Intel's SLC SSDs: The Rest Of The Story
<rant>Oh, how I detest tedious multi-phase product introductions…</rant>
Ahem. Back in mid-August, Intel unveiled its MLC (multi-level cell) and SLC (single-level cell) flash memory-based 1.8" and 2.5" solid-state drive plans, and several weeks later the company followed up with pricing and a "we’re shipping now, so order away" green-light status announcement on the MLC variants. Now it’s the 2.5" SLC drives’ turn for a wrap-up update. The 32 GByte drive, now in production, sells for $695 in 1,000-unit quantities.
The 64 GByte version will be sampling later this quarter, "with production estimated for the first quarter of 2009". I tried to get firmer sampling and production dates from my Intel contacts, warning them that in the absence of more definitive data, your assumed actual sampling date would be New Year’s Eve, 11:59:59 PM…but no such luck. Don’t be too hard on the company, though…after all, it beat the original "within 90 days" SLC SSD production shipping estimate by more than a month! And the high-level product specifications originally touted in mid-August haven’t slipped, either, as far as I can tell:
- 75 µsec read latency
- 2.4 W active power consumption
- 250 MByte/sec peak sequential read speeds, and
- 170 MByte/sec peak sequential write speeds
Stay tuned for my HDD-vs-SSD hands-on feature article in EDN’s November 13 issue, which among other things will test Intel’s MLC SSDs in both single- and (warning: tempting teaser ahead!) dual-drive RAID 0 configurations. I’ll also do my best to get my hands on (minimally) one or (ideally) two SLC SSDs and subject them to the same testing suite…those particular results will appear here on Brian’s Brain as an online addendum to the print piece. As a preview of my MLC SSD results, check out this 12-year-old’s perspectives 
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