Micron prepares low cost SSDs up to 256GB

Micron Technology is working on a series of 2.5" and 1.8" SSDs that will be targeted at both the corporate enterprise and laptop markets, with drive capacities of up to 256GB.  To make prices more attractive for consumers, its C200 consumer based drives targeted at laptops will be based on multi-level cell (MLC).  These drives will be around 1/3 the price of the same size SSDs based on single-level cell (SLC) technology.  Micron’s P200 enterprise SSDs will be based on SLC technology.

While MLC based drives typically have lower reliability and performance than SLC based drives, Micron claims that its C200 consumer based drives will feature fast read and write speeds of up to 250MB/s and 100MB/s respectively using a 3Gbps SATA interface and that its SSDs are just as reliable as hard disk drives.  For example, even if a user writes 40GB to 60GB per day on average, they will not reach the typical 10,000 write cycle life of MLC in five years, according to Micron. 

To help overcome the latencies when writing to SSD and minimise wear, Micron’s SSD series features an intelligent processor and a 64MB DRAM buffer. Its P200 enterprise SSD series features latencies of less than 1 millisecond, compared to latencies of around 8 milliseconds for typical enterprise hard disks.  It operates at 2.5 watts active and under 0.3 watts idle and requires just minimal cooling. 

While Micron mentioned that their MLC based drives will retail for around 1/3 the price of currently available SLC based drives of the same capacity, the company has not given any other pricing information at this time.  Its C200 consumer series drives will be available in capacities of up to 256GB for the 2.5” form factor and up to 128GB for the 1.8” form factor.  It plans shipping its SSDs in the next quarter.