June 2nd, 2009
SanDisk next-gen SSDs are faster, target netbooks and Linux
SanDisk today announced that it has begun shipping its next-generation solid state drives for the 12 million-strong netbook market in 8, 16, 32 and 64 GB flavors.
The drives employ a new technology called nCache, a non-volatile write cache capable of supporting burst performance up to five times the steady state vRPM2, the company says. nCache improves user responsiveness and helps prevent incidence of “stalling” or “shuddering” often seen in first generation netbook SSDs, SanDisk says.
SanDisk’s pSSD P2 and S2 drives offer 9,000 vRPM of steady state performance in addition to nCache (which goes beyond this and offers a non-volatile cache of up to 320MB, it says).
SanDisk says engineers from Canonical (Ubuntu Linux) have “worked closely on system optimizations for the Gen2 pSSD.”
“Canonical is enabling original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and designers (ODMs) to offer consumers a fantastic user experience with Ubuntu Netbook Remix running on netbooks,” said Chris Kenyon, director, OEM services, Canonical. “Our tests have shown SanDisk second generation pSSD equipped with nCache performing significantly better than a 5400 RPM HDD, providing Ubuntu users with the speed and stability that they need.”
SanDisk says its pSSDs are also ideal for use in netbooks equipped with ARM processors such as Freescale’s i.MX515.
No word on price.
Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet.
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