Indilinx Speeds Up SSDs To 230 MB/s

Milpitas (CA) - Solid state disk (SSD) drives are likely to see further speed increases from the currently fastest drives that provide read speeds of about 200 MB/s to the theoretical maximum of 300 MB/s. Silicon Valley startup Indilinx says it has developed a technology that will boost the speed of SSDs by more 15% and is already working on SATA III interface version that should double the bandwidth provided by today’s SSDs.

Performance is one of the key benefits of SSDs, but even if the fastest SSDs available today are substantially faster than the fastest hard drives, the price/performance equation just does work for the mainstream buyer yet. Any increase in performance or decrease in price will help the industry to shift the perceived value of a solid state drive in its favor.

Indilinx says it has developed a new "high-performing solid state drive (SSD) controller" built in 90 nm process technology that is currently shown at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara and promises much higher data transfer speeds for SSDs.

The device, called Barefoot, delivers a read speed of 230 MB/s, 30 MB/s above today’s fastest SATA II SSDs, and support for storage capacities of up to 512 MB. Indilinx claims that it is first to "fully utilize" the SATA 2 interface and noted that it is already working on an interface compatible with SATA III and a bandwidth of 600 MB/s.

Commercial products using the Barefoot interface have not been announced.