SanDisk Makes SSDs Use a Lot Less Energy

SanDisk may have actually outdone itself with its latest solid state drive standard, since it isn't every day that a product, which is already praised for power efficiency, gets to become so much less energy-hungry.

Solid state drives have, so far, been gaining market share thanks to their high speeds and low power draw, compared to hard disk drives.

Whatever power efficiency they have, however, is, it turns out, not nearly enough for SanDisk, and the latest SSD standard proves it.

Simply put, the company, supported by Microsoft, Intel and Samsung, managed to reach the point where it could safely say it had come up with a new SSD standard whose power efficiency puts everything achieved so far to shame.

“Intel is aligned and supportive of low power SATA to reduce the total power budget,” said Erik Reid, general manager, mobile client platforms, Intel.

“We are pleased to join SanDisk in leading this initiative and are very excited about its implications for the future of mobile computing. Innovation in ultra portable designs is dependent on important efficiency gains. By supporting SATA DEVSLP standardization, we’ll be enabling innovative designs for countless future mobile devices.”

SATA DEVSLP can supposedly make sure that SSDs can stay at 5 mW (milliWatt) most of the time.

High-end SSDs of today already have this potential but don't tap into it very well. Either way, mobile devices like the ultrabook are the ones set to benefit from this accomplishment the most (longer battery life), although just how fast industry is at adopting the technology only time will tell.

“As the industry trends toward creating ever thinner and faster truly mobile computing products, the performance versus power demand tradeoffs will have even greater influence in the design process,” said Kevin Conley, senior vice president, client storage solutions, SanDisk.

“Anticipating this growing challenge, we set to work on the SATA DEVSLP technologies to offer considerably more power-efficient options to anyone designing in the mobile space. We’re pleased to be working closely with our partners to enable the next generation of low power SATA computing devices.”

UPDATE: Corrected the minimum power usage from 50 mW to 5 mW (50 mW is what most of today's SSDs use).