As Intel ships 160GB SSD, pricing nags buyers

Updated at 1:40 p.m. PST with pricing information.

Intel is now shipping 160GB solid-state drives as it vies with Samsung and Toshiba to deliver high-capacity SSDs that rival hard-disk drives in capacity. Price, however, remains a big obstacle for many consumers.

(Credit: Intel)

Intel said Monday that it will add 160GB versions of its X25-M and X18-M Serial ATA (SATA) solid-state drive. To date, Intel has limited shipments to its 80GB versions. Laptop-size 2.5-inch versions of the 160GB drive are shipping now; 1.8-inch models for ultraportable laptops will ship next month, Intel said.

Larger-capacity drives from other SSD suppliers are also on the way. In November, Samsung said it had begun mass production of 256GB SSDs. And Toshiba recently said it would show a 512GB drive at the Consumer Electronics Show in January that would ship in the second quarter of 2009.

Solid-state drives are generally faster at getting data than hard-disk drives (and in some cases, much faster) but pricing is a big hurdle for consumers. Toshiba indicated last week that sample quantities of its new solid-state will range in price from $220 for the 64GB drive to $1,652 for the 512GB drive.

That kind of pricing--even if it's for pricey sample drives--is hard to swallow when a laptop-class 500GB hard-disk drive sells for well under $200.

"Introductory" pricing for the Intel 160GB solid-state drives is $945 for less than 1,000 units, Intel said.

Currently, adding an Intel 80GB solid-state drive option to an HP EliteBook 2530p ultraportable laptop adds $659 over the cost of a 5400RPM 1.8-inch 120GB hard disk drive.

Adding a 128GB solid-state drive to an Apple MacBook Air ups the price by about $500.

Additional comments:: Note that the only first-tier PC vendor to publicly say it is using Intel SSDs is Hewlett-Packard. This is a significant customer for Intel since HP is the largest PC vendor in the world. HP offers Intel SSDs in all of its EliteBook notebooks.

[sartor1]

Time will tell..<br />I a few years, there won't be any laptops with hard drives as we know them today..<br />All will be SSD..

[Lerianis]

True. Though, I think EXTERNAL hard drives will still be non-SSD and mechanical like we have right now.

[CanadianGeezer]

Has Toshiba not heard about the global economy? The price quoted of $1,652 means a very 'slow' uptake if not total avoidance of the drive. The second tech 'bubble' burst more than a month ago .... perhaps they haven't heard! <br /> <br />When solid-state drives are priced at only twice the price of a hard disk drive then they might see marginal interest among the more affluent adapters ... other than that they are going to see a stagnant response.

[biggstuu]

So they should spend billions in R&#38;D and ensure that they give it to you for as cheap as possible to make you feel good about yourself?

[CanadianGeezer]

This has nothing to do with me or my feelings biggstuu .... Try trolling around somewhere else eh!

[BigGuns149]

I am afraid you don't have a clue about what type of people would be early adopters for such a device. Gamers who want 2 more fps aren't going to be the early adopters for SSDs, although I imagine in a year or so when the price for a 512GiB SSD is ~$300-400 instead of $1600 that you will see them on quite a few high end gaming rigs. Everybody seems to be comparing these against typical consumer drives when the more apt comparison would be comparing these to 15K SCSI/SAS drives, which are FAR more expensive then the 7200RPM consumer drives that most people are picking up at their local Fry's or online at NewEgg or TigerDirect. Even the "cheap" and "slow" MLC based SSDs in this article have lower latency and in many cases faster read/write speeds. Comparing an SSD that can peak at ~220MiB/sec and a HDD that peaks out ~110MiB/sec is a bit like comparing a Tesla Roadster to a Ford Focus and wondering why electric vehicles aren't flying off the shelves. You are comparing products that have entirely different intended markets. <br /> <br />Enterprise users are already showing interest in SSDs due to their high IO performance and low latency even at prices you consider absurd. In fact the faster SLC based SSDs, which can get TWICE the transfer speeds and require a PCIe slot are selling for ~$30/Gig as opposed to $3/Gib for the Toshiba 512GB SSD and while you might not comprehend it people are buying SSDs that are 10 times the cost per Gig of the Toshiba 512GB SSD and they aren't doing it because they are stupid. Furthermore, compared to SAS, FibreChannel or other enterprise technologies using an SSD via SATA actually doesn't have nearly as high of a price premium. If you are running a web server you are most concerned about IO performance per dollar, NOT dollar per Gig.and by a performance benchmark SSDs are a far better choice than HDDs. A basic SAS controller is going to cost more than a decent SATA hardware RAID card. <br /> <br />I would suggest you to actually do your HW, instead of spouting off stupidity. I can guarantee you that there will be people buying that Toshiba 512GB SSD once it becomes available. Even then the prices on SSDs are coming down FASTER than HDDs. If the trend continues the price gap will only decline. Come 2009, I would wager we will see SSDs under a lot of Christmas Trees because the price for a 512GB SSD will easily drop 60-80% in the next year.

