Intel on its way to making consumer SSD drives. Yes, still.

SSDs definitely seem like the boldest new frontier in computer electronics these days, and Intel, which lately has been making some solid developments in the NAND memory department, is apparently still on track to do that whole SSD thing they've been talking about. According to CNET, Intel's NAND marketing manager Troy Winslow supposedly said the company would be coming up with some 80 - 160GB capacity drives in Q2, and 128GB capacity drives in Q3. Sounds to us like someone got something wrong, but there's no denying Intel and its respective partners Micron and STMicroelectronics are out to make a dent in the hard drive market of tomorrow.

[Mark @ Mar 11th 2008 4:17AM]

How can the stock prices for Seagate, Western Digital, etc etc not be getting crushed right now ? All these guys are out of business in three years, surely ? SSDs are as big and as fundamental a change as the move from floppy disk to internal hard disk.

[mattbrown @ Mar 11th 2008 5:08AM]

Uh, because SSDs are ridiculously expensive right now. Hard disks are not going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

[mark @ Mar 11th 2008 5:44AM]

You're missing my point. I know they're expensive now. But they will get much cheaper very quickly - look at the price/Gb curve over time for any of the flash card technologies, then extrapolate that curve into SSDs and you will see it overtaking HDD very quickly.

I guarantee you will not be able to buy a laptop with HDD in three years time, and it will be price comparable for desktop drives for all except the very largest capacities.

The HDD drive manufacturers are toast unless they get into SSD, and real quick.

[nikster @ Mar 11th 2008 6:57AM]

Is this the same Mark? You are suddenly lower case...

Anyway- Last I checked SSDs were improving at the same rate HDDs were improving. So they may cost 1/2 and have double the capacity every 18 months, but so do HDDs. Until HDDs hit some sort of technological limit, there's no reason to assume SSDs will overtake HDDs any time soon.

Currently a 64GB SSD is $1000 vs a 250GB HDD for $150 (laptop sizes here). So HDDs are better than SSDs by a factor of more than 10. SSDs are surely interesting, and I can't wait to dump the moving parts and spinning platters. But I also can't see myself needing less space anytime soon, if anything I need more as I am moving all my video to digital storage. I need several terabytes in my laptop going forward. So let's have another look at SSDs in 5 years. Until then, HDD manufacturers are perfectly safe (and moving into solid storage themselves, actually).

[671GD @ Mar 11th 2008 4:18AM]

iPhone with 160GB SSD = Ultimate gadget.

[671GD @ Mar 11th 2008 4:20AM]

Can't wait.

[atz6975 @ Mar 11th 2008 4:36AM]

wait

[Daza @ Mar 11th 2008 4:36AM]

Are you having a conversation with yourself?

[671GD @ Mar 11th 2008 5:24AM]

No. I just forgot to add "Can't wait" at the end.

[fourthletter @ Mar 11th 2008 6:41AM]

Atom powered EEEpc with 160GB SSD, Tri booting XP, Xandros, OsX86 - The actual ultimate gadget ;)

[Dmitrij @ Mar 11th 2008 10:51AM]

with tablet convertible form factor and build in 3D HD projector as an option. =D

[a ham sandwich @ Mar 11th 2008 10:49AM]

@fourthletter

oh, and you forgot that you want hdmi out, 3g wireless connectivity with no monthly contract, gps, a 12in1 card reader, blu-ray, led-backlit screen, fingerprint reader, facial and retinal recognition, and built in toaster :)

[torqueo @ Mar 11th 2008 4:37AM]

I'm just stating the completely obvious here, but.. how successful a company will or won't be in three years doesn't really affect its success in the market of today.

SSD is nowhere near mature enough to replace HD's yet. Only the best (and most expensive) SSD's are faster than HD's (overall), and they're much smaller in byte volume.

[nikster @ Mar 11th 2008 7:02AM]

Yeah - I need some sort of smart filter for SSD news. I want to filter out all articles that don't mention "shipping now" and prices, and links where I can buy them.
Otherwise, it's just meaningless chatter, perhaps meant to excite - or placate - analysts.

