Intel Launches 34 Nm SSD Products

Santa Clara, California-headquartered Intel Corporation has announced the launch of solid-state drive products that breach the 34-nanometer barrier for the first time. The earlier standard was 50nm. These drives are an alternative to the standard hard disk drives one finds in computer systems.

The new drive is called X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD, and is aimed at laptops and desktops. The drive has a capacity of 80Gb and 160Gb. The product is priced at USD 225 (for minimum quantity of 1,000 units, 80 Gb) and USD 440 (for minimum quantity of 1,000 units, 160Gb). The devices have a form factor of 2.5 inches.

Another version of 34-nm technology is X18-M, which too comes in capacities of 80Gb and 160Gb, and has a form factor of 1.8 inches.

A major attraction of the SSD is the absence in its functioning of any mechanically moving component. According to the company press release, the new X25-M operates at 65-microsecond latency, which compares very favorably against the 4,000-microsecond latency for an HDD. This translates into better throughput in read operations.

The devices are Windows-7-ready. A firmware update and an end-user tool are planned to be released around the time Windows 7 is launched, to enable users to optimize the performance of the SSD on the OS.

Read about the latest breakthrough in data storage technology achieved by Intel, here.

High Performance Solid State Drives From Intel

Three recently launched solid state drives (SSD) have won Intel laurels and awards at various fora.

These devices do not have any rotating platters, moving heads or delicate actuators, eliminating delays due to spin-up or positional seeks, resulting in better efficiency and throughput.

The X25-M and X18-M SSD storage devices target SATA-based laptops, mobile client devices and mini/sub-notebooks, and come in two capacities – 80Gb and 160Gb. The X25-M SSD has a form factor of 2.5″, while the X18-M SSD has a form factor or 1.8″. The SSDs clock a bandwidth of 250Mb in one second for read and 70Mb in one second for write.

The X25-E Extreme SSD is aimed for servers, storage and high-end workstations, and comes in two capacities – 32Gb and 64Gb. It has a form factor of 2.5″. True to its target usage, the X25-E clocks a bandwidth of 250Mb per second for read, and a scorching 170 Mb per second for write.

The architecture of these SSDs has been designed around 10 parallel NAND flash channels packed with multi-level cell NAND flash memory. Up to 32 concurrent operations become possible in these storage devices thanks to a powerful Native Command Queuing algorithm, thus delivering a higher than conventional I/O per second.

Read more about the X25-M and X18-M solid state drives here.

Read more about the X25-E solid state drive here.