Micron debuts RealSSD C400 drives using 25nm NAND technology
What's "bringing excitement back into personal computing" more than anything else? According to Micron, it's SSDs, and it says it's now "accelerating this enthusiasm" with its new RealSSD C400 drives. Those are apparently the industry's first drives to use 25 nanometer NAND technology, which naturally brings with it a number of benefits -- namely, storage capacities from 64GB to 512GB (in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch sizes), peak read speeds of 415 MB/second, and write speeds varying by drive (the 512GB hits 260MB/s). No word on prices just yet, but Micron expects mass production to begin in February, and the drives will also sold by Micron's Crucial division as the m4 SSD in the first quarter of the year.
Update: Hot Hardware managed a hands-on with this bad boy, and there's a video proving it just after the break.
Show full PR text
Micron Introduces Faster, Higher Capacity Solid-State Drives for NAND Flash-Based Notebooks
First SSD Portfolio to Use Industry's Most Advanced 25-Nanometer NAND Technology
BOISE, Idaho, Jan. 4, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:MU) today unveiled a new portfolio of the industry's most advanced RealSSDTM solid-state drives (SSDs) for the fast growing flash-based notebook market. A new breed of notebooks are entering the market that have lightweight construction, snappier system responsiveness and a longer lasting battery-all made possible because of the innovations in flash-based storage products.
"SSDs are bringing excitement back into personal computing," said Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron. "Micron is accelerating this enthusiasm with our new RealSSD portfolio, providing even greater performance and higher capacities than our previous generation SSDs."
The new portfolio is the first SSD product line to incorporate Micron's 25-nanometer (nm) NAND flash technology, creating a broad portfolio of capacities ranging from 64-gigabyte (GB) to 512GB. The drives will be available in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors. As with its predecessor, the product line also supports the SATA 6Gb/s interface, which opens up the data path between the host processor and the SSD delivering improved overall system responsiveness including faster boot times and speedier application loads. The new drives reach read speeds up to 415 megabytes (MB)/second, which is 17 percent faster than Micron's previous generation drives. With write performance varying by capacity, the new 512GB drive achieves up to 260 MB/second write speeds, which is more than 20 percent faster than the fastest C300 drive. The new SSDs also provide benefits that desktops, workstations and industrial applications can take advantage of including low power consumption, lightweight construction and resistance to shock and vibration.
"At IDC we expect total portable PC SSD shipments to increase significantly every year for the next three years," said Jeff Janukowicz, research manager for Solid State Storage Technologies at IDC. "The use of leading-edge NAND technology and product innovations, such as in Micron's RealSSD drives continue to bring SSDs into the mainstream by enabling higher performance and lower power consumption in a more cost effective solution."
Micron is currently working with notebook manufacturers to qualify its new RealSSD drives under the C400 product name. With samples of the RealSSD C400 drives available now, Micron expects mass production to begin in February.
Bringing the drives to business customers and consumers, Crucial, a division of Micron, will begin selling the portfolio under the name, Crucial® m4 SSD. The Crucial m4 SSD product line is expected to be available online at crucial.com and through select global channel partners in the first quarter of 2011.
Micron Offering NAND Flash Design to System Solutions
As a NAND developer and manufacturer, Micron is in a unique position to apply proprietary management algorithms to its RealSSD portfolio that yield tremendous performance gains and maintain quality control. Micron continues to push NAND process geometries-the company is currently at 25nm with visibility into several more generations-which brings great benefits to solid-state storage applications including greater capacity and more cost-effective designs.
