Intel prepping SSDs with up to 160 GB capacity

Santa Clara (CA) – Intel is expected to unveil new products within its solid state disk (SSD) drive family. Following its joint venture partner Micron, which recently introduced new RealSSD drives, Intel-branded versions should make their debut during IDF next week.

Chinese website Expreview got its hands on some of the details of Intel's SSD line-up that will target the consumer space, while Micron primarily aims for enterprise customers at this time. According to the site, Intel will release SSDs with the usual 32 and 64 GB capacity, but the company will also offer rather unusual 80 and 160 GB versions.

The drives will be available in 1.8" and 2.5" format factors and offer a bandwidth of 240 MB/s (read) and 70-170 MB/s (write).

Common sense suggests that these SSDs will be rather expensive, but if we believe the chatter in the industry, it seems that especially the big boys are planning a major shot at this market segment. Mainstream SSDs are still about one year away, but we expect 64 GB SSDs to drop well below $200 and 128 GB SSDs into the $300 neighborhood.

You can read more details about Intel-branded SSDs here.