Intel to raise solid storage stakes to tune of 160GB

Stan Beer
Thursday, 13 March 2008 12:27

Opinion and Analysis

However, SSD prices are coming down faster than the mature hard disk technology and sooner or later - some say within the next three years - the tipping point will come. This is is especially so with advances such as the one discussed in a Cnet article by Troy Winslow, marketing manager for the NAND Products Group at Intel.

The issue is not just that Intel's coming 160GB SSD will be the highest capacity silicon storage device to date. It's also that, being based on the SATA II specification, it will be significantly faster than previous generation SSD products and certainly much faster than any hard disks.

Once again, however, the question will be price. Until high capacity SSD devices are in the low hundreds of dollars, which doesn't appear to be likely for the next couple of years at least, magnetic drive makers can keep flogging their buggy whips for all they're worth. So the end will come for hard drives but it will be a long time coming.