14 DAY TRIAL // Following a series of rumors and speculations over the Internet, the Santa Clara, California-based Intel has now officially announced the introduction of its new NAND Flash-based Solid State Drives, which take advantage of the company's new 34nm manufacturing process. With the announcement, the chip maker has become the first in the industry to provide computer users with a 34nm-based SSD, delivering increased performance, improved latency and a lower price tag, making it more affordable to a wider public. Despite previous rumors, the announcement didn't include details about a new product, but rather indicated that Intel was moving some of its SSDs to the aforementioned process technology.
“Our goal was to not only be first to achieve 34nm NAND flash memory lithography, but to do so with the same or better performance than our 50nm version,” said Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager, Intel NAND Solutions Group. “We made quite an impact with our breakthrough SSDs last year, and by delivering the same or even better performance with today’s new products, our customers, both consumers and manufacturers, can now enjoy them at a fraction of the cost.”
The world's leading chip maker has announced that its X25-M mainstream SATA SSD, designed using a multi-level cell (MLC) technology, is now available with 34nm-based NAND chips. Just like the previous versions, the new SSDs will be available in both 80GB and 160GB versions, with Intel still expected to announce the launch of a 320GB version, as mentioned in previous reports that surfaced on the Internet prior to the much-anticipated launch.
As far as performances go, the company's second generation of SSDs can deliver 6,600 4K write IOPS and up to 35,000 read IOPS. In addition, the company says that its new 34nm-based X25-M SSDs can deliver a 25 percent reduction in latency, operating at 65-microsecond latency.
One of the key aspects of Intel's newest SSDs is that they will be made available at a much more affordable price tag, compared to its previous generation of 50nm-based Solid State Drives. The 80GB X25-M will be priced at US$225 in 1000-unit quantities, while the 160GB version is priced at US$440. That's a significant price cut, with 60 percent reduction for the 80GB version, compared to the launch price a year ago.
The chip maker has also announced that its new SSDs will support Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system and that by the time this is launched, they will have a firmware update to support the Windows 7 Trim command. In addition, Intel said that it planned to unveil its first 34nm-based X18-M later this year.
