14 DAY TRIAL // The entire Computex exhibition this year is practically dominated by tablets, which act as a battleground for the Intel Moorestown platform, the NVIDIA Tegra 2 system-on-chip (SoC) and any other CPUs based on the ARM architecture, most notable of which are the Qualcomm Snapdragons. In the wake of these newcomers, not many devices of other types, besides the GTX 465 and the unreleased P67 chipset, got the chance to truly shine at their leisure.
The expo has entered the second half of its moderately brief existence, however, which means that the shadow cast by these many slates is receding, allowing for products like Plextor's new solid state drives to enjoy some spotlight of their very own. Three in number, the new storage units combine the high performance of NAND Flash storage with the high bandwidth of the relatively new SATA 6.0Gbps interface.
When it comes to the technology implemented, the three 2.5-inch units are alike to A-Data's S501, in the way that they use the same SSD controller, developed by Marvell. They go by the part numbers of PX-64M2S, PX-128M2S and PX-256M2S, each with capacities of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB, respectively. All are made of 32nm MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory chips, have 128MB of DDR3 DRAM cache and reach read and write speeds of 380-400MB/s and 180-200MB/s, respectively. Of course, the Windows 7 TRIM command, which constantly cleans up the drives to maintain performance over time, is fully supported.
Unfortunately, as is the case with most products announced during such public exhibitions, no pricing details have been given. Fortunately, Plextor did, at least, say when the products would be shipping, in September to be exact. By then, they will be ready to even provide the benefit of the Toggle Mode and ONFi 2.1 features, which reduce power consumption and increase stability.