Intel has claimed it will be the first company to move to 34 nanometer NAND flash-based solid state drives (SSD).
Moving from its previous size of 50nm SSDs, the company has said that the Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD will help reduce the costs of such drives by 60 per cent "for PC and laptop makers and consumers who buy them due to the reduced die size and advanced engineering design."
Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager of Intel's NAND Solutions Group, said: "Our goal was to not only be first to achieve 34nm NAND flash memory lithography, but to do so with the same or better performance than our 50nm version... our customers, both consumers and manufacturers, can now enjoy [SSD] at a fraction of the cost."
The SSD is available in either 80Gb or 160Gb and compatible with machines currently running 50nm, as well as original hard disk drives (HDD).
Intel claimed the new X25-M offers improved latency and faster random write IOPS compared to the 50nm. The company also said it provides a reduction in latency of 25 per cent compared to a HDD.
Prices for the 80GB version are $225 for orders up to 1,000 units and for 160Gb it is $440 for up to 1,000 units.
The X25-M comes in a standard 2.5 inch form however Intel will be shipping one in a 1.8 inch format later in the quarter.
