Intel and Micron develop "world's fastest" NAND -- kiss SSD random write lag goodbye

How do 200MBps reads and 100MBps writes in a storage device sound to you? Pretty sweet if you ask us. That's the upper spec for Micron's new highspeed 8Gb (Gigabit not Gigabyte, kids) SLC NAND co-developed with Intel on a 50-nm processes node. Once slapped together in an SSD, you can expect performance to easily outshine any existing SSD or mechanical drive on the market while easily kicking the SSD bugbear -- random read/writes -- to the curb. The rub, of course, is that SLC NAND is more expensive than MLC so you can expect to pay dearly for that performance. Watch for the speedy Micron flash to pop in cellphones, camcorders, SSDs (and pretty much every portable consumer electronics device out there) sometime in the second half of 2008 -- sampling now to manufacturers.

[RussG @ Feb 1st 2008 3:39AM]

Remind me again when they get the life expectencies up near a traditional HDD.

[riobard @ Feb 1st 2008 4:33AM]

DO WANT!

[j_g_puff @ Feb 1st 2008 5:00AM]

This is nice, but why would it necessarily be in cellphones and camcorders? I would that thought that in the apps that require fast access (i.e. recording and playback of video), all the accesses are sequential anyway...surely it would be better to stick with cheaper storage which is also good at non-random access.

[Tom Oliveri @ Feb 1st 2008 5:07AM]

thanks for noting gigabit, appreciated.

[Kurian @ Feb 1st 2008 7:23AM]

There goes my mechanical raid array...

[kal326 @ Feb 1st 2008 10:19AM]

Great an even more expensive way to make a SSD, granted faster, but seriously lets look into more tech to make the things less expensive.

I'll be a bit more interested in these when they can get a 100+ gig drive that I could put in my laptop for less then half the price of the laptop.

[C @ Feb 1st 2008 11:27AM]

They already have SSDs faster than this... I think RiData or Ritek showed them off at CES earlier this year.

[Jeff Lewis @ Feb 1st 2008 1:41PM]

What's the write-cycle lifespan?

If that's not been improved, then faster writes really just means shorter lifespans.

[infiniteadmin @ Feb 1st 2008 10:29PM]

C above is right. I think the Zeus-IOPS drives are capable of these speeds.
http://infiniteadmin.com/index.php/emc-symmetrix-dmx-4-ssd-support/
It looks like most manufacturers are sticking with slc rather than mlc. I guess it's just not there yet.

[guns @ Feb 1st 2008 11:02PM]

StorageSearch.com determined that the average life span of a 64 GB flash drive that was continuously written to until failure would be ... 51 years.

That number increases geometrically with the size of the SSD and with the write endurance rating. Taking into account that almost no drive is subjected to anywhere near continuous writing, that both capacities and endurance ratings are increasing rapidly, and that this article was written in 2006, could we please be rid of this primordial fear of the solid state drive?

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

[silverXXwolf @ Feb 2nd 2008 12:15AM]

I am so excited! Gigabit transfer rates, but I have to say. Data recovery and loss of data when power is lost, aren't those some of the main arguments against both SSD's and NAND storage devices?

[infiniteadmin @ Feb 2nd 2008 11:41AM]

Yes data recovery is an issue and there was a good discussion about this here:
http://infiniteadmin.com/index.php/laptop-data-recovery-on-an-ssd/
also the standard interface war is still interesting
http://infiniteadmin.com/index.php/will-onfi-nand-flash-memory-win/

[ethana2 @ Feb 4th 2008 12:51PM]

If I want more than 8GB,I'll use a regular hard drive for now.
...but I don't. Lifespan is now the main concern, after verifying rates that match this..