News

posted on 03 June 2008 08:50

SanDisk has announced flash solid state drives (SSD) for ultra low-cost PCs with up to 16GB of capacity.

ULCPCs, inexpensive hand-held computers such as the Asus Eee PC and HP Mini-note, are designed to give a full PC experience with Internet browsing via WiFi, according to SanDisk, and are a natural partner for SSDs because of the low power draw, small size, and physical robustness of flash drives. The company sys there is now no need for a hard disk drive at all in these products.

SanDisk's new pSSD - with 'p' for Parallel - has a PATA interface and offers 39MB/sec streaming read performance and 17MB/sec streaming write speed. There are three capacity points; 4, 8 and 16GB, and both Linux and Windows are supported.

The drives use single-level and multi-level cell technology and are made at fabrication plants in Yokkaichi, Japan, with SanDisk and partner Toshiba sharing the output.

SanDisk is optimistic about pSSD sales, quoting Joseph Unsworth, Research Director at Gartner: “The opportunity for SSDs in the emerging market of ultra low-cost PCs is promising.” Gartner expects the low-cost SSD category to grow from 635,000 units in 2007 to over 33 million units in 2012, and that represents a five-year compound growth rate of 117 percent.

The new flash drives should be available in August.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}