Intel ships new solid-state drives

Intel started shipping its new X25E Extreme SATA SSD on Wednesday. Available in a 2.5-inch form factor, the drive is built with Intel's 50-nanometer single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory technology. The SSD delivers a performance of 3,300 write IOPS, which Intel claims is 100 times better than that of a hard disk drive. In terms of power consumption, the X25E Extreme consumes just 2.4 watts when active, or about 14,000 IOPS per watt of power. Samples of larger 64GB SSDs are scheduled to be sent to computer makers this quarter, and are due for production in the first quarter of 2009. High prices are still a major disadvantage of SSDs, limiting their use in situations where speed and low power consumption are more important than cost.

To read more about Intel's SSDs:
- check out this article in InformationWeek

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Intel ships first solid-state drives