Micron Announces SATA 6Gb/s RealSSD C300

For a good while now, vendors of Solid State Drives have been quick to point out the benefits of their storage solutions by comparing them to those achieved by traditional hard drives. However, as technology improves some SSD vendors can compare their products with some of the early models of SSDs, as today's technology can enable consumers to take advantage of a better overall performance. On that note, Micron Technology has announced today the debut of its RealSSD C300, a storage solution that combines a next-generation SATA 6Gb/s interface with the company's 34nm NAND Flash memory technology.

“The C300 SSD not only delivers on all the inherent advantages of SSDs – improved reliability and lower power use – but also leverages a finely tuned architecture and high-speed ONFI 2.1 NAND to provide a whole new level of performance,” said Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron.

According to the company, the new RealSSD C300 SSD is the industry's fastest PC SSD using the SATA 3Gb/s interface, although the drive also comes with native support for SATA 6Gb/s. Using the latter, the drive can deliver read and write speeds of up to 355 MB/s and 215 MB/s, respectively. Featuring a 1.8-inch or a 2.5-inch form factor, the new drives will be available in capacities ranging from 128GB to 256GB.

“Hard drives gain little performance advantage when using SATA 6Gb/s because of mechanical limitations,” said Klein. “As a developer of leading-edge NAND technology, along with our sophisticated controller and firmware innovations, Micron is well positioned to tune our drives to take full advantage of the faster speeds achieved using the SATA 6Gb/s interface. The combination of these technology advancements has enabled the RealSSD C300 drive to far outshine the competition.”

The company also reveals that the C300 is currently being sampled in limited quantities, while mass production is slated for the debut of 2010.