Micron intros "industry's fastest" SSD, uses SATA 6Gb/s

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Matthew DeCarlo

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Micron has announced the "industry's fastest" SSD, with about 50% better data transfer speeds than today's best consumer-grade flash drives. The company's RealSSD C300 is the first to embrace the SATA 6Gb/s and Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) 2.1 specifications, allowing it to deliver sequential read speeds of up to 355MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 215MB/s. The drive also represents Micron's first 34nm product, increasing the NAND flash chip density over its previous 50nm technology.

By comparison, OCZ's Agility EX -- a high-end SLC-based SSD -- has a peak read rate of 255MB/s and max write speed of 195MB/s. Another industry leading drive, Intel's X25-M, is said to offer a top sequential read and write speeds of 230MB/s and 100MB/s .

Micron's RealSSD C300 drives use MLC NAND flash memory, and will come in 1.8" and 2.5" form factors -- both of which will be available in 128GB and 256GB capacities. Volume pricing will start at $350 and $715 in quantities larger than 1,000 units, and the C300 should ship in the first quarter of 2010.

Catch a performance demonstration after the break.

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Well it looks like SATA 3.0 is finally going to be needed, can't wait to see what kind of speeds can we expect to see in a couple years? Boot speed was rather fast, the HDD one was pathetic.
 
I just did a similar file transfer test using a 1.25 Folder full of pictures from my RAID array to one of my other HDDs and had a flash transfer speed of 857MB/second, after that it dropped to 400MB/s and then it was done. I can only imagine the kinds of ridiculousness can be obtained when RAID'ing a couple of these drives.

PS. I'm running RAID 0 on two WD 640GB Blacks
 
Use a larger data set to get more accurate numbers Adhmuz - you can't possibly reach even 400 MB/s with only 2 spindles. Try using a single large file like an iso or zip/rar to get your best possible real numbers. Using bonnie++ I can only sustain 339 MB/s with 6 spindles and haven't benched again since adding a 7th in my array, but I wouldn't expect to surpass 400 even with my setup.
 
The windows boot time on that machine was incredible. It would be great to see a benchmark of these drives comparing SATA 2.0 and 3.0.
 
The speed difference I saw in the videos does in no way what so ever justify 5-10x the price.
 
Apart from everything else covered in last and upcoming comments..
It's been a while since the last time I saw a demo of SSD working..so im like "wow"..while watching the vid..
 
Hope they keep pushing the envelope on SSD drives and people with more money that i have keep buying them so that the price comes down ;-)
 
i knew SSD's were fast but man that boot up time was sick. i would think that 2 of those in raid 0 would be beyond faster than anything i could ever hope for. the prices of ssd's have come down alot since there release and i for one like that.
 
I look forward to when I can afford the bad boys....Imagine just a year ago, micron had 1000+ offerings in this tech segment....
 
BENCHMARK!!!!! I want to see benchmarks on these things. Techspot.com can you help a brother out?
 
Interesting figures quoted for the opposition, given SATAII 128GB MLC drives with Indilinx and Samsung controllers tend to return read/write mb/s figures around 230-250/180-200. Sure the 64GB drives write at around 100mb/s but hey, Micron are releasing 128GB and 256GB drives here so how about comparing apples with something resembling apples.
 
I can't seem to load the video. Im not sure if it was mentioned, but was the "industry's fasterst" monicker due to the fact that is uses Sata 6Gb or because of its read and write speeds? If its due to the Sata, then the drive itself isn't the fastest but just the adoption of the Sata. But i guess this statement says enough about its R/W potential: "allowing it to deliver sequential read speeds of up to 355MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 215MB/s". Doesn't seem to be the industry's fastest though.
 
@saintbodhisatva: The video is loading fine for me. Is anyone else having trouble?

I believe Micron is calling the drive the "industry's fastest" due to its actual performance, and not simply because it uses SATA 6Gb/s.
 
I think in the demo he said the drive was throttled down to 3Gb/s to make a more fair comparison.
 
It looks pretty impressive, but still not fast enough or cheap enough to get me to upgrade yet. I'll wait for SATA 6Gb/s to be integrated into the next gen Intel or AMD chipsets.
 
Matthew said:
@saintbodhisatva: The video is loading fine for me. Is anyone else having trouble?

I believe Micron is calling the drive the "industry's fastest" due to its actual performance, and not simply because it uses SATA 6Gb/s.

Thanks for the data. oh, and now worries about the video, the problem is likely just on my end.
 
Wow! Small and fast... About time too! Rotating-drives have been one of the main bottleneck in computer history... Our ear have heard more HDD squeaks than our girls' complaints... awful record!
with Sata 6Gb/s SSDs can release their potential...
I'd like to see a small but fast SSD in each computer become a standard; for example, like the integrated audio in modern motherboards...
More and more small and fast... very good.
 
Wow that thing is really fast, I'm definitely adding an SSD to my Christmas letter to Santa because for $700 I don't think I'm goint to be able to buy it.
You can get this tipe of storage devices with certain laptops and PC but they are still expensive in this moment, I'm personaly waiting for USB 3.0 to be integrated in a laptop with Corei 7 and SSD to get a new laptop, I guess my old HP will have to wait longer for it's retirement.
 
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