Storage and memory maker Micron has announced its new RealSSD C300 solid-state drive, which the company claims is the first to employ a 6Gb/s SATA interface—twice as fast as the normal 3Gb/s SATA interfaces in typical drives. The RealSSD C300 can push data to storage at up to 215 MB/s and read data at up to 335 MB/s, which pushes the performance envelop for SSD drives well into the high range of all large capacity storage media.
“The C300 SSD not only delivers on all the inherent advantages of SSDs—improved reliability and lower power use—but also leverages a finely tuned architecture and high-speed ONFI 2.1 NAND to provide a whole new level of performance,” said Microns VP of memory system development Dean Klein, in a statement.
The RealSSD C300 drives use Micro’s 34nm NAND Flash memory and supports the high-speed ONFI 2.1 standard. According to Micron, traditional hard drives don’t benefit much from the 6 Gb/s SATA interface because they just can’t read and write data fast enough—but the RealSSD C300 can take advantage of it. The RealSSD C300s are also backward compatible with 3 Gb/s SATA interfaces, where the company claims the are also the fastest PC SSD available.
The RealSSD C300s will be available in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors, with 128 and 256 GB capacities being available in each size. The company hasn’t released any pricing information, but they still have a little time to sort things out: the drives are sampling now in limited quantities, and should be available to consumers and system builders in the first quarter of 2010.
