Intel is cooperating with NAND flash manufacturer Micron to develop a series of Solid State Drives, and stories have been going around that it won't be long until they appear. Over at Expreview they have published a picture that seems to come from an Intel roadmap that speaks of three different models, which will launch in 2008. Intel X25-M and Intel X18-M will be the entry models that focuses on power efficiency through an active power consumption of mere 0.25W. Quite impressive as the two models will offer 240MB/s read speed and 70MB/s write speed.
Both X25-M and X18-M will launch in the third quarter sporting 80GB capacity, but later on there will also be a 160GB version of X25-M. The 160GB version of X18-M will have to wait until Q1, 2009. The difference between is the formfactor, 1.8" vs. 2.5".
Intel's real killer is the X25-E model (E as in Extreme) where the power saving is not the main bullet point, but performance. The read speed is still impressive 240MB/s, while the write speed has been improved substantially to 170MB/s. Still not as impressive as the figures Micron unveiled with its RealSSD P200 series, but this one will hardly target the same crowd. X25-E will become available in 32GB and 64GB flavors during the fourth quarter.
The Solid State Drive market is starting to become a real hornet nest and with the development moving forward at this rate, no one knows where it will end up. We hope to see more of Intel's SSDs soon and not the least some price information.
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