Intel Ready To Unveil 320-GB 'Postville' SSD?

By Joseph F. Kovar, CRN July 20, 2009

Rumors are circulating the Web that Intel may be in the process of unveiling new "Postville" solid state drives (SSDs) with capacities of up to 320 GB.

If true, that could be a real game-changer for the storage market.

SSDs store data on solid-state memory instead of spinning disks, making them much faster than the spinning models, but otherwise work the same in servers and storage appliances as in legacy hard drives.

SSDs are still much pricier than the legacy drives, and a 320-GB SSD would be expensive.

However, given the increased use of data deduplication for cutting the amount of storage required by a company by eliminating duplicate files or blocks of data, the resulting smaller storage capacities can be stored on high-performance SSDs at a lower cost than today's spinning disk-based primary storage.

Indeed, this is already the case for some high-performance applications. And the release of a larger capacity SSD could drive the move.

Engadget is reporting that Intel has been planning a 320-GB SSD for some time, and that it will release 80-GB, 160-GB and 320-GB models in its Postville family.

Meanwhile, Canadian retail bargain-hunting site RedFlagDeals.com is reporting that the three Postville SSDs could be available by the end of July, with possible prices of either $261 or $276 for the 80-GB version.

The Postville SSDs supposedly are halogen-free, and include a 32-MB wear-leveling buffer, a 90-MBps sequential write rate and AES 128-bit encryption.