[CanadianGeezer]

BigGuns149 many of us do not comment on what tech we have at hand ... but a few of us are well aware of its applications ... some of us are also 'bean' counters within this economy and the 'Economy' and its health is the crucial factor. One should realize that all the promotional hype in the world is not going to raise the prospects for the tech sector in the next eight quarters. (PS: I count beans for more beans than most can imagine).

[jacob1varghese]

Um, Canadian, did you read what BigGuns wrote at all?<br /><br />Did you understand it? It doesn't seem like you do. <br /><br />I'm not sure you understand the enterprise market. These devices are actually cheaper.

[shootthecops]

32gb flash/thumb drives cost ~50$-80$<br />now why would i pay 220$ for a 64gb flash drive?

[contentcreator--2008]

Write cycle life. The flash drives are designed to survive being used as the main drive on a system, while the flash thumb drives are not. While RAM has no particular write-cycle life, flash memory uses high-voltage processes that wear out some of the insulating layers in the chip. So writes have to be spread around to avoid burnout.

[protagonistic]

Not to mention the read/write speed of that 32GB flash drive. Try installing your OS of choice on it and see if you can live with it. I think you will find things are painfully slow.

[BigGuns149]

One word: performance. <br /> <br />A 32GB flash drive isn't even in the same league as a 64GB SSD for that I could buy for $180. For $180 I can buy an SSD that will read between 120-160 MB/sec OR I could save a few bucks and buy a 32GB SSD that at BEST tops out at 27MB/sec. Even that drive tops out on your price scale. A $50 flash drive will be lucky if it goes faster than 20MB/sec. Considering the modest price per gig differential you really would have to really be cheap or ignorant not to prefer the 64GB SSD.

[whsy82cnet]

I wish CNET would list which vendors are actually *shipping* with this drive.<br />A few months ago, when they posted "Intel ships 80 gig SSDs", I went to dell, hp (no *shipping* machine). <br />I also googled it, and when to Intel's site. Despite vendor support statements, no shipping machines.<br />I actually contacted HP and 2.5 months later despite saying they were intending to ship with one, they hadn't. And Dell was shipping with an old Samsung one.<br />It just seems some tire-kicking a reporter could do: Is this just an Intel press release announcing availability or has some vendor actually decided to incorporate the thing?

[BigGuns149]

Slightly in defense of CNET(yeah I know they are often stupid), but when Intel says they are shipping something it doesn't mean I will be able to walk down to Fry's next week and buy the drive AND it certainly doesn't mean HP or Dell is going to have a system with it soon. I remember when Intel launched the Core2Duo back in July '06 and no reseller I remember was shipping for about a week and HP didn't ship a computer with it for about a month. <br /> <br />Another issue is that in some cases some vendors have production issues. I've read from other sources that Intel still isn't producing their SSDs in volume and anything that can't be produced in volume you aren't likely to see HP or Dell touching because they don't want to deal with the complaints about long queues for backorders.. <br /> <br /> An SSD unlike a CPU is an even harder sell to end consumers who I hate to say this tend to prefer cheap over fast. I have noticed that HP and to a lesser degree Dell seem to have little interest in selling computers with high end consumer CPUs nevermind high performance HDDs. They will sell you a server with an expensive chip, but it seems that they don't see enough demand for home consumers to build anything with high end hardware for the non-server market. <br /> <br />I will agree with you that CNET ought to inquire the vendor (ie. Intel) who they know have already agreed to buy some of the product so that consumers can quickly snag one. It would probably be in Intel's interest insofar as the sooner resellers sell out the sooner they will reorder.

