Intel’s Postville SSD Refresh to Spawn 600GB Model?

I think it goes without saying that solid-state drives are a hot commodity today, and while everyone wants one in their PC, the biggest issue has been price. Things have certainly been getting better over the past couple of years, though, with prices hitting close to $1.50/GB in some cases. But compared to the $0.05/GB of many 2TB hard drives… the premium is a little difficult to stomach for some.

Also because of this premium, densities have also been kept rather modest, with many people opting to stick with smaller drives in order to save money. Most commonly, 128GB SSDs are chosen as they offer both flexibility for your OS and applications, and shouldn’t break the bank. So when, exactly, are we going to see much larger SSDs become more commonplace?

According to leaked roadmaps, things could be improving real soon, thanks in part to the 25nm NAND chips that Intel and Micron have been co-producing. In the next refresh, called Postville, Intel’s X25 drives could literally double – or more than double – in size. That means once the new drives hit, we should be seeing 160GB, 300GB and 600GB models… all in the same 2.5″ frame we’ve become accustomed to.

The article also mentions that with this refresh, Intel’s lowest-end SSD, the X25-V, will also double in density, from 40GB to 80GB. When that happens, it’ll be difficult to continue calling it a “boot drive”, since 80GB tends to allow quite a bit of flexibility for most people. Just how pricing is going to suffer with these major density boosts is yet to be seen, but the way things are being touted, prices could pretty well halve on the per GB scale.

First off is a refresh to the high performance X25-M range of SSDs. Currently available in 80GB and 160GB models, these will be replaced by a new design, codenamed Postville, which will come in 160GB, 300GB and 600GB variants. According to the roadmap these drives will use a 25nm MLC NAND flash, which is most likely to be the process announced earlier this year.