Intel announces its first SSDs, plans to ship in a month

Intel's keeping the announcements coming at this year's IDF -- today we got word that the company will launch its first SSDs in a month or so just as we expected. The 1.8-inch X-18M and 2.5-inch X-25M drives will be targeted at laptops and MIDs and come in 80GB and 160GB sizes using MLC tech, while the 32GB and 64GB SLC-based X-25E is aimed at servers and will be out in 90 days. Intel hasn't locked down pricing, but the M-series drives should cost about $8/GB, which would put the 160GB unit at a whopping $1,280 and the 80GB at $640. We're hoping those estimates are skewed a little high -- and Intel says there might be a cheaper 40GB unit on the way as well. We'll see in a month, we suppose.

[Via Electronista]

[Jon Doe. @ Aug 19th 2008 6:35PM]

Yah know. While 1200 is a lot. Considering its 160GB its not THAT bad. If you factor in how much some of the uber laptops cost now a days. Financing that is what? An extra $40 a months + interest? That said I'll keep my performance 7200RPM drives thank you very much.

[Dan Halen @ Aug 19th 2008 6:44PM]

$40 a month seems reasonable to you?

Geez.

[kris @ Aug 19th 2008 6:45PM]

Financing a LAPTOP?? No wonder this country has trillions in credit card debt. A car, sure, but COME ON.

[deyanimay @ Aug 19th 2008 6:45PM]

I don't understand why you would finance a laptop, its not a car and there is almost no reason for one to cost more than $3,000.

[BCre8v @ Aug 19th 2008 9:24PM]

Also in the news:

AMD just announced their intentions of competing against Intel in the SSD space. They plan on releasing a tri-core Black Phenom 80 GB SSD that consumes 8 watts and costs 50% of what the other guy charges.

{sigh} - If only....

[Elais @ Aug 19th 2008 9:32PM]

You could be a poor college student who has poor parents that can't afford to buy a decent new laptop. Particularly one that is damn-near guaranteed to last you more than a year or so without having troubles (i.e most business class laptops which are upper range by nature) and you plan on paying for it with that little work-study you got to make ends meet while trying to get your education. I think college students (especially those in science and technology majors) should be considered prosumers by occupation and should get business class support and quality in their products.

Of course the chief argument would be the monthly bill would be far more disastrous than raising the money, but sometimes its easier to pay incrementally.

[Jon Doe. @ Aug 19th 2008 10:20PM]

God people. I didn't say you'd have to finance the entire thing. The laptop prior to my MBP was around $3,700. I financed about a grand under a 6 month no interest. I use these options all the time. My HDTV. My high end camera and lens. My Tablet PC. Hell my iPod. All interest free stretched out from 6 month for my iPod to 4 years for my TV.
Its a hell of a lot easier then saving 6 months for something.
Typical Engadget commenters....shooting off their mouths with NO facts behind it.

[YasirJ @ Aug 19th 2008 6:35PM]

Im so excited!

[Benhur @ Aug 19th 2008 6:35PM]

"and Intel says there might be a cheaper 40GB unit on the way as well."
Hey, no kidding. Probably a dirt cheap 128MB on the way, or better yet, the 512kb unit, for every pocket.

[Dan Halen @ Aug 19th 2008 6:42PM]

Real consumer level pricing there, Intel.

[sip @ Aug 20th 2008 12:59AM]

Another dead baby? Sue the parents!

[Jeremy K. @ Aug 19th 2008 6:46PM]

I'm buying two.

[Thi mam(kris120890) @ Aug 19th 2008 6:52PM]

So while amd and co are announcing new 22 Nanometer advances intel are producing SSD's that are too expensive for your average consumer. Well done intel.

[Eric @ Aug 19th 2008 7:02PM]

Pass.

[GaryZ @ Aug 19th 2008 7:03PM]

Forgive me if I'm being ignorant, but Intel and storage solutions? What's the point?

[Minilap @ Aug 19th 2008 8:16PM]

come again

[Za @ Aug 19th 2008 8:46PM]

Intel did not have the capabilities to work with magnetic storage and so stayed out of that realm. However, they have extensive experience with silicon - for example, the cache found on processors. The technology in these new storage devices is more similar to say, processor cache than it is to magnetic media, as found in hard disks. Also, Intel has a hell of a lot of fabrication facilities.

[Guy Barwood @ Aug 19th 2008 7:14PM]

I know most won't see it this way for for some $8/GB is a steal.

Sony sell their 16GB SxS flash cards for around $850. Thats $53 / GB. The are Express Card format with PCI Express interface and 800Mbps read performance.

For Sony XDCAM EX users, we can put one of these in a chassis and off load our cards to safe flash storage rather than hard drives which are much more likely to fail if moved around and dropped etc Then we can safely re-use our cards knowing out video is safe...

In fact I think the 160GB unit is already cheaper than Sonys external 60GB hard drive unit for the XDCAM EX cameras!

