Irreverence

posted on 22 August 2008 13:17

The Asustek Eee netbook is to get faster flash with a serial interface making it a better performer.

It currently uses single-layer cell (SLC) Samsung flash with a Phison Electronics controller providing a parallel ATA (PATA) interface.

Before February 2008 Silicon Motion was the only flash controller Asustek used but Phison became an alternate controller supplier that month.

Faster single-layer cell (SLC) flash from Micron is going to be used with a Micron controller giving it a Serial ATA (SATA) interface, presumably SATA II running at 3Gbit/s.

PATA interfaces run at 100MB/sec with bursts up to 133MB/sec whereas SATA II runs at 3GB/sec.

Digitimes, which originated the story, could get no-one to comment.

HP's Mini-Note 2133 also uses Samsung 4GB SLC NAND flash. There is speculation that a second generation model may have 32GB of flash.

^{[Martin Edwards, news writer.]}