| View this article at: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/09/08/intel.ships.ssds/ |
Monday, Sep 08, 2008 11:45am
Intel ships, prices first solid-state drives |
Intel has quietly begun shipping its first company-designed solid-state drives. The Mainstream SSDs are aimed at more affordable notebooks and ultraportables and trade some of the data write speed of the Extreme drives in exchange for a lower cost. The final versions of the Mainstream drives write at a still-fast 70MB per second comparable to desktop hard drives but read at a far faster 250MB per second with just 85 microseconds of latency; Intel claims this speeds up an outfitted computer's loading speed by as much as nine times in boot times as well as some general use.Like many solid-state drives, the new models should also extend battery life with just 150mW of power in active use and less when idle. Intel further promises a long lifetime with about 1.2 million hours (137 years) of continuous use before the drive fails. |