14 DAY TRIAL // The age of solid state storage has already dawned upon us and the technology is advancing quite rapidly. In fact, over the past months, quite a few new SSDs have been launched, some of which have even reached a low-enough price point to be considered accessible by consumers. In tune with this trend, being the vigilant SSD developer that it is, AMP Inc. decided to come out with a new line of such products for server and mobile use.
Being meant for mobile and enterprise use already suggests a small form and, true enough, the SATAsfaction Series drives, as they are called, use the 2.5-inch form factor. Also, as opposed to most recent storage units, they use single-level cell NAND Flash memory chips, which have a higher reliability, albeit at a higher cost.
As far as actual specifications are concerned, the SATAsfaction Series operate on the SATA 3.0 Gbps interface and use a 22-pin SATA plug, seven pins being used for data and the remaining 15 for power. The drives also have either 32MB or 64MB of buffer memory, as well as built-in ECC and EDC and Native Command Queing (NCQ) support. Other features include ATA-7 compliance, TRIM, PIO and UDMA-6 support and a performance of 30,000 random write IOPS. Finally, and most importantly, the storage units have maximum read and write speeds of 260MB/s and 150MB/s, respectively.
Unfortunately, as it often happens when new products see the light of day, the prices and availability details of the devices are still a mystery. What is known is that they will have capacities of 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB and will also come in versions based on MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash chips, for those seeking lower price points. Further information can, obviously, be found on the Santa Ana, California-based company's official website.