Micron claims speed title with C300 Flash drive

Micron's RealSSD C300 is due early next year

Hardware manufacturer Micron has announced that it will release the industry's fastest solid state drive (SSD) in the first half of next year.

The RealSSD C300 conforms to the SATA 3Gbit/s interface but also supports 6Gbit/s, offering read speeds of 355MB/s and write throughput speeds of up to 215MB/s.

"The C300 not only delivers on all the inherent advantages of SSDs - improved reliability and lower power use - but leverages a finely tuned architecture and high-speed ONFI 2.1 NAND to provide a whole new level of performance," said Dean Klein, vice president of memory systems development at Micron.

"Hard drives gain little performance advantage when using SATA 6Gbit/s because of mechanical limitations. As a developer of leading-edge NAND technology, along with our sophisticated controller and firmware innovations, Micron is well positioned to tune our drives to take full advantage of the faster speeds achieved using the SATA 6Gbit/s interface. The combination of these technology advancements has enabled the RealSSD C300 to far outshine the competition."

The new drives use 34nm NAND Flash memory and will be offered in 1.8in and 2.5in form factors with capacities of 128GB and 256GB in the first quarter of 2010.