Super-Speed USB 3.0 SSD Flash Drives In 2010
12/04/10 19:28 Filed in: USB 3.0 Solid State Drives
Solid-State hard disk drives have had an interesting technology ramp. In 2009 in particular, SSD controller chips took a huge leap in performance thanks to larger cache, better design and improved SSD firmware. Some of the top performing SSD's such as from Intel and OCZ are now pushing the bandwidth capacities of the SATA II interface, and have easily outpaced USB 2.0 transfer rates for quite some time.
To give you an idea of the potential USB 3.0 SuperSpeed will bring to Apple computers and Windows PC's, read this excellent article at TweakTown that took Intel's current X25-M SATA II SSD and benchmarked it thru a variety of computer interfaces available. In a nutshell, the chart below shows USB 3 is going to rival throughput of a direct SATA II interface - with the convenience of an external USB3 plug.
Presuming the speeds of NAND flash memory chips and controllers used in SSD's can keep up with the promise of USB 3 and the 6Gbps SATA III interface hopes to deliver, expect the NEXT generation of SSD drives to be able to leverage the bandwidth of both. It's already looking like USB will allow us to backup to an external drive in one fifth the time it currently takes!
To give you an idea of the potential USB 3.0 SuperSpeed will bring to Apple computers and Windows PC's, read this excellent article at TweakTown that took Intel's current X25-M SATA II SSD and benchmarked it thru a variety of computer interfaces available. In a nutshell, the chart below shows USB 3 is going to rival throughput of a direct SATA II interface - with the convenience of an external USB3 plug.
Presuming the speeds of NAND flash memory chips and controllers used in SSD's can keep up with the promise of USB 3 and the 6Gbps SATA III interface hopes to deliver, expect the NEXT generation of SSD drives to be able to leverage the bandwidth of both. It's already looking like USB will allow us to backup to an external drive in one fifth the time it currently takes!
