Sans a formal announcement, a new solid-state drive has surfaced from Intel meant for ultrabooks. The SSD 313 has just 20GB or 24GB of storage, and is intended as a boot drive that sits next to a more conventional, rotating disk. Peak reads per second (160MB for 24GB drives and 220MB for 20GB) and writes per second (115MB for 24GB and 100MB for 24GB) aren’t as fast as Intel’s best drives, but are still quick enough to hit Intel’s responsiveness goals.
The drives are based on more recent 25-nanometer manufacturing and can fit into tight spaces, including a micro SATA card. It runs on SATA2 rather than SATA3, although its performance isn’t fast enough to saturate the faster bus.
Bulk prices begin at $120 for a 20GB drive. The 313 series isn’t likely to be available as a stand-alone upgrade for aftermarket buyers, but it may show up in many systems that could benefit from an SSD boot, including performance desktops and regular notebooks.
