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.