[john @ Mar 11th 2008 1:06PM]

the idea is that once Intel throws its weight into the SSD business, the price will go down and they will get larger capacities for cheaper

[webon @ Mar 11th 2008 4:38AM]

hey can some one wishing to show off their technological knowledge explain in simple and few words wats the difference between NAND and SSD
I know Im too lazy to lookit up

Ill up your comment, promise

[raj @ Mar 11th 2008 10:41PM]

SSDs and most (if not all) flash cards and USB drives are made with NAND flash memory chips..

i'll down your comment for being lazy

[torqueo @ Mar 11th 2008 4:39AM]

Does anyone else think it's awesome that "Winslow" is someone's name? Win... slow... Windows... sl... er , yeah. ;>

[webon @ Mar 11th 2008 4:52AM]

cant sleep eh?

[ethana2 @ Mar 11th 2008 5:07AM]

I just want 8 GB. That's it. 8. /maybe/ 16 eventually.

....but man, it has to be fast and run really cool when i'm not reading or writing.
..then I want a 12 cell Li-ion battery I can put in the place of the optical drive and use external (eSATA/FireWire/USB)

[Poom @ Mar 11th 2008 5:16AM]

What, you only want 8GB/16GB? This is SSD we are talking about, not NAND for cellphones and portable devices... How can you want only 8GB/16GB to replace harddisks? -_-"

[ethana2 @ Mar 11th 2008 5:23AM]

Dude. I don't /need/ half that. I don't want to pay for what I won't use. Ubuntu and 5 GB of music with all my favorite apps is around 8 GB. Power of two. I'm good with it.

8 Gibibytes by the way. Hopefully SSD's put an end to this power of ten nonsense.

[Kizorblade @ Mar 11th 2008 9:23AM]

Power of two for the win.

Stupid marketing.

[Patriks7 @ Mar 11th 2008 5:50AM]

quite nice
cant wait to see these get more gigabytes and cheaper.. guess we'll have to wait a long time for that :x
i bet there will be a war :o SSD (RIP) HD (RIP) and floppy disks will win in the end \o/

[Poom @ Mar 11th 2008 5:56AM]

That's all you need a computer for? Wow.

I can't even survive with 5GB of music... >_> I'm afraid you'll have touch time trying to find 8GB HD/SDD... 40GB perhaps?

[Patriks7 @ Mar 11th 2008 6:07AM]

smallest ive seen is 32 i think :x

[Poom @ Mar 11th 2008 6:34AM]

Sorry, that was to ethana27.

[patriks7 @ Mar 11th 2008 6:09AM]

by the way i have no clue how to contact admins or somthing here so ill ask here >_<
when i try to log in i get this
Invalid Password. Please Try Again.
and ive tried many times and im 100% sure the pass is correct :x
someone help?

[Rex @ Mar 11th 2008 1:53PM]

if i remeber it right, the drill is to enter a comment using the new user boxes...
enter the screen id and email address you registered with, and engadget will send you your password, in the same email in which they ask you to confirm your comment...
cheers

[account69 @ Mar 11th 2008 8:33AM]

I remember my first HD a whopping 10Mb and then we couldn't fill it, we thought it would last for ages. How wrong we were

[m.edgar @ Mar 11th 2008 9:03AM]

All I need is a 16 or at most 32 gB drive for my OS partition. Data can stay on a normal platter based HDD, and although it would be nice to have games and apps on SSD, I just want faster boottimes and a slightly less noisy pc in the meantime.

[zag2 @ Mar 11th 2008 12:18PM]

Yeh me to, there is no point using an SSD drive for storage, but as an OS drive these things are awesome. I have one in my HTPC at the moment and the speed increase is incredible! and that was a 1st generation Samsung drive.

[Juggernaut @ Mar 11th 2008 11:02AM]

Exactly. Kind of like buying a Raptor now, but even 73G is more than required. Nice to put some beasts like Office on a faster drive though.

[AlphaTeam @ Mar 11th 2008 11:44AM]

Now make them affordable to the masses!

[tekdroid @ Mar 11th 2008 1:44PM]

Sorry, but until NAND Flash's limited write cycles are improved, I will be less than enthused about all current SSD products.

Wear-levelling, shmare-levelling. It's still not good enough for a hard drive, regardless of what manufacturers like to tell you.

Multi-year warranties, anyone?