Intel and Micron announce 25nm MLC NAND drives

by Stevie Smith - Feb 1 2010, 16:07

Pushing the vision of their 2006 industry partnership, chipmaker Intel and data solutions specialist Micron have announced the sampling of 2-bits-per-cell MLC NAND flash-based storage utilising the 25nm manufacturing process.

More pointedly, a third-generation of Intel’s X25-M line is expected to shift into production during the latter half of 2010, with storage variants in flavours of 160GB, 320GB and 600GB expected before the close of the fourth quarter. However, third-generation units are unlikely to be widely available until around 2012.

According to Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech, the application of immersion lithography has been an integral contributing process in the step forward attributed to 25nm MLC NAND – and essentially results in twice the solid-state drive (SSD) size at the same price as current 34nm hardware.

While performance and pricing details are currently sketchy, TrustedReviews points to previous jumps in the X25-M line insofar as random read and write IOPS doubled between the first and second-generation platforms. It also notes that third-generation sequential read and write speeds should hit around 200Mbps.

The partner companies also believe they have captured around a one-year head start over the competition when it comes to fully utilising 25nm technology.

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