Taipei (Taiwan) – PNY, known mainly as a system memory vendor, is getting in the SSD game: The company today announced that it is shipping 32 GB flash-based solid state disks now and will be offering versions with up to 128 GB in Q3 and 256 GB in late 2007 or early 2008.

Even before the doors at Computex are opening, it has become clear that solid state disk drives will be one of the key topics at the 2007 tradeshow.

PNY said that its roadmap includes 1.8” drives with up to 64 GB capacity and 2.5” versions with up to 128 GB. According to a spokesperson, 32 GB 1.8” drives are currently shipping. 128 GB versions should be available in Q3 and 256 GB following in late 2007 or early next year, we were told.

The 1.8" SSDs will come with a PATA-based "ZIF" connector as well as a Micro SATA interface. The 2.5" versions integrate will be available with PATA-based 44-pin IDE or SATA connector. PNY said all SSDs will offer read and write speeds up to 66 MB/s and 55MB/s, respectively.

Pricing of the drives remains unclear at this time, as PNY stated that the 32 GB will sell for about $350 “in large volumes.” By the time the drives are available to the consumer, there is likely to be a premium attached to those drives. PNY was unable to say how high this premium will be, but mentioned that pricing will be competitive: For today’s market that means that the retail price of the PNY 32 GB SSDs could end up in the range between $450 and $500 (to a notebook). This scenario suggests that the 128 GB SSD will easily break the $1000 barrier, while the 256 GB version is unlikely to hit the market for less than $2000.

 

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impressive

Jun 04, 2007 16:21     

would be awesome to see these things in action. but that $2k price tag is scary.
chris report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

128 GB

Jun 04, 2007 16:27     

line "This scenario suggests that the 128 MB SSD will easily break the $1000 barrier" should say "128 GB" Pretty neat for a notebook.
Des report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

SATA SSD's in RAID-0

Jun 04, 2007 17:44     

Drool... Also wondering why no one has come out with a 3.5" SSD.
Henrik Gustavsson report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

reason its not in 3.5"

Jun 04, 2007 20:20     

its not in a desktop hard drive format because the main attraction to Solid State Disk drives right now is their very low power consumption. Not many people care about this in a desktop (desktops are more performance oriented and the energy use be danged). Small and fast SSDs have an attraction for users of Vista ReadyBoost, but right now SSDs just don't have the performance to truly take on Raptor, or even regular 7200rpm hard drives at a comparable cost. Currently the cost to get a massive (250 GB) at HIGH SPEEDS (not the slower speeds of these ones just announced) would be very high.

meh report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Forget 3.5in...

Jun 04, 2007 22:25     

Now that we are moving away from platters we can finally get 5.25in drives. I'd take a 5.25in with twice the capacity or 1/2 the cost over 3.5in.
nvalhalla report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

128GB costs $1000? Holy crap!

Jun 05, 2007 09:22     

Wow, here's hoping these new drives drop in price very quickly over the next year or so.
D report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

there are 3.5" SSDs.

Jun 05, 2007 09:36     

There are 3.5 inch SSDs: www.dvnation.com There always have been, in fact. Cant compete with a Raptor? Hardly. Raptors float around 60 mb/s sustained and so do the current SSDs. Samsung's 32GB SSD seems designed to compete with a Raptor on performance, to me. On everything but seek times, a Raptor is doing well to get 4ms seek times, whereas with an SSD it's more like 0.11ms for seek operations. Across the entire drive, actual file location is inmaterial with these drives. I suspect fragmentation isnt as much of a performance killer on these drives, either. I hear lots of people discussing the wonderful potential of SSD drives in the laptop segments, but I dont hear anyone mentioning server applications or industrial embedded uses, as yet. SSDs have been produced since the 70's for aerospace and millitary applications, so thats a no brainer... I strongly suspect, tho, that once these drives begin to find their way into servers, those IT professionals will come around. The concept of picking up 25-50% in I/O by placing the correct ten percent of files in a server on a storage product that can produce seek times measured in tenths of milliseconds is going to appeal, I'm thinking. Anyone running large databases with lots of users should love this.

Scott report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Lets not forget another great reason for the SSD's ...

Jun 07, 2007 02:07     

Lets not forget another great reason for the SSD's to be built for 2.5" first. Being steady state they not only consume less power but have no moving parts and can take alot more abuse in mobile products. Current HDD technology is largely mechanical and are thus the #1 source of failure in all laptop computers. FYI, WD Raptors have a random RW sustained rate of ~75MBps, more if you're just using it as a boot drive. Of course it can't beat flash at seek or rotational latency (there isn't any). Also keep in mind that given the sickening cost of the flash drives right now, you'd pay out the arse for a 3.5" product. You can buy a whole lot of hard drive, build yourself a massive RAID with $2k!

john report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

self

Jul 03, 2007 14:56     

If a 32GB drive is $450-500, why would a drive with 4x the capacity (128GB) "easily break the $1000 barrier"? Just asking.
Duncan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0