[dolphin6800]

I remember when an external hard drive (with a capacity measured in MB, not GB) cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. <br /> <br />I remember when 256k was a heck of a lot of RAM. <br /> <br />I'm not really that old. <br /> <br />This is a normal trajectory for technology improvement. Variants on SSDs have been around for a long time, in tech years anyway. 160GB for less than two grand (in a package that will fit in a laptop no less) is an absolute steal compared to what you had to pay for a few GB a couple of years ago (or a few MB 10 years ago). <br /> <br />SSDs will either dominate within a few years or some other storage technology will come along to displace them. The days of the hard drive as we know it are, thankfully, numbered.

[BigGuns149]

Finally, somebody with an informed opinion who understands what is going on!! <br /> <br /> The reality is that anyone following the price drops of SSDs can see that they are falling FAR faster than HDDs. It is only a matter of time(~2-3 years) before all except the cheapest consumers will start jumping onto the SSD bandwagon. Especially since, most people don't fill 500GB HDDs right now I think for a lot of consumers it isn't a question of when SSDs price per GB curve crosses HDDs, but rather when an SSD that is big enough for their needs drops to a price that they find reasonable. That is how most new technologies have gone. Everybody except the cheapest consumer jumps to the next thing before the new technology even passes the old one price wise, but the benefits of the new technology become hard to resist once the price premium is nominal. <br /> <br />I don't know how long we will stick with SSDs, but HDDs with their noisy thrashing sounds and poor access times appear destined for history if the current trend continues.

[Mergatroid Mania]

Heck, when we purchased our first IBM XT, it cost $1200 just for the 10Mb hard drive. Of course that was a ton of space back then....

[Mr. Dee]

I have no interest at all in SSDs for the foreseeable future. Just too expensive and unproven at the moment. When they get inline with mechanical disk drive pricing I will consider, but for now, its technology for ultra tech rich.

[BigGuns149]

I would wager that you will jump onto the SSD bandwagon long before the price per Gig curve crosses the cruve with 7200RPM drives. <br /> <br />History has shown that most people's predictions that most people won't adopt xyz until it is as cheap as the priot generation are bogus. Most new monitor sales were TFT long before they were similar in price to CRTs. People bought Dual Core processors in masses long before they were as cheap as single core processors and people will buy SSDs in masses before they even approach the price per GB of SSDs. <br /> <br />Once most customers see a demo of a computer with an SSD and they consider that they aren't likely to ever use more than what the SSD can hold they will be wondering why someone would want to buy a FAR slower HDD so that they can have xTB of empty space that they don't need or are likely to need anytime soon. I know a lot of people for which by the time they fill a 500GB SSD could go down to the store and buy a 64TB SSD! I think you overestimate how much demand there is bigger HDDs for a lot of consumers. Most consumers these days would much prefer speed over storage considering most HDDs are half empty today.

[Mergatroid Mania]

I agree. When these drives are down to around the price hard drives were at the time the majority of people started buying them, that's about when I'll look into it too.<br />My first hard drive was $1200, but that was a special treat. I don''t think I'll be spending $1200 on mass storage again any time soon.<br />Just like Blueray. Many people are still holding out for lower prices. Quite a few people refuse to buy even though they have a HD widescreen TV. I do own a few Bluerays myself, but all of them were bargens at under $15. In Canada new movies can cost upwards of $30 on Blueray. No wonder they aren't selling very well. Same with SSD. When the prices are down enough to compare with what people spend now on mass storage, they'll start selling better to consumers. It was the same with LCD monitors. When CRT monitors reached a certain sweet spot, people would buy them. When larger size CRTs reached that same sweet spot, people bought those. When LCD monitors reached that sweet spot, people bought LCDs, now we're seeing larger LCD monitors reaching that same price point. Same as it ever was...

