Intel Announces New Venture In Flash Hard Drives
Today, Intel announced it's entry into the realm of flash hard drives with the introduction of the Z-U130. The Z-U130 will come in sizes ranging from 1 to 8 GBs and according to Intel, will have a sustained write speed of 28Mb per second; average magnetic platter hard drives sport write speeds varying from 30 to 75MB per second. Furthermore, the new drives will connect to PCs through USB 1.1 or 2.0 interfaces. Intel has also done some initial testing of it's new product and estimates the mean time before failure (MTBF) to be around 5 million hours for its new flash based hard drives.
Intel announced today that the company is releasing its first entry into the flash-based hard drive market. The Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive will be available in 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB models and boasts sustained write speeds of 28MB per second. This is comparable to the low end of magnetic platter hard drives, which have typical write speeds varying from 30MB to 75MB per second. The drives are contained in a 3.5cm by 2.5cm package and connects via a USB 1.1 or 2.0 interface using a standard 2x5 USB connector. "Solid state drive technology offers many benefits over traditional hard disk drives including improved performance and reliability," said Randy Wilhelm, vice president of Intel's NAND Products Group. "The Intel solid state drive technology provides robust performance, while offering Intel's industry leading quality, validation and reliability for a wide variety of embedded applications."
