Intel releases low-power, 40Gbyte SSD for $125

sleibson321 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:15 +0000

Now it’s a trend. Last week, I wrote about the sub-$100, 2.5-inch, 32Gbyte SSD from OCZ. Now Intel makes low-cost SSDs a trend with the introduction of a $125 (when ordering 1000), 2.5-inch, 40Gbyte, “value” edition of its industry-leading X25 SSD, as reported by Computerworld’s Lucas Mearian. Intel’s new X25-V SSD employs a five-channel MLC NAND Flash controller and incorporates ten 4Gbyte MLC NAND flash chips resulting in sequential read and write speeds of 170MBytes/sec. and 35MBytes/sec, respectively. Compare that to the OCZ Onyx drives specs of 125Mbytes/sec and a write transfer rate of 75Mbytes/sec. However, it’s the power consumption that really differentiates these drives. Intel’s X25-V SSD dissipates 150mW (typical) in active mode and 75mW (typical) in idle mode compared to the OCZ Onyx drive’s power ratings of 1W active and 375mW idle. For embedded hardware designers paying close attention to every mW, that’s a huge difference. Intel’s X25-V SSD provides 25% more storage for about an eighth of the active power and about a quarter of the standby power.

OCZ’s 32Gbyte Onyx SSD breaks $100 barrier, cuts power

sleibson321 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:10:08 +0000

It was only a matter of time. Nobody doubts that solid-state disks (SSDs) will decline in price over time. The only questions are “How fast will prices fall?” and “How much storage will I get for my money”? PC component vendor OCZ contributed some answers to those questions yesterday by introducing a new low-cost line of “sub 100 dollar,” 32Gbyte, 2.5-inch, SATA II SSDs dubbed Onyx. The first in a planned series of low-cost SSDs, the 32Gbyte Onyx sports a read transfer rate of 125Mbytes/sec and a write transfer rate of 75Mbytes/sec. The Onyx drive is based on MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash devices, which might raise concerns about long-term reliability, but the drive sports an MTBF rating of 1.5 million hours and a 3-year warranty. As for power—the 32Gbyte Onyx drive consumes 1W while active and about a third of a Watt on standby. That’s roughly half the power required by a mechanical 2.5-inch HDD.

Steve Leibson » SSD

Intel releases low-power, 40Gbyte SSD for $125

OCZ’s 32Gbyte Onyx SSD breaks $100 barrier, cuts power