Back in January during the Consumer Electronics Show, Micron unveiled the M500 solid state drive as a successor to the dated M4. The line, which uses the latest 20-nanometer multilevel cell (MLC) NAND flash technology, is now available for purchase at less than $0.60 per gigabyte.
The per gigabyte pricing is for the 960GB version which works out to around $570 - bargain basement pricing for a solid state drive with this level of capacity. Drives with this amount of storage space typically cost upwards of a thousand bucks or more. If you're in the market for a large-capacity SSD, this could certainly be worth a look.
Naturally, the price per gigabyte increases with smaller drives. As The Tech Report points out, the 120GB, 240GB and 480GB models currently retail for $129, $202 and $363, respectively. That works out to $1.08, $0.84 and $0.76 per gigabyte.
The new M500 can deliver up to 80,000 IOPS with sequential reads and writes topping out at 500 MB/sec and 400 MB/sec, respectively. Inside is a Marvell 88SS9177 controller that uses custom firmware and hardware-based encryption.
The drives use a technology known as device sleep (DEVSLP) that uses around 150mW during use and a sparse 5mW while asleep. This helps to reduce excess heat and energy consumption, especially when you aren't using the system but it's still on. Crucial claims the drive consumes 93 percent less power when in sleep state than its predecessor.