New SSDs still top out at 160GB but the move to a 34nm process halves the cost while doubling write performance. Yeah, we can live with that...
Solid-state drives stand to get a significant boost in the netbook market, and quite possibly in notebooks next year.
While SSD prices have steadily decreased due to competition and scales of economy, Intel’s second-gen X-M solid state drive has slashed the sticker of its predecessor by a staggering 60% to deliver an 80GB SSD for US$225 and a 160GB version for US$440.
Both drives are available in 2.5 inch (X25-M) and 1.8 inch (X18-M) form factors and use the standard SATA interface.
The drastically lower prices should encourage OEMs to wedge silent
battery-friendly solid state drives into netbooks, and potentially some Atom-based desktops and
ultra-portable notebooks. The more mainstream push won’t come
with the debut of a 320GB version in the first half of 2010.
Intel managed to take a razor to the RRP sticker by shifting the drives from a 50nm production process down to a higher-density 34nm.
“The 34nm move specifically benefitted our SSDs by shrinking the die of the flash memory and therefore reducing the cost” said Troy Winslow, director of marketing for Intel's NAND products.
Performance also gets a kick from the integrated controller and firmware, which has been tweaked to deliver a claimed 25% reduction in read and write latency, albeit based on sequential operations, and a doubling of real-world random write performance.
Shortly before the launch of Windows 7 Intel will release a firmware update which will support the operating system’s SSD-friendly ‘trim’ command. This clears up free areas which remains on the drive after data blocks are deleted but which still appear full, thus reducing the drive’s capacity as perceived by the OS.
“Trim allows you to release those blocks for reuse and maintain the performance” explains Winslow. “Every drive will degrade somewhat over time. With Trim, you're able to stay more in that the virgin state.”