Charting new directions and opportunities for NAND-based storage, Micron Technology, today entered the growing solid state drive (SSD) market by announcing its RealSSD family of products. Offered in a range of form factors and densities, Micron's solid state drives are designed for computing, enterprise server and networking applications.Moving the NAND-based storage architecture forward, the first of Micron's solid state drives vary in density from 1 gigabyte (GB) to 64 GBs. Aside from the obvious benefits of SSDs over hard disk drives (HDDs) - lower power, faster boot-up time, increased reliability, improved performance and reduced noise - the products that Micron is announcing today usher in a new set of application-specific features and capabilities. The devices in this new family include:

• RealSSD Solid State Drives - Micron's 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch RealSSD solid state drives for notebook and desktop computing applications will be offered in 32-gigabyte (GB) and 64-gigabyte densities. Micron is now sampling both devices with mass production expected in the first quarter of 2008. Micron's RealSSD solid state drives feature:
• A native-SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) II interface, allowing for improved performance. The products use a single-chip controller specifically targeted at the SSD application, and do not require a SATA bridge chip like most current solutions. The controller is optimized for four channel control of the NAND and supports advanced SATA features such as native command queuing allowing the drive to reorganize read and write commands. It also features a SATA hot plug allowing for the drive to be removed from the system without eliminating power.
• Less than 2 watts of power while active, with dramatically lower power idle and standby modes. In addition, without platters to spin up, worst-case power consumption is greatly reduced.
• A rugged, lightweight plastic casing, allowing for at least a 50-percent reduction in weight when compared to similar density HDDs, which is of particular importance for the ultra mobile PC market.
• RealSSD Embedded USB - Micron's RealSSD Embedded USB products range in density from 1 to 8 GBs of storage and are designed to be integrated into a system through an embedded USB 2.0 interface. This provides a cost-effective solution to store and boot an entire operating system within an industrial PC or blade server system or it could be used as a reserve for often accessed files. Micron is now sampling these products with mass production expected by the end of 2007.
• RealSSD Module - Micron is changing storage perceptions, providing customers with a customizable form factor that goes beyond a legacy HDD enclosure and provides significant footprint reduction, ease of installation and weight savings. Micron's RealSSD Module is essentially a solid state storage device in a low profile module form factor. Using a commonly available SATA interface, these modules are designed to be 25 millimeters high, by 133.5 mm long and less than 4 mm thick, allowing for increased system airflow, a key value proposition for enterprise server applications.

"SSDs are becoming the new storage medium, fundamentally altering the way data is stored," said Dean Klein, Micron vice president of memory system development. "The storage market is ripe for innovation, and it's an opportunity Micron is embracing given our expertise in NAND. We know how to manage NAND flash to work best with controllers, allowing us to develop an optimized SSD solution for every application."
A virtual press kit is available for media and analysts at www.micron.com/media.