Intel Flash drives to mark SSD push

The Flash drive range was unveiled at the San Francisco event.

Intel used its developer conference in San Francisco last week for a sneak peek at a range of Flash drives to be launched in the coming year.

The range includes single-level cell technology (SLC), which prioritises speed over capacity and reliability, and multi-level cell (MLC) technology. The latter is likely to dominate the solid state drive (SSD) market short term, according to analysts.

Intel has announced it will launch 80GB and 160GB MLC drives and 32 and 64GB SLC drives in October, followed by larger MLC designs, with a capacity of up to 320GB, in 2009. It will then follow up on the 8in and 2.5in form factors with compatible SATA II interfaces.

Troy Winslow, Intel’s Nand marketing manager, admitted the consumer market was not quite ready for the product. Resellers need to target the enterprise user, or the high end specialist, he said.

“What sets these drives apart is the massively high performance,” he said. The knock-on effect of these Flash drives could see CPU processing improve by a factor of 175 and hard disks could function 30 per cent faster, he promised.

“It will not be cheap but, arguably, high-end high-value workers could enjoy such a boost to productivity that it would be cheaper to use this technology than old-fashioned hard drives,” added Winslow.

The market has waited a long time for SSD to become reassuringly reliable. But if significant gains have been made in that area, SSDs will be hard to resist, according to George Purrio, European technical manager at disk vendor Imation, who welcomed Intel’s announcement to make its own versions of SSD.

“Intel’s decision to enter the SSD market is a boost for this technology. The company’s power and influence over the IT market will help to accelerate the adoption and integration of SSD in the enterprise,” he said. “This announcement bodes well for the impact of SSDs on the storage market and will help to develop its growth in the IT industry.”