Intel's "mainstream" 80GB and 160GB SSDs ready to launch with mainstream price?

Looks like Intel, the big bad daddy of silicon, is about to unleash its first consumer oriented SSDs into the market. While Intel's 1.8- and 2.5-inch 80GB and 160GB SSD plans were pretty thoroughly detailed in those May leaks, Expreview has slapped up an honest-to-goodness slide which looks like it came straight from the Intel deck. Assuming it's authentic, then we now know that Intel's 2.5-inch X25-M and 1.8-inch X18-M SSDs top out with a 240MBps sustained read and 70MBps write. That's just a bit slower than the blazing Micron RealSSD C20 but still seriously quick and hopefully priced for the mainstream audience they are targeting. Dell, for example, sells a 128GB Samsung SSD for $450 -- surely Intel can beat that cost per Byte... right Intel? We're guessing that the enterprise-class 32GB and 64GB X25-E SSDs will feature some of that Micron co-developed "world's fastest" SLC NAND in order to achieve that ridiculous 240MBps / 170MBps read / write speed at what's expected to be an equally ridiculous price. The 80GB X25-M and X18-M are expected to launch in Q3 (so any day now) while the 160GB solid state slab should break free for consumers in Q1 (not Q4 2008) of 2009. Expect to hear more on these next week as Intel kicks off another International Developers Forum.

[Via TG Daily]

[xdfgf @ Aug 15th 2008 4:03AM]

80GB iPhone here I come!

[Phoenix @ Aug 15th 2008 7:14AM]

Sure, if you want to take pretty much everything of importance out of the iPhone before getting the drive in, and maybe cut some holes in the casing to make it fit

[MadCow234 @ Aug 15th 2008 11:09PM]

Or just go get Simplify Media from the app store and you can stream your iTunes library to your iPhone. Who even needs 8 gigs anymore? Unless you're watching all your t.v. and movies on your iPhone.

[Traycer @ Aug 15th 2008 4:09AM]

Man, even 70 MB/s writes to the "budget" SSD would be juuuuuuuuust fine. 0.25W while active too! I wonder how they are estimating their MTBF's... statistical probability that a memory cell fails without an available block to remap to?

[Ryback @ Aug 15th 2008 4:22AM]

I like the price. I was just looking at 1.8 inch ssd for my aspire one and it 64gb is around $1000. I'm springing for an SDHC-card.

[MastrCake @ Aug 15th 2008 4:24AM]

Go Micron!!!

I happen to live in Boise, where Micron resides. Were it not for this partnership between the financially-troubled Micron and the rich-as-hell Intel, this would never have been possible.

You know I'll be buying this to (hopefully) replace my sh*tty dell stock HDD (I have had many problems with it). 160GB has been perfect for me, and I hope this will be cheap enough.

Oh, and I have to support Boise while I'm at it (directly or indirectly).

[neofolklore @ Aug 15th 2008 7:34AM]

lets go RAID0 the micron factory

[sklingonsmith @ Aug 15th 2008 9:12AM]

Sounds like a good way to support a local company, a emerging technology and a local economy all in one nice little upgrade. I can't wait to slap one of these in my netbook (less heat and no sound)

[Aidan @ Aug 15th 2008 4:40AM]

Very cool. New MacBook Air storage options, anyone? Will that 2.5" drive fit in the tiny case?

[MastrCake @ Aug 15th 2008 5:14AM]

Well, considering that the current drives are 1.8", I really think that if Apple could've shoehorned a 2.5" in there, they would've. That would be cheaper, but probably thicker.

So, probably not.

[LiNTEK @ Aug 15th 2008 5:35AM]

I wonder if the 1.8-inch model can be used for my PSP. LOL!

[Paul Dullford @ Aug 15th 2008 8:36AM]

That's interesting. The SSD's I've heard of have storage capacities corresponding to powers of two. Why 80GB and 160GB?

[BirdofPrey @ Aug 15th 2008 9:44AM]

2 is the computer equivalent of 10

Multiplying by it makes PC maths easier

[sam @ Aug 15th 2008 8:37AM]

Speeds look very nice, hopefully their drivers will work properly with these, the ocz core series are plagued by driver and controller issues at the moment but as intel has it's own controllers and drivers i'm sure software updates will make these intel ssd's work really well.

Hope the 80GB 240/170mb/s is under £120.

[sam @ Aug 15th 2008 8:39AM]

Speeds look very nice, hopefully their drivers will work properly with these, the ocz core series are plagued by driver and controller issues at the moment but as intel has it's own controllers and drivers i'm sure software updates will make these intel ssd's work really well.

Hope the 80GB 240/170mb/s is under £120.

[pball_inuyaha @ Aug 15th 2008 11:35AM]

With all this ssd stuff coming out, I'm wondering one thing. Will they ever switch over to measuring capacity of the drive by 1 megabyte = 1024 bytes? Not to start the normal war on this subject but is it really that hard to do and there will be less confused and enraged people if that were to happen. Right?

[Larry Fenske @ Aug 15th 2008 12:59PM]

to pball_inuyaha:

We just need to get more people (especially Microsoft) to use standard units. 1 MB really is 1,000,000 bytes. 1 MiB is 1,048,576 bytes. (see http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix) When people say that they got a new 250GB drive, formatted it under Microsoft Windows, and "lost" 17GB, it's because Microsoft and some other vendors are mislabeling units. Microsoft is using GiB, but labeling as GB. It's like comparing liters to quarts, but calling them both quarts.

[Enterprise Dude @ Aug 16th 2008 10:58AM]

Does it really matter? Do you really get "enraged"? I don't know that I get pissed off that my 500GB drive is actually 500 000 000 000 instead of 536 870 912 000 bytes. Most people never fill their drives up anyways.

I suggest the solution to this problem lies less in restating the unit, and more in psychotherapy...

[Bill @ Aug 15th 2008 12:44PM]

I'm normally an early adopter, but I'm skeptical here. This is not Tivo vs the VCR, a life-altering change. For the advantage in speed (which I haven't yet seen fully benchmarked) you get an always-on drive. Recent tests showed that SSDs actually used more power than HD because they have to keep the memory refreshed constantly. I'm also wondering what happens when you do have any failure of the massive memory. Can you format around it like a traditional HD or will you just get crazy errors as different data tries to write on the bad spot.

Like with autos, I'm thinking Hybrid is the way to go for the time being. Yes, massive SS memory, but on top of a traditional magnetic disk. Hey, you got Magnetic Disk on my SSD. No, you got SSD on my Magnetic disk. It's the Reeses solution.

[xValentine @ Aug 15th 2008 1:25PM]

If Intel let these babies go for a very decent price, then 2009 will be very very nice for us :D

[Sharone @ Aug 15th 2008 1:55PM]

This is one of the biggest leaps in computer hardware in modern times. The speed is great, but it is the latency that is the real show-stopper. One 80GB SSD for OS and applications, and if you need more space use cheapo WD or Samsung magnetic HDD.

[霽月瀛台 @ Aug 15th 2008 11:21PM]

mainstream 160G is $50, can a SSD be that cheap in this moment?
even it is technically possible, the companies just won't give up a chance to juice your wallet.
You are parched !!!!