Corsair Memory, a leading supplier of high-end dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and flash products, on Tuesday announced its first high-performance solid-state drive (SSD). Earlier this year the firm revealed mainstream SSDs and it was a matter of time before the company released its advanced SSD, which also became one of the world’s first solid-state drive with 128MB of DRAM cache.

“The Corsair Storage Solutions P256 delivers the best computing experience of any single storage drive available today. Using the P256 results in immediate and dramatic improvements in system startup and shutdown, game level loading, application startup, and many other everyday tasks,” said John Beekley, vice president of applications engineering at Corsair.

Corsair Storage Solutions P256 with 256GB capacity is based on Samsung’s multi-level cell (MLC) flash memory as well as a sophisticated Samsung controller chip, coupled with 128MB of DRAM cache memory and native command queuing (NCQ) support for stutter-free performance. Samsung declares read speeds of up to 220MB/s and write speeds of up to 200MB/s for its new SSD, which is considerably lower compared to SSDs with PCI Express interface, however, inline with advanced Serial ATA-300 flash-based storage.

“Additionally, the P256 is more durable and reliable than hard disk drives, and has been shown in the Corsair Labs to provide up to 25% longer battery life in portable computers,” Mr. Beekley added.

The Corsair Storage Solutions P256 SSD is available immediately from Corsair’s authorized distributors and resellers worldwide, and is backed by a two year limited warranty. Pricing was not announced, but Newegg.com online store sells the Corsair P256 (Corsair CMFSSD-256GBG2D 2.5” 256GB) for $669 after $30 discount.

Tags: Corsair, SSD, Flash