14 DAY TRIAL // Hearing of companies preparing a major product refresh for 2011 seems to have become something of a trend recently. Spearheaded by Intel, the company plans to not only release its Sandy Bridge CPU architecture sometime in the first quarter of next year, but it will also be unveiling a number of solid state drives around that time as well. Fortunately, though, it seems that consumers might not have to wait that long for every device currently in progress, as part of the products en-route should make their way to the market before the year is over.
Intel released a number of 34nm process-based storage devices, such as the 40GB X25-V drive meant for the value market. However, the major step on the flash storage market was its announcement, jointly with Micron, of 25nm NAND flash memory chips a couple of months ago.
Naturally, the Santa Clara company is understandably eager to put its new 25nm NAND to work, and what better way to do it than through a new series of SSDs. Unfortunately, most drives based on the new technology aren't set to debut before next year. Not all is lost, however, as, according to a recent report by Fudzilla, one particular model will make its way to the market even before the ongoing year expires.
Set to also be part of the X25-V family, the SSD will have a storage capacity of 80GB and will be constructed out of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND chips. Like all its future siblings, the unit is codenamed Postville and will arrive sometime during the fourth quarter. Intel also intends to eventually unleash a 40GB version of this very same product, but, similar to the 160GB and 300GB 25nm SSDs, this one will only be introduced in the first quarter of 2011.
Along with the unshackling of its newest offspring, Intel will cease manufacturing X18-M drives based on the 34nm and 50nm processes.