[waterboy99troop @ Aug 19th 2008 9:07PM]

you're justifying the price by comparing it to SONY, the king of overpricing?...

[RAQ @ Aug 19th 2008 8:45PM]

Oh come on, no one in their right mind would buy a SSD for that price when you can get a 7200 rpm HDD for far more cheaper and so far the advantages of SSD over HDD isn't that great.

[Snacks @ Aug 19th 2008 7:35PM]

Advantages over HDD not that great? Did you even read the article?

"The X25-E enterprise drive is rated at 35,000 IOPS, and up to 250 Mbytes/s sequential read and 170 MB/s sequential write. Read latencies are about 75 microseconds. From a power perdpective, the drive consumes 2.4 watts in active mode, and 0.06 watts while idling. Both the X25-M and X-18M read and write data at 250 Mbytes/s and 75 Mbytes/s. respectively. Power consumption is about 0.15 watts in active mode, and 0.06 watts while in idle. "

[Dan Halen @ Aug 19th 2008 7:44PM]

@Snacks

Doesn't sound $1,200 great to me.

[loop @ Aug 19th 2008 7:21PM]

hell..first ssd...i have a intel ssd that came in my acer aspire one netbook...says intel right on the damn thing....defintley NOT FIRST!!!

[Snacks @ Aug 19th 2008 7:42PM]

It's the first _SATA_ ssd from Intel

[BigD145 @ Aug 19th 2008 7:22PM]

This late in the game, Intel should have been able to push these out cheaper. They don't look solid gold or even gold plated.

[Capissen @ Aug 19th 2008 7:31PM]

I think the point is not the price but the very existence of this product. Go look at some graphs of Intel price cuts on CPUs vs. performance. With storage hopping on the Moore's Law bandwagon, and with SSDs rapidly becoming commonplace, I would expect these to come down in price *very* quickly. $1280 is just the early adopter tax.

[Casey @ Aug 19th 2008 7:59PM]

The performance specs for these drives are supposed to blow away the current gen sustained read/write speeds, hence the high price tag. Time will tell.

[ethana2 @ Aug 19th 2008 8:22PM]

$8/GB is fine as long as I can get just 16 GB.
Let's see, right now, I'm using 16.9 GB, total. Just use an external hard drive for my media, and I'll bet even just 8 GB would have me /set/.
I really wish they'd sell more hybrid systems, you know, set up with everything on the SSD except ~/Music and ~/Videos.

[ethana2 @ Aug 19th 2008 8:32PM]

Actually, ~/.miro and ~/.wine are frigging huge too, and those don't come in the base install....
So scratch all that and just to do the normal mount as ~/
...wait, gahh, 2.1 GB of game art. I'd want to throw /usr/share/games on the mechanical hard drive too..
Maybe it'd be simpler to just get a separate mobile and gaming rig.

[Dan Halen @ Aug 19th 2008 9:10PM]

: )

I just love you.

[ethana2 @ Aug 19th 2008 10:01PM]

ethan@home:~$ man love
No manual entry for love
ethan@home:~$

Whoa. I guess that means I don't know what to think about that, Dan.

[Paulmichael @ Aug 19th 2008 8:23PM]

Hot DAMN I can't wait 'til these prices are lower, then to NewEgg I go! :)

[Kyle @ Aug 19th 2008 8:56PM]

Under xp, i only run about 16.7gb. that being said, i would only need about 24gb to be sufficient.
that would be about $128 for a 16gb SSD, which is not unreasonable. then i would only need to limit my programs and keep my music and videos on a external drive.

[RAQ @ Aug 19th 2008 8:54PM]

@ Snacks

Hitachi's Travelstar 7K320 2.5 inch HDD 320 GB spins at 7200rpm and only consumes 1.8 watt while reading/writting and a 0.8 watt when idle. So yeah not much difference, oh yeah and i forgot to mention the HDD is priced at $218.

[xValentine @ Aug 20th 2008 3:55AM]

Does Intel out of their F'ing minds ?

And I though Intel would be generous enough to set the SSD price tags much lower. I was wrong.

Screw this overpriced SSDs.

[Coolbee8 @ Aug 20th 2008 5:40AM]

So much for 'mainstream pricing'.

[capeconsultant @ Aug 20th 2008 1:34PM]

If I were Intel, I would do this... Announce the first prices way high to get the juices flowing and EVERYONE talking about they would would never ever buy one and how one must be phsychotic to buy one and Intel sucks and all of that. NO PUBLICITY GETS THE JUICES FLOWING LIKE NEGATIVE PUBLICITY (Paris Hilton as prime example of this)

THEN, I would announce, when the products became almost actually AVAILABLE, whoops, here are the real prices, making them substantially lower, and therefore making everyone happy and RUN out to buy one :)

But then again I am not in charge of Intel's marketing arm. Or am I?