Intel® X25-M and X18-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drives

[BSIT07-01]

The Intel X25-M 80GB & 160GB Solid State Drives Arrive

Solid State Drives (SSD) have been around for over 25 years, but only recently have SSDs started to prove ready for the mainstream computing market now that performance is getting better and the price is coming down. As many of our readers know, there are over a dozen companies that currently have solid state drives on the market today, but the performance reliability on many of the drives are unpredictable. It's been no secret that Intel has been working on a SSD for some time now and whenever Intel does something you know they pumped a ton of cash into the project and had some of the brightest minds in the industry making a product that would blow the others away.



Today, Intel is launching two MLC-based Solid State Disks, the X18-M and X25-M. For this article we will be looking at the Intel X25-M drive, which is a 2.5" form-factor drive that is 80GB. Intel has a 160GB version of this drive as well as 1.8" versions in both 80GB and 160GB capacities. Both the Intel X25-M and X18-M are pictured above to give you an idea of the size difference between the two new drives. When it comes to performance the specifications are very impressive with a maximum read bandwidth of 250MB/sec and write bandwidth of up to 70MB/sec. If these specifications fail to impress you then you'll be happy to know that Intel will have an SLC NAND solid state drive under the eXtreme series that will be coming out in 2009. The Intel X25-E SSD will be available in 32GB and 64GB capacities, which may seem small, but they were designed to replace drives that enterprise customers are currently using. Intel believes that many of their customers are still using 32GB and 64GB drives in enterprise applications and that the eXtreme series will replace those and offer a significant speed boost. What kind of speed boost are we talking about? How about a write speed of 170 MB/s instead of the 70 MB/s found on the mainstream models!

The Intel® X25-M and X18-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive (SSD) brings a new level of performance and reliability to laptop and desktop PC storage.
Wait Less. Do More.
Why wait for a traditional hard disk drive to spin up? Unlike traditional hard disk drives, Intel solid-state drives have no moving parts, resulting in a quiet, cool, highly rugged storage solution that also offers faster system responsiveness. And for laptop PCs, the lower power needs of Intel SSDs translate to longer battery life and lighter notebooks. Higher performance with more durability means you can be truly mobile with confidence.
Better by Design
Drawing from decades of memory engineering experience, Intel Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drives are designed to deliver outstanding performance, featuring the latest-generation native SATA interface with an advanced architecture employing 10 parallel NAND flash channels equipped with multi-level cell NAND flash memory. With powerful Native Command Queuing to enable up to 32 concurrent operations, Intel Mainstream SATA SSDs deliver higher input/output per second and throughput performance than other SSDs on the market today - and drastically outperform traditional hard disk drives. These drives also feature low write amplification and a unique wear-leveling design for higher reliability, meaning Intel drives not only perform better - they last longer.
Two Options. No Worries.
Intel® Mainstream Solid-State Drives are available in either 2.5" (Intel® X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive) or 1.8" (Intel® X18-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive) standard hard drive form factors. And all Intel Mainstream SSDs are tested and validated on the latest Intel-based mobile and desktop platforms for your peace of mind.

Technical specifications

Model Name	Intel® X18-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive Intel® X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drive
Capacity	80GB and 160GB
NAND Flash Components	Intel® Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory 10 Channel Parallel Architecture with 50nm MLC ONFI 1.0 NAND
Bandwidth	Up to 250MB/s Read Speeds Up to 70MB/s Write Speeds
Read Latency	85 microseconds
Interface	SATA 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s
Form factor	X18-M: 1.8" Industry Standard Hard Drive Form Factor X25-M: 2.5" Industry Standard Hard Drive Form Factor
Compatibility	SATA Revision 2.6 Compliant. Compatible with SATA 3.0 Gb/s with Native Command Queuing and SATA 1.5 Gb/s interface rates
Life expectancy	1.2 million hours Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF)
Power consumption	Active: 150mW Typical (PC workload¹) Idle (DIPM): 0.06W Typical
Operating shock	1,000G / 0.5ms
Operating temperature	0°C to +70°C
RoHS Compliance	Meets the requirements of EU RoHS Compliance Directives
Product health monitoring	Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) commands plus additional SSD monitoring