14 DAY TRIAL // According to a leaked roadmap, in the third quarter of this year Intel planned to launch its first PCI Express SSD, but it now seems like the company has decided to delay the release of this device until the forth quarter of the year.
The solid state drive in question goes by the name of Ramsdale (720-series) and is supposed to become Intel's fastest enterprise-oriented SSD.
This was uncovered at the end of April, and form what we have managed to find out about the drive it will use a PCI Express 6Gbps controller as well as 34nm SLC (single-level cell) NAND Flash.
Initially, the Ramsdale SSD will be available in two different sizes, 200GB and 400GB, and both of these were scheduled for an early Q3 release. For an unknown reason, however, the launch date seems to have been delayed to the forth quarter of 2011.
Ramsdale will be Intel's first PCI Express solid state drive, and will replace the company's old X25-E series that has been around for almost two years now.
As it moves into the PCI-E SSD space, Intel will have to compete with companies like OCZ, which has an extensive line of such drives based on SandForce controllers already in the market, as well as against Micron's recently released RealSSD P320h.
This is a particularly interesting design as it uses the first native PCI Express SSD controller and is able to deliver impressive performance without all the problems associated with internally RAID-ed drives.
Apart from Ramsdale, the leaked Intel roadmap also revealed the existence of another enterprise-oriented solid state drive, the Lyndonville 710-series, which is supposed to launch in Q2 2011.
Right now, we don't know if Lyndonville is on track for a July launch, as previously reported, or if it was also delayed. (via Fudzilla)
