Intel considering value SSD’s for netbooks

According to a slide we bumped into over at XFastest, a Taiwanese hardware community, Intel is working on “value” SSD’s for small form factor devices. These SSD’s will offer “good enough” performance, but we’re wondering if Intel isn’t just a little bit late into the game.

Oddly enough, Intel seems to be working on SLC based SSD devices that rely on the SATA interface with a capacity of 8-16GB+ with an expected launch some time in 2010. The SSD’s should have a read performance of about 40MB/s and a write performance of about 30MB/s, both being no better than your average hard drive.

We’re not really following Intel’s logic here, especially as Microsoft has said no to hybrid storage solutions on netbooks. This might change with the launch of Windows 7, but no-one really wants a primary drive that’s limited to 8 or 16GB. Everyone knows that Windows tend to “grow” as you install applications, even if they’re not installed on the same drive as Windows. Furthermore, in a hybrid storage scenario, you need to install your key applications onto the SSD, since to gain the battery life advantage, you need to switch off the hard drive.

This roadmap might be a little bit dated though, as Intel is getting ready to launch 320GB SSD’s in the 2.5-inch form factor and there’s no mention of such a device. The integrated NAND module is unlikely to make it to the netbook market for now, as it’s intended for high-performance notebooks and some desktop systems that will arrive later this year, or early next year.

We hope to see more netbooks with SSD’s as standard, but until the pricing come down to more reasonable levels, this is unlikely to happen. However, even a 32 or 64GB SSD should be plenty for most netbook users and we expect the market to head this way sooner or later.