Micron Unleashes Speedy Consumer SSDs

Micron's new SSDs to offer blistering read speeds of 250MB/sec

The solid state drive (SSD) market is looking quite healthy these days. It seems as though every few weeks we are presented with faster and cheaper drives that aim to push the technology on a broader audience.

Super Talent and OCZ have been working the "value" angle with their respective MX and Core Series SSDs. Both product lines have read speeds ranging from 120MB/sec to 140MB/sec and write speeds ranging from 60MB/sec to 90MB/sec. OCZ's core lineup is also relatively "affordable" with prices of $169, $259, and $479 respectively for the 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB models.

Micron is now ratcheting up the performance envelope a little more with its new multi-level cell (MLC) RealSSD C200 SSDs. The SSDs will be available in capacities up to 256GB (2.5" form factor) and 128GB (1.8" form factor). All models will feature a SATA II interface.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the new SSDs, however, is their performance. Micron says that the RealSSD C200 SSDs will have read speeds of a whopping 250MB/sec and write speeds of 100MB/sec.

"With our C200 products, we are providing a balanced price to performance solution specifically designed for notebook applications by utilizing MLC NAND technology and highly optimized NAND management algorithms," said Dean Klein, VP of memory system development at Micron.

Unfortunately, pricing is not yet available for Micron's new RealSSD C200 SSDs. Micron does, however, state that the drives will reach mass production during the fourth quarter of 2008.

It appears that companies like Super Talent, OCZ, and Micron have no problems cranking out SSDs with impressive performance figures at competitive price points (at least for the former two offerings). SanDisk, on the other hand, is still having problems getting its SSD operations into gear.