Intel also announced today that shipments of their new Solid State Drives (SSDs), the X18-M and the X25-M Mainstream SATA SSDs, have begun. These new drives are based on multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash technology with the X18-M a 1.8 inch drive and the X25-M a 2.5 inch drive. Both drives are currently available in 80GB capacities with a 160GB version to be sampled in the fourth quarter of this year.

Spec wise, the 80GB drive can hit read speeds of up to 250MB/sec with an 85 microsecond read latency and write speeds up to 70MB/sec. With the drives now shipping, Intel also announced the pricing to these new 80GB SSDs. The 80GB drive will be selling for %595 in quantities of up to 1000.

Intel also plans on introducing a new line of single-level cell (SLC) SSDs for the server, storage, and enterprise markets within the next 90 days. The new SSD will be called the Intel X25-E Extreme SATA SSD and according to Intel are designed to maximize the Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS).

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