[BigGuns149]

CNET really ought to change the headline to "pricing nags cheap consumers." Most people who have tried even some of the decent MLC nevermind SLC based SSDs don't find the pricing that bad compared to high performance HDDs. SSDs are already pretty close in line with 15K HDDs and in the next year could approach the price per gig of even 10K drives. Probably within 2 years they will be only 50% more than 7200RPM drives. Once that happens I imagine only the ignorant or really cheap aren't going to be interested in an SSD because most people really don't need larger HDDs, but virtually everyone would like better performance. <br /> <br />The reality is that except for people storing vast amounts of video 512GB is plenty of storage. Heck, there are a lot of people I know that would be fine with 128 or 256GB of storage. Even the people who need multi-TB HDDs will probably buy one small SSD as a boot drive just to improve general performance. <br /> <br />I don't expect to see lots of computers with SSDs in 2 months, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of computers with SSDs come next Christmas. The only people who seem to really be negative about the growth of SSDs are the folks at CNET who can't understand why these things are going to really take off next year.

[CanadianGeezer]

Sorry BigGuns but its the economy not personal decisions that will be the decising fator for many of us ... You are an enthusiast - Good for you .... but the majorityof us are just lowly consumers with other things to spend our shekels on ... So it Goes!

[BigGuns149]

@CanadianGeezer:<br /><br />I don't see SSDs becoming the norm in the next 6 months or even in the year, BUT if you have been following the falling prices you would realize that SSDs are dropping in price FASTER than HDDs. Since most people's needs aren't growing, most people are progressively buying computers that are better and better for less money in real dollars and often even in nominal dollars.<br /><br />A person buying a computer today will probably be able to buy a computer with a faster processor, more RAM, and an SSD that will be FAR faster and perhaps even bigger then their current computers HDD in three years. I don't know about you, but I have sold computers to average non-enthusiast buyers and a lot of people lost interest in a bigger HDD years ago. If you gave them two options a 256GB SSD or a 1.5TB HDD for the same price a lot of people who saw the side by side performance difference would pick the SSD because I have met a lot of people who have older 160 an 250GB HDDs that are half empty. As smaller HDDs get discontinued and SSD prices fall faster than HDDs that comparison doesn't sound as far fetched as it might seem.<br /><br />The enterprise market will buy hundreds of thousands if not millions of SSDs next year, because as I noted they are already practically at parity with 15K HDDs. The only people who are really calling these drives expensive are people here are CNET who are often ignorant of how much of a difference in performance these drives offer and how little HDD storage most consumers actually use. For every person who is creating their own personal archive of hundreds of movies there are FAR more people who don't do that who would rather have performance over storage that they will likely never use in the near future.<br /><br />I don't question that SSDs growth will be stymied a bit by a soft economy, but I think the adoption on these even amongst non-enterprise users will be FAR more than the cynics imply. As I have said elsewhere, MOST people will start buying SSDs long BEFORE they reach price parity with HDDs. That was true with TFT monitors, dual core processors, etc. and it will be the same with SSDs. With SSDs dropping in price 60-80%/year the day when there is a row of SSDs or computers with SSDs at your local electronics retailer isn't far off. It will take off in enterprise sector and enthusiast sectors next year and particularly with laptops I expect to see significant sales in ~18 months.

[Alex3917]

So does this use the new 32nm process that was supposed to debut in early 2009?

[NWLB]

Prices will come down, and they'll do so quickly. Too many players will be producing these things too soon to prevent it. Standard HDDs will remain for bulk storage, and they are fine for that.<br /><br />But high-end gamers, video production, other people with use for very fast bulk data handling, they'll buy them.<br /><br />Heck, as a game player myself, I wonder what kind of bump I'd get from putting two SSDs in a RAID 0 setup? Makes me wish I could hook SSDs directly to the GPU card and cut the middle steps.

