Boise (ID) – Micron announced a new generation of its RealSSD flash disk drives for server and notebook applications Capacities are now hitting 256 GB, but the real questions appears to be pricing and not storage space.

Micron’s new drives will come in two flavors, the P200 for servers and the C200 for notebooks. The server models will range from 16 GB to 128 GB in size in a 2.5” form factor. Micron claims that the P200 will be more than 10 times faster at accessing transactional data when compared to a typical enterprise HDD. It is promised to hit a sub-millisecond latency while a typical enterprise HDD has an average latency of approximately 8 milliseconds.

The C200 for notebooks will be available as 1.8” units with up to 128 GB of space and as 2.5” devices with up to 256 GB. Micron said that the C200 models provide a read speed of up to 250 MB/s and a write speed of up to 100 MB/s.   

All new RealSSDs are sampling now with mass production expected in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Pricing remains the big mystery, as it was the case with other SSD announcements in recent history. However, industry sources told TG Daily that the time appears to be right for a substantial price adjustment in the SSD segment. Low flash prices are believed to be contributing to an environment in which major vendors are ready to compete more aggressively for consumers. Sources suggested that 128 GB and 256 GB SSDs will be in reach for enthusiasts later this year with 128 GB models falling well below the $500 mark and 256 GB versions targeting a price point “around $500”.

SSD could be aiming for the first mainstream notebooks as early as 2009, sources indicated.  

the lower the better

Aug 05, 2008 15:01     

The lower the price becomes the more appealling it will be. Once it is closer to the price of HDD's, it will be able to compete even more. I will wait for the lower prices.
TomLeeM/BigWarpGuy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

HDD is the slowest part on a computer today

Aug 05, 2008 15:31     

Whether you can single or quad core processor or 1 or 4 GB of RAM. Once the HDD start to loading data then the computer will be as fast as the HDD loading the data. HDD is the bottleneck and to see such great read/writing speed will truly improve computer performance. As the author said, the price remains deterrent for many.
Wisam report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

not bad

Aug 05, 2008 19:58     

SSD's are getting bigger much faster than I thought they would, and they are finally getting transfer rates that were promiced when they were first announced. Sounds like they will be coming in arround $2/GB which isnt too bad for the bleeding edge, and if it follows most things technological it means in 1.5-2 years it will hit the $0.50/GB mark that makes it main stream!
caeden report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

Not worth it

Aug 05, 2008 22:53     

Way to much $$$ vs. a standard Velociraptor which dominates any SSD when in RAID 0 (equivalent performance without RAID except in random r/w)
Me report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -6

@Me

Aug 06, 2008 06:13     

I have the 10,000 RPM drives on RAID0, and of course I have wicked throughput, but my next computer will certainly have an SSD as the primary disk. No matter how great our throughput is, the seek time is still the problem. These SSD's beat the heck out of even the 10,000 RPM drives and for only about 30% more money, if this article is correct (buying two Raptors is not cheap). I'll keep my RAID set as my data drive, because you're right about throughput, but for my OS and software installations it's all about seek time.

Charles report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

real question = how fast?????!!!!!

Aug 06, 2008 20:41     

So far SSD drives are slow, very slow, extremely slow. I'm not paying a premium for slow speed, forget it.
Narg report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -3

RE: real question = how fast?????!!!!!

Aug 07, 2008 04:21     

Are you kidding me? These SSD's are much faster than hard drives especially in seek time, so what makes you think they're so extremely slow? I would definitely get a SSD rather than a hard drive within a couple of years when the prices go down.
KillFrenzy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3