Date: 22/07/2009

Intel's 34-Nanometer NAND flash SSDs

Intel has made available 34nm NAND flash-based Solid State Drive (SSD) with reduced die size. SSDs are replacing magnetic disk-drives in new portable computers such as netbooks and tablet PCs for the advantage of power, speed and noise but at higher price. These new multi-level cell (MLC) X25-M Mainstream SATA SSDs from Intel are aimed at both portable and desktop computers and are available in 80 and 160 Gigabyte versions.

"Our goal was to not only be first to achieve 34nm NAND flash memory lithography, but to do so with the same or better performance than our 50nm version," said Randy Wilhelm, Intel vice president and general manager, Intel NAND Solutions Group. "We made quite an impact with our breakthrough SSDs last year, and by delivering the same or even better performance with today's new products, our customers, both consumers and manufacturers, can now enjoy them at a fraction of the cost."

The Intel X25-M on 34nm flash memory is drop-in compatible with the current 50nm with improved latency and faster random write Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS). Intel's new SSD provides a 25 percent reduction in latency, for quicker access to data, operating at 65-microsecond latency compared to approximately 4,000 microseconds for an HDD.

Intel says, Random write performance increases twofold, further separating the X25-M from other competing SSDs. By delivering up to 6,600 4KB write IOPS and up to 35,000 read IOPS, the X25-M continues to set the bar for SSDs, while leapfrogging HDDs which only operate at several hundred IOPS. This provides for markedly faster system and application responsiveness. These improvements in latency and IOPS not only benefit desktop and notebook users, but also server and workstation users, as they utilize Intel's cost-effective, yet performance-oriented, MLC SSDs for enterprise computing.

These SSDs are pin-to-pin compatible with SATA-based HDDs and support all operating systems. The X25-M will also support Microsoft Windows 7 when it becomes available.


Package:
X25-M: 2.5-inch form factor.
X18-M: 1.8-inch form factor

Price:
X25-M 80GB: Each $225 for 1k pieces.
X25-M 160GB: Each $440 for 1k pieces

For further details visit www.intel.com/go/ssd