Intel's 34nm NAND SSDs launch in two weeks

Quick as a flash (drive).

Rumours are growing louder that Intel will be launching new SSDs based on the firm's 34nm NAND chips within just a couple of weeks. Previous reports had said Chipzilla planned to come out with its new 34nm flash memory drives in Q4, but that timetable has been nudged up.

