Intel launching cheaper SSDs with up to 320GB capacity in two weeks?

Rumor has it that Intel is prepped to launch its new SSDs in the next two weeks. According to sources speaking to the The Inquirer, the new solid state disks will feature that smaller 34nm NAND Flash developed by Intel and Micron. As usual, the smaller manufacturing processes should allow for higher density SSDs (as high as 320GB) at a reduced cost to manufacture. In fact, INQ says, "there will be drives big enough to replace the HDDs in most, if not all laptops." With Intel already cutting SSD prices we remain optimistic that this rumor is true.

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[peepeepants @ Jun 29th 2009 5:43AM]

Whoa.....

[Idlemind @ Jun 29th 2009 12:48PM]

damn... I'm running out of kidneys to sell....

[Ellianth @ Jun 29th 2009 1:29PM]

If I hadn't already sold my arms, legs, and first born son, I'd attack you and steal your last kidney :p.

[Heinz @ Jun 29th 2009 5:45AM]

If this is ture am going to buy one of these!

[Taylor @ Jun 29th 2009 10:16AM]

Keep in mind that the cheaper prices will be on the 60/160GB versions and the 320GB will be just as expensive as the current generation. I think this is a price reduction to just clear inventory and won't be significant enough for the mainstream to jump on it. They've still got a ways to go to get prices down.

[msalivar @ Jun 29th 2009 7:03PM]

Not necessarily, if the process upgrade improves yield.

[Ethos @ Jun 29th 2009 5:45AM]

I hope this is true I would like a SSD drive for my Win7 computer.

[richb93 @ Jun 29th 2009 6:16AM]

Agreed. I'm tempted to get a small SSD just for Windows + temp filestore and get something like a SpinPoint for main apps etc.

[Bobby Junes @ Jun 29th 2009 7:42AM]

I would like a new OS for my Win7 computer.

[loosely_coupled @ Jun 29th 2009 10:34PM]

Wait for the 34nm to hit Indilinx-controller drives... Currently, You can find a 128GB drive in the $300-350 range and 256GB for under $600.
These prices should be easily cut in half when the 34nm flash comes out from different foundries..

[B3astofthe3ast @ Jun 29th 2009 5:47AM]

So how soon till HDD's are a part of the ancient world?

[LondonConsultant @ Jun 29th 2009 5:59AM]

A long time. Remember that all netbooks used to have SSDs, then they started having HDDs and now almost all netbooks have HDDs.

[Kelmon @ Jun 29th 2009 6:51AM]

Not for a long time. Heck, tape is still used as a storage medium today and I fully expect HDD to be around as a long-term archival medium (we're using it for that today for one of my systems via EMC Centera systems). However, I do not expect that it will be much longer before SSD replaces HDD in the desktop/notebook computers that you or I will use.

[kylehase @ Jun 29th 2009 7:01AM]

There will be an HDD demand for large data archiving unless somehow SSD gains a cost per GB advantage. It's possible but not in the near future for sure.

[Buzz @ Jun 29th 2009 8:29AM]

@LondonConsultant:
That's because higher capacity SSDs were to expensive to manufacture for the low price required by netbooks. Furthermore, Intel and Microsoft limited the availability of netbooks with higher SSD capacity.

SSDs will replace HDDs in all areas only when the cost per Gb is lower for SSDs than it is for HDDs. I believe that will not happen for a while, however, i do see SSDs taking over in certain areas such as:
- high speed server where write throughput needs to be max;
- hybrid storage laptops
- hybrid storage computers (1 small and fast SSD for the OS and applications, regular HDDs for massive storage)
- netbooks (since they're becoming cheaper and windows 7 is coming out which is the first SSD-aware MS OS)
- smartbooks (being based on non-windows compliant ARM architecture ( Intel) no hardware limits will be imposed and SSDs might become more popular than on netbooks)

Note that in the mobile computing world SSDs have numerous advatages over HDDs despite the price difference (heat, reliability, power consumption etc.)

[Mega-Japan @ Jun 29th 2009 5:51AM]

Yayz! Yet another $700+ SSD!
Way to go Intel!

[Kebab in Korea @ Jun 29th 2009 5:55AM]

Any rough idea on pricing? Just a vague hint at it being cheaper is a little hard to swallow.

[digitallysick @ Jun 29th 2009 5:59AM]

How about sub $150.00 , that will be the SSDs that sell well

[Patriks7 @ Jun 29th 2009 7:33AM]

And stop working within days...

[kal326 @ Jun 29th 2009 9:22AM]

And store about as much as a USB flash drive. I doubt the 320GB version or even a 256GB version is going to be much under $500. At the same time I can buy a 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" drive for a $120 or a 320GB 7200rpm drive for around $70. I would take "cheaper" ssds with a smaller grain of salt for some time.

[Finnschi @ Jun 29th 2009 6:09AM]

At least we can see some progress........

[3rdsun @ Jun 29th 2009 6:11AM]

Only in the PC world cheaper means better. I wish that applied to other sectors as well

[Dux @ Jun 29th 2009 6:15AM]

Like hookers.

[Jon @ Jun 29th 2009 6:20AM]

Would love to get 3 and replace my 3 Raptors in Raid 0 .. i can hear them crunching along as i type this

[Godsfaith @ Jun 29th 2009 1:31PM]

Raid was a bad choice?

[davepermen @ Jun 29th 2009 6:42AM]

you could get one and replace your 3 raptors in raid 0.. :)

[chansthename @ Jun 29th 2009 7:33AM]

I see what you did there ...

