
Oh, that.
Well, aren't we talking about Solid State Drives? Ya know, no moving parts? (checks article) Yep, sure are.
ps61318
Slartibartfast
Posted 1:02 AM 6/8/08
At that data transfer rate, I'll bet the platter spin and head motion are going to make a nasty racket. No thanks.
Slartibartfast
Notch_Johnson
Posted 12:50 AM 6/8/08
I am getting one for my laptop for sure. First, I'll sell my laptop to pay for the drive.
Notch_Johnson
Slartibartfast
Posted 1:46 AM 6/8/08
@ps61318:
I'm pretty sure that by 'solid state', they mean that the drive is composed of only solid materials (no liquids or gasses). That includes the platter and heads. I thought that they were always made this way--but what do I know?
Slartibartfast
Kymeira
Posted 3:19 AM 6/8/08
@Slartibartfast: A Solid-State Drive (SSD) has no moving parts what-so-ever.
Kymeira
daftrok
Posted 4:27 AM 6/8/08
@ps61318:
Well then you better add these companies to your list:
1) Apple
2) T-Mobile
3) AT&T
4) Fischer-Price
6) Verizon
7) Sprint
8) HP
9) Dell
10) Lenovo
11) eMachine
12) Gateway
13) Disney/ABC/ESPN
14) FOX
15) NBC
16) CBS
17) HBO
18) Sony
19) Nintendo
20) Lexmark
Enjoy!
daftrok
metalgear08
Posted 6:37 AM 6/8/08
You know, I live about 5 miles away from the Micron factory, and I wondered why in the last few months it's been spewing more steam than usual. Huh. Cool.
metalgear08
Slartibartfast
Posted 12:42 AM 7/8/08
@Kymeira:
I'm pretty sure that you're wrong on this one. The 'D' in SSD is for 'drive'. You can't drive anything without moving parts.
Slartibartfast
JEmlay
Posted 6:54 AM 7/8/08
More then double? Try almost triple!
Sweet!!!!
JEmlay
JEmlay
Posted 6:56 AM 7/8/08
@Slartibartfast:
He's right. You are wrong. Unless you consider electricity a moving part? OR your humor was lost on me. Take your pick!
JEmlay
Slartibartfast
Posted 8:05 AM 7/8/08
@JEmlay:
Guys, this isn't brain surgery:
I can drive a car, but it is not solid state as it uses gasses and liquids. So it is not a solid state drive.
The hard drives on my desktop are drives which employ only solid matter--thus solid state drive.
Crap, I thought techies hung out here.
Slartibartfast
JEmlay
Posted 3:10 AM 8/8/08
@Slartibartfast:
I think you're trying to attempt humor that no one finds funny.
If I hit you in the head with my solid state driver golf club does that count?
JEmlay
Slartibartfast
Posted 4:43 AM 8/8/08
@JEmlay:
Not funny ?!? That cut me real deep. The blow to my ego hurt much more than the solid state driver would. I don't think that the solid state driver counts though: it doesn't have any moving parts; it is a moving part.
Slartibartfast
jra
Posted 1:31 AM 8/8/08
Give e a break. Do a little research [en.wikipedia.org] . SSD is memory, no moving parts.
jra