Intel Wins Top Spots in SSD Storage Drive Ranking

From PC World: Chip giant Intel won first place in a ranking of flash memory-based Solid State Drives (SSDs), in which the researcher, DRAMeXchange Technology, pilloried the industry over the wide disparity of quality among the storage devices.

Intel took first place in two categories, one for its Intel X25-M 160GB SSD (SSDSA2M160G2GC) and the other with its 80GB Intel X25-M SSD (SSDSA2M080G2GC). DRAMeXchange praised the chip maker for speedy boot-up times on the SSDs.

Beyond the rankings, which are listed below, the Taiwanese market researcher blamed controller chips, flash memory storage chips, and firmware for a wide disparity of quality among SSDs.

SSDs are made using flash memory chips and have no moving parts. The storage drives grew in popularity after Apple started using them for music storage in its popular iPods, and have since caught on as the main storage for smartphones. SSDs have continued to expand in netbooks, laptops and servers due to their speedy run times, and they give off little heat so they don't need fans and are more power efficient. Their high price, especially compared to HDD (hard disc drives) with much greater storage capacity, has kept them out of many systems.

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