CES '09: SanDisk's 40,000 RPM SSD--What?

SanDisk today demonstrated its new line of G3 SSDs, which it claims is state of the art.

Using a new rating method called vRPM or virtual RPM, SanDisk compares its SSD drives in terms of platter rotation rates of traditional HDD drives. So how fast do these SSD drives spin? Actually, they don't spin at all, but SanDisk told us that if they were able to, it would be around 40,000 RPM!

This all sounds great right? So we're expecting some blazing performance. Unfortunately, no.

SanDisk has two G3 drives, the C25-G3 and the C18-G3--the difference is in the drive's physical size: 2.5 inch and 1.8 inch respectively. Performance wise, both drives play in at 200 MB/sec. read and 140 MB/sec. write. While that is fast, it's not quite fast as Intel's Exteme line of SSD drives and rate slower than Patriot Memory's line of WARP3 SSD drives, which do 260 MB/sec. reads and 160 MB/sec. writes.

New marketing ploy to rate SSD drives? Actually, there's no current standard to test and rate SSD drives other than raw read and write performance. While the industry works together to come towards a standard measurement of perofmrnace, we'll have to chuck the vRPM rating to marketing at this point.