Micron Technology (http://www.micron.com) has unveiled a new portfolio of the RealSSDTM solid-state drives (SSDs) for the flash-based notebook market. A new breed of notebooks are entering the market that have lightweight construction, snappier system responsiveness and a longer lasting battery -- all made possible because of the innovations in flash-based storage products, says Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron. "

The new portfolio is the first SSD product line to incorporate Micron's 25-nanometer (nm) NAND flash technology, creating a broad portfolio of capacities ranging from 64GB to 512GB. The drives will be available in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors.

As with its predecessor, the product line also supports the SATA 6Gb/s interface, which opens up the data path between the host processor and the SSD delivering improved overall system responsiveness including faster boot times and speedier application loads, Klein says.

The new drives reach read speeds up to 415MB/second, which is 17% faster than Micron's previous generation drives. With write performance varying by capacity, the new 512GB drive achieves up to 260 MB/second write speeds, which is more than 20% faster than the fastest C300 drive, says Klein.

Micron is currently working with notebook manufacturers to qualify its new RealSSD drives under the C400 product name. With samples of the RealSSD C400 drives available now, Micron expects mass production to begin in February.