[tremelai]

The 80GB Intel X25-M is an extremely fast drive. $500 is within the performance enthusiast price envelope. I remember when Seagate came out with the first 7200rpm SCSI drive, at 2GB of capacity, it cost $1,000! (it was loud too, sounded like a jet taking off) Flash based SSD is not new technology as companies such as Bitmicro have been shipping enterprise SSD's since 1999. What is new with today's flash based SSD's is the fact that Moore's Law is on the cusp of catching conventional drives in capacity and cost parity.

[EcuadorHomesOnline]

I have not seen any reliability data for SSD's - theoretically, they should be better than hard drives. Might be worth the cost for a drive that doesn't crash. <br /> <br />I have a 256MB IBM "MicroDrive" with a PCMCIA interface that's almost ten years old now. Look how fast the capacity went up and the prices went down on these little babies - they really made the whole portable music player industry a possibility. If the demand is there, the prices will come down.

[kucingliar]

Still take a long time to make SSD to replace old rotary hardisk. SSD benefit is really is age like it's producer (very rare hardisk past 10 year you know!). But it's still low in capacity (how long we'll take to see a SSD with 1 Tb capacity? Who know). The high price tag is relative things, but because old time still had a bigger capacity with lower price, for consumer with limited budget with hunger for huge capacity like me :) the only choise right now is the rotary one. SSD still to fancy for common customers I think.

[BigGuns149]

1TB SSDs will probably arrive in the next 6-9 months. For perspective, I don't remember any 256GB SSDs at CES 2008, but CES 2009 will have at least one 512GB SSD.<br /><br />I don't think the larger capacity of HDDs will be as big of an argument as some people make it out to be. Take MP3 players for example. HDD based players used to commonplace, but once flash based players hit ~8GB most people found that they didn't have a need for the additional capacity. Now that flash based players have hit 32GB HDD based players are almost completely gone.<br /><br />I think we will see the same with laptops first and then desktops a bit later. The reality that most bittorrent junkies aren't willing to admit is that most people's HDDs are nearly empty. I've encountered a lot of people who have HDDs that are only 15-25% full (i.e. getting a bigger HDD isn't going to be high on their priority list for their next computer). For everybody who seriously need 1TB there are a FAR more people who seriously don't what they would do with anything bigger than 320GB nevermind 1TB.<br /><br /> Sure there are some people who have filled a 1TB or even a 1.5TB HDD where moving all their data to SSDs won't be practical in near future, but there are a LOT of people who could put all their data one of the SSDs that are already on the market. The only thing holding them back from buying one is that the SSD size that is right for them hasn't hit a price point that they are comfortable with paying yet. Once it gets low enough they will get an SSD on their next computer or just put an SSD in their current computer. Considering SSDs seem to be dropping in price 60-80%/year I think a lot of people will hit the magic price point that they are willing to buy a lot sooner then you think.<br /><br />Finally, I think you ignore that there are other benefits other from better reliability. While NOT every SSD blows away HDDs performance wise there are a lot of SSDs that use the "slow" MLC technology that blow away most HDDs performance wise. Particularly on laptops where 5400RPM HDDs are the norm I think you will see a lot of people who move to SSDs for the performance gains as much as the better reliability. Even in the enterprise sector there is a lot of interest in SSDs due to their high IO performance because SSDs despite their high cost may ironically be cheaper to operate than HDDs because one SSD in some cases could replace multiple expensive SAS drives.<br /><br />I don't expect to see HDDs disappear from the shelves of the local Fry's anytime soon, but I think that you will see SSDs become commonplace FAR faster than you cynicism implies.

[jabberwolf]

Did you guys actually take a look at the specs of each SSD?<br />Intels blows the competition out of the water, especially concerning I/O traffic.<br />The x-25 extreme is 720 bucks and only 30GB but is faster ( very noticeably so) compared to anyone else... and especially with multiple writes. The regular X-25 is still faster than most out there but again for multiple writes and I/O performance, Intel stomps the competition.<br /><br />If I needed a portable and fast HD with long life and heavy writes, INTEL is the only choice. And if you dont, then there are others, and Intel knows this.