Micron Technology will bring faster interfaces to its enterprise SSD (solid-state drive) line in June when it begins shipping its P300 drives to makers of storage equipment.
The P300 line will use the SATA 3.0 specification, with throughput as high as 6Gbps, in place of the SATA 2.0 standard that Micron uses on its P200 drives, said Kevin Dibelius, senior product marketing manager, in an interview Wednesday at Storage Networking World in Orlando.
SATA 2.0 is limited to 3G bps. With the new, higher standard, Micron's SSDs will be able to outperform any hard disk drive, because the company claims even the fastest spinning disks can't fill the 6G bps link between the drive and system that SATA 3.0 offers, Dibelius said. (Seagate announced a SATA 3.0 HDD last year.) To help the P300 fill that pipe, the new SSD also uses ONFI (Open NAND Flash Interface) 2.1, a faster connection between the flash silicon itself and the controller inside the SSD.
The P300 drives will be made using Micron's 34-nanometer manufacturing process and will come in 50GB, 100GB and 200GB sizes, shipping in sample quantities to system makers in late May. Dibelius expects them to hit the market in storage platforms in June.