[Jon @ Jun 29th 2009 8:32AM]

I would for the Speed but i need the Space as well

[Kelmon @ Jun 29th 2009 6:53AM]

Man, that's double the capacity of my current HDD - things are moving along very nicely as long as they can get the prices down to something sensible (I have no intention of paying more for my next laptop than what I paid for the current one).

[kai @ Jul 2nd 2009 12:03AM]

well both you and a5ehren are half right. cell status is determined by the Vt level but the different Vt level is based on how many electron were trapped in the floating gate. while smaller litho does face more challenges... 3k write cycles flash is most likely tier 3 or low material. tier 1 flash these days can easily handle 200k cycles.

[MayaPosch @ Jun 29th 2009 7:07AM]

One thing I wonder about is how the write cycle count and data retention are affected by moving to a smaller process size. As Flash is based on keeping a number of electrons in a cell and the count of them determining the value of the cell, with each write cycle slightly damaging the cell (making it 'leak' electrons more quickly), smaller process features will mean fewer read cycles and lower data retention times. An article series at Tech-On! (Japanese site) mentioned that the numbers for these variables are by now dropping to as low as 3,000 write cycles (from 100k for old-style SLC Flash) and data retention of 1 year (down from ~10 years).

Those are the things I think will prevent Flash SSDs from ever breaking through as storage medium outside memory cards. But perhaps, maybe they'll find a new method to make the Flash cells less leaky and avoid this doom :)

[Florin @ Jun 29th 2009 7:41AM]

How can someone possibly market flash memory with 1-year retention? Perhaps through some no-name brand in a market stall somewhere, but I very much doubt WD, Kingston or Seagate would ever sell stuff with that kind of spec.

[a5ehren @ Jun 29th 2009 8:01AM]

It's not about counting the number of electrons, it's about the voltage across the transistor. As long as you can keep the current from leaking across the gate (at these process sizes, that's almost as much due to quantum tunneling as traditional sources), you'll be able to maintain the voltage.

[Excelsium @ Jun 29th 2009 8:57AM]

I heard the data will be readable for over a decade, but you won't be able to to write to it anymore when it "wears out".

[sam @ Jun 29th 2009 7:17AM]

OCZ Vertex Turbo is out soon too 278mb/s read, 218mb/s write. up from 230mb/s read 155mb/s write with their current ocz vertex drives with latest firmware.

[Nihility @ Jun 29th 2009 8:45AM]

Yea but that drops to 80MB/s after you use it for a while.
Until I see benchmarks I don't trust the marketing numbers.

[sylvain.bertrand @ Jun 29th 2009 7:31AM]

TRIM support?

[AoMoe @ Jun 29th 2009 7:48AM]

Having seen SSD in action, it is great to hear that greater capacity are arriving. However, I would have to read the specs before passing judgment.

[Dave @ Jun 29th 2009 8:25AM]

All well and good, but long term most flash drives become performance pigs. Just to get decent performance out of the gate, there is so much custom configuration you must do with any OS (even the mighty Windows 7). Once that's done, the performance is sweet for a while, but it starts to degrade and within a few weeks there is stuttering, random slow-downs and weird lockups. I've had these problems with XP, Vista, Windows 7, OS-X and Ubuntu - just doesn't matter. I ripped the SSD out of my netbook because in a matter of a few short weeks after purchase, it had become virtually unuseable.

So, when these things live up to the full potential (not just burst reads), then you will have something. Now, you just have an interesting experiment today and a lot of lost cash in a month.

[davepermen @ Jun 29th 2009 8:40AM]

none of my ssd shows this behaviour. i have an intel x18-m 160. i have two mtron 3000 64gb. i have two samsung, one 64gb mlc with new controller, one 128gb mlc with old controller.

none show that behaviour of you mentoin, dave.

i think it's greatly exagerated on the web, the problem with the performance loss after a while. at least, with hdd's, it's much worse. some of those ssd's are now soon 3/4th year old, and in daily use.

[Excelsium @ Jun 29th 2009 8:58AM]

and what if new drives come out with TRIM support?

[JJ @ Jun 29th 2009 10:57AM]

A good RAID array will still outperform these. But its hard to put a high-performance RAID array into a laptop, which is where my interest lies in these. I have been looking at the 128 GB ($345) and 256 GB ($659) Corsair drives, which perform similarly to the Intel drives. I am even tempted to take a slower proc to counter the price of one of these to stay under budget. The problem I have is trying to find a laptop with SATA II, since they cruise and 200 MB/s, past SATA I's 150 MB/s.

[ryan @ Jun 29th 2009 12:31PM]

It won't outperform them at random reads/writes.

[captnutzslinger @ Jun 29th 2009 1:14PM]

That RAID array won't get you the low latency performance that SSDs deliver. That's what SSDs are about. The

[captnutzslinger @ Jun 29th 2009 1:21PM]

*previous message was truncated, dunno why*

That RAID array won't get you the low latency performance that SSDs deliver. That's what SSDs are about. The

[David S. Kim @ Jun 29th 2009 1:43PM]

how much is cheap?

[sam @ Jun 29th 2009 6:09PM]

If you have to ask, you still can't afford it.

[Amrin Long @ Jun 29th 2009 3:52PM]

batter saver to the rescue

[Amrin Long @ Jun 29th 2009 4:11PM]

battery saver to the rescue

[Sven @ Jun 29th 2009 6:23PM]

ive been waiting for news like this ever since... well forever