As I understand it, the Intel SSD is somewhat different technology
and thus is significantly faster than the other SSD drives out
there. Also significantly more expensive so right now they're
primarily marketing them to data centers.
__________________________
Robert Rosen
There are two basic types of flash:
MLC - multi-level cell
SLC - single-level cell
In general the MLC drives are cheaper and slower.
The SLC are more expensive and smaller in capacity
and probably more robust.
The Intel MLC-based drives are faster than most because
they use a better (custom Intel part) controller. That is the
type I have and it comes in 80 or 160 GB. The SLC-based
Intel drives are for enterprise applications and have way
faster write performance (170 vs 70) , higher power during
operation, and are smaller (32 and 64 GB). They are
really expensive and would be used in servers for really
fast operation for small data sets or for logging
drives for special file systems (ZFS from Sun
Solaris for example). If you had lots of money and
a 2/3 spindle SATA notebook, you could use a
SLC-based drive for boot/OS and a MLC-based
drive for data. Currently they are both small
in capacity compared to hard disks. The cost
would probably be on the order of $1400 for
a 64 GB X25-E and a 160 GB X25-M :-)
Stuart
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