Memory maker Micron revealed bits on its new Solid State Drive RealSSD C300 last fall. It boasted SATA 6Gb/s and record fast read speeds. Then it got quiet and we have waiting for more information. During CES it has shown the drive for the first time and it it’s same boasting as before. Read speed up to 355MB/s over SATA 6Gb/s with 4K read and write performance on par or better than Intel’s X25-M series.
Micron has used a solid state controller from Marvell built upon two ARM9 processors. With firmware and storage algorithms by Micron. The design of RealSSD C300 is more like Intel’s X25-M series than OCZ’s new SandForce-based Vertex 2 series. But instead of a large integrated cache the drive has 256MB external DRAM and 8-channel MLC NAND flash (Intel uses 10 channels).
Picture courtesy of Anandtech
The benchmark numbers shared by Micron are pretty impressive and even if the write speed isn’t breathtaking it is still far better than Intel’s version, 215MB/s vs. 100MB/s.
According to Micron the SATA 6Gb/s interface will play a part and score 45,277 points in PCMark Vantage, which is really impressive. Unfortunately there are no impartial tests with Micron’s drive, but in February Micron will start selling the drive through the subsidiary Crucial and costing around $400 (128GB) and $800 (256GB).
