Solid-state drives are expensive and do not offer capacities suitable for users interested in multimedia of video games, but they still appear to be extremely popular among performance-demanding users. Micron Technology, a leading maker of DRAM and Flash, which recently launched its own-brand Micron C300 RealSSD solid-state drive, claims that the demand towards the product is overwhelming.

“We began shipping our award winning C300 RealSSD beyond our OEM customer base into our distribution channel during the second quarter. Initial demand for SSD product is very strong, and we are currently on allocation for our channel customers. We sold out on our crucial.com and it is the first SSD we have ever offered online,” said Mark Adams, vice president of worldwide sales at Micron, during a conference call with financial analysts.

Micron RealSSD C300 achieves a read throughput speed of up to 355MB/s and a write throughput speed of up to 215MB/s. Native support of SATA 6Gb/s means that the data path between the host computer and the SSD is twice as fast as the previous SATA 3Gb/s interface. While some drive architectures require a trade-off between throughput-sensitive and IOPS (Input/Output Per Second)-sensitive data streams, Micron’s core design and higher speed interface provides advantages for both.

The RealSSD C300 drive utilizes 34nm MLC NAND flash memory, allowing the company to provide a cost-competitive, high-capacity SSD solution. Bringing another first to SSDs, Micron’s 34nm MLC NAND supports the high-speed ONFI 2.1 standard, ensuring the NAND performance keeps pace with the faster SATA 6Gb/s interface.

“Last quarter we began shipping SSDs to some OEM customers, and we opened some of our allocation [to evaluate the demand in] the channel and our online website crucial.com. The results were phenomenal. So, we see a constraint on available NAND for that product line,” added Mr. Adams.

Micron Technology on Wednesday announced results of operations for its second quarter of fiscal 2010, which ended March 4, 2010. For the second quarter of fiscal 2010, the company had net income attributable to Micron shareholders of $365 million, or $0.39 per diluted share, on net sales of just under $2 billion. These results compare to net income of $204 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, on net sales of $1.74 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2010 and a net loss of $763 million, or $0.99 per diluted share, on net sales of $1.0 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2009.

Tags: Micron, Crucial, SSD, 34nm, Flash