Intel Reveals Solid State Value Drives

Intel enters the storage market with a solid offering

Intel Corporation announced today its entry into solid state drives with the Intel Z-U130. Aimed at delivering performance and value, the drives are based on NAND flash memory with standard USB 2.0/1.1 interfaces. Intel says that the advantages of its Z-U130 over hard disk drives and removable USB storage devices are faster boot times, embedded code storage, rapid data access and low-power storage alternatives.

Solid state drives enjoy several advantages over traditional hard disk drives, such as faster start up, faster read times, lower seek times, less power consumption, silent operation and lower weight. Solid state drives should also be more reliable as there are no moving parts involved in the device’s operation. On the flip side, magnetic-based drives may endure better after a great number of read/write cycles and faster write times. For the foreseeable future, traditional hard disk drives will also enjoy the cost advantage at large capacities.

“Solid state drive technology offers many benefits over traditional hard disk drives including improved performance and reliability,” said Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager of Intel’s NAND Products Group. “The Intel solid state drive technology provides robust performance, while offering Intel’s industry leading quality, validation and reliability for a wide variety of embedded applications.”more