SanDisk Debuts Next-Gen Flash-Based SSDs

Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs), SanDisk’s second-generation flash memory-based solid-state drives (SSDs) have the capacity and performance for use in full-featured netbooks, which require a robust operating system. The drives—the pSSD-P2 and pSSD-S2—are being introduced at CES 2009 in Las Vegas.

The drives feature a SATA interface to meet new netbook design requirements. The SATA interface offers a significant boost in performance, rendering these SSDs faster than HDDs in critical aspects. Booting and launching applications takes just half the time of an HDD. Available in capacities of 8, 16, 32, and 64 Gbytes, the SanDisk Gen 2 pSSD drives are aggressively priced, making them attractive for point-of-sale terminals, printers, ATMs, and other applications where users need HDD functionality with strong reliability, yet want to pay a low cost. For example, in OEM quantities the 32-Gbyte modular SSD is priced at parity with 2.5-in. HDDs.

The drives, scheduled to be available in February, are built using the company’s 43-nm Multi-Level Cell flash memory. The technology on which the second-generation modular SSDs are based also uses SanDisk’s patented All Bit Line architecture with advanced proprietary programming algorithms and multi-level data storage management schemes.

Sandisk
www.sandisk.com