Intel ships new solid-state drives

Intel estimates that its SSDs run nine times faster than platter-based drives

Intel has shipped its first line of solid-state hard drives for notebooks and PCs.

The new line includes an 80GB drive in 1.8in and 2.5in versions dubbed the X18-M and X25-M respectively. The company hopes to add a 160GB model to the line later this year.

Intel plans to sell both models to PC manufacturers in quantities of up to 1,000 at a price tag of $595 per drive.

The company expects the first models equipped with the SSDs to hit the market within the next few weeks.

HP already plans to offer the drives in its notebook line-up starting in October.

Intel also provided an update on the line of server SSDs announced at IDF. The X25-E Extreme drives should ship to system vendors within the next 90 days.

That drive will sport a 32GB capacity and is aimed at high-performance server applications that demand the fast access times afforded by the solid-state systems.

Intel estimates that its SSDs run nine times faster than platter-based hard drives and require less power and space.