Intel's Braidwood Could Crush SSD Market

Lucas123 writes "Intel is planning to launch its native flash memory module, code named Braidwood, in the first or second quarter of 2010. The inexpensive NAND flash will reside directly on a computer's motherboard as cache for all I/O and it will offer performance increases and other benefits similar to that of adding a solid-state disk drive to the system. A new report states that by achieving SSD performance without the high cost, Braidwood will essentially erode the SSD market, which, ironically, includes Intel's two popular SSD models. 'Intel has got a very good [SSD] product. But, they view additional layers of NAND technology in PCs as inevitable. They don't think SSDs are likely to take over 100% of the PC market, but they do think Braidwood could find itself in 100% of PCs,' the report's author said."

Comments

Re:why flash?

[Diabolus Advocatus]

RTFA. It's cheaper than DRAM.

Is Braidwood already canceled?

[bboy_doodles]

There have also been rumors, however, that Braidwood has been canceled, at least in the near term:
http://www.dvhardware.net/article37368.html

Re:Is Braidwood already canceled?

[Colonel Korn]

There have also been rumors, however, that Braidwood has been canceled, at least in the near term:
http://www.dvhardware.net/article37368.html

I read another report (maybe at Anandtech) of the same thing earlier this week. It was a sidenote in a motherboard preview claiming that Intel removed it after it showed no meaningful performance advantage in real use, unlike an SSD.

Re:How about the reliability ?

[John_Booty]

SLC flash memory, which the article claims Braidwood will use, is an order of magnitude or two more durable (in terms of write cycles) than MLC flash memory, which is what is used in most consumer-level devices like Intel's X-25M SSDs.

Wear-leveling and overprovisioning should ensure a long life for the memory used in a scheme like Braidwood. Intel, generally speaking, knows what they're doing in this area. Now if only I could afford one of their drives...