SEK: Mtron claims speediest solid-state disk
Solid-state disks (SSDs) are fast becoming popular as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives but they are not all alike, said South Korea's Mtron Co. Ltd.
SSDs use flash memory rather than magnetic storage, which means faster reading and writing of data, lower power consumption and zero noise. They've been around for several years although it is only recently, after flash memory chip prices fell, that they have become practical for use in laptop computers.
Major PC makers are starting to offer them as options in some laptop models, but consumers looking to SSDs for a performance boost should pay close attention to the specifications, said Sean Roh, assistant manager of the marketing department at Mtron.
The company, which is based near Seoul, makes its own SSD that it claims is faster than any other on the market. It offers a sustained read speed of 100M bytes per second (Bps) and a sustained write speed of 80M Bps, he said.
By comparison, Sandisk Corp. reports a read speed of 67M Bps and a write speed of 47M Bps for its recently announced 64G-byte SSD and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said its SSD reads at 56M Bps and writes at 32M Bps.
The faster speeds are possible thanks to the use of a custom-designed drive control chip.
In a demonstration at the SEK show, which opened in Seoul on Wednesday, the company had five competing 2.5-inch drives and its own 2.5-inch drive hooked up to a personal computer running benchmarking software. The test appeared to confirm that the Mtron drive performed at around the speeds claimed and also beat out the competition.
Among the competing drives, all of which had labels to cover the manufacturer's name, the slowest read data at about 28M Bps and the fastest at about 96M Bps, while write speeds ranged from 17.6M Bps to 68M Bps (the fastest read and write speeds were not on the same drive). The Mtron drive hit a read speed of 97M Bps and a write speed of 72M bps in the test, the benchmark software reported.
Mtron, which is about three years old, has already signed up distributors in some markets and is looking to sell its 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives to PC makers for use in their machines. It isn't planning to offer the drives direct to consumers.
IDG News Service
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