Intel Corp. on Monday announced that it has begun shipping Intel X18-M and X25-M mainstream SATA solid-state drives (SSDs) based on multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash technology for laptop and desktop computers. With a huge company like Intel entering the market of SSDs, it is highly likely that the storage technology will become more popular thanks to dropping prices.

The Intel X18-M and X25-M mainstream SSDs are available in 80GB capacities, with 160GB versions sampling in the Q4 2008. The 80GB drive achieves up to 250MB/s read speeds, up to 70MB/s write speeds and 85ms read latency, which is inline with premium class SSDs from competitors. The 80GB version is priced at $595 for quantities up to 1000. These SSDs are available now and end-customer products containing the Intel’s high-performance SATA SSDs are expected to begin shipping in the next few weeks.

“Validated by our rigorous testing and OEM customer feedback, we believe that we have developed an SSD that delivers on the promises of SSD computing. By combining our experience in flash memory design with our processor and computing expertise, we have added advances such as our parallel 10-channel architecture, proprietary controller, firmware and memory management algorithms that address write amplification and wear leveling issues to redefine SSD performance and reliability for computing platforms,” said Randy Wilhelm, Intel vice president and general manager of the NAND products group.

The company is also expected to introduce a line of single-level cell (SLC) SSDs for the server, storage and enterprise environments within the next 90 days. Called the Intel X25-E extreme SATA solid-state drive, these products are designed to maximize the Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), which equates to higher performance and lower enterprise costs. Since SSDs lower energy consumption, maintenance, cooling and space costs, an SSD-based data center will reduce overall infrastructure costs while increasing performance-per-square-foot by as much as 50 times, according to Intel.

Tags: Intel, Flash, SSD