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Intel demos world's smallest solid-state drive

updated 11:45 pm EST, Fri December 14, 2007

 

Intel Z-P140 SSD


Intel late Friday revealed what it touts as the most miniscule solid-state drive ever released. The Z-P140 is tailored for portable media players, handhelds, and other devices where even the already small 1.8-inch flash drives common to ultraportable notebooks would be too large. The entire drive is no larger than a penny and weighs just 0.02 ounces --as much as a paper clip, the chipmaker says. Regardless of its size, the SSD is still faster than most any flash-based memory card and reads as quickly as 40MB per second while writing at 30MB per second.

The drive is currently ready with 2GB of storage but will be available in a 4GB version by the middle of 2008 and a 16GB version in the future. Combined with a standard Parallel ATA connection, the Z-P140 is capable of serving as an extremely small hard drive for virtually any operating system without needing special controllers, Intel says. The semiconductor firm intends to pair the new solid-state disk with its future Menlow ultra-mobile processor line when it arrives in 2008 but will offer the storage for other processors and platforms.






By Electronista Staff

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Intel, industry, upgrades/storage, SSD, Menlow
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Previous Comments

  1. lancelott

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Nov 2007

    0

    Apple really partnered...

    With the right chipmaker... Ah... those ultra-portable MacBooks in 2009 or 2010 will be sweet!


  1. TheBum

    Mac Enthusiast

    Joined: Sep 2001

    0

    reliability

    I just hope it's more reliable than the Toshiba 1.8" drives in demanding applications. At work, we use 1.8" drives in some applications and they have a tendency to die in a couple of weeks under continuous use.


  1. Kees

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Sep 2001

    0

    solid state

    this is a completely different solution from traditional hard drives. This pretty much what's in your data stick or iPod shuffle nano, just smaller. They're solid state, no moving parts, so (theoretically anyway) they're far less likely to break.


  1. drush

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Feb 2005

    0

    Small capacity

    With ZFS (when available) simply adding several of these shows up as one larger drive. So the cost is the key not the capacity.


  1. rtamesis

    Dedicated MacNNer

    Joined: Jan 2000

    0

    Yawn

    Wake me up once storage capacity gets up to 100 Gb and higher.


  1. beez1717

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Oct 2007

    0

    What it could be used for

    With the 4 GB version (or 2 of them if needed) of the chip stuck in an ultra portable computer that has another small SATA hard drive you could have the OS files sitting on the new solid state drive, in a raid configuration with the SATA drive to make booting the computer obscenely fast...


  1. beez1717

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Oct 2007

    0

    edit

    With the 4 GB version (or 2 of them if needed) of the chip stuck in an ultra portable computer that has another small SATA hard drive you could have the OS files sitting on the new solid state drive, in a raid configuration with the SATA drive to make booting the computer obscenely fast, AND without taking up an obscene amount of space...


  1. Kees

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Sep 2001

    0

    re: yawn

    "Wake me up once storage capacity gets up to 100 Gb and higher."

    take a 1.8" hard drive; I think you'll find you could make 25 pennies fit in the same volume...


  1. stainless

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: May 2005

    0

    What's the difference...

    between this and my 2gb micro SD? My micro SD is the size of a penny and is here now!!! By the time Intel release it's 2gb, micro SD will be at 4 or 6... so the point is?


  1. beez1717

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Oct 2007

    0

    um...

    what if you used ZFS to link these chips together for the OS to reside? it could make a subcompact notebook boot really fast...


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