SanDisk Pushing For Low Power Consumption SSDs

SanDisk is pushing an initiative to provide low power consumption SSDs to OEMs that don't sacrifice performance.

Tuesday during the Intel Developers Forum, SanDisk revealed what it calls the "SATA DEVSLP " initiative. With companies like Intel, Samsung and Microsoft already on-board, the company is pushing the industry to provide SSDs to OEMs with SATA performance at significantly lower power consumption than current offerings.

Implementation is already planned for future devices, chipsets and operating systems, SanDisk said.

"Intel is aligned and supportive of low power SATA to reduce the total power budget," said Erik Reid, general manager, mobile client platforms, Intel. "We are pleased to join SanDisk in leading this initiative and are very excited about its implications for the future of mobile computing. Innovation in ultra portable designs is dependent on important efficiency gains. By supporting SATA DEVSLP standardization, we’ll be enabling innovative designs for countless future mobile devices."

According to SanDisk, today's "best-in-class" SSDs support low power consumption of 50mW. However, under the new SATA DEVSLP initiative, SATA storage will remain in a low power state the majority of the time. This will improve power consumption by "an order of magnitude" compared to previous solutions, SanDisk said.

"As the industry trends toward creating ever thinner and faster truly mobile computing products, the performance versus power demand tradeoffs will have even greater influence in the design process," said Kevin Conley, senior vice president, client storage solutions, SanDisk. "Anticipating this growing challenge, we set to work on the SATA DEVSLP technologies to offer considerably more power-efficient options to anyone designing in the mobile space. We’re pleased to be working closely with our partners to enable the next generation of low power SATA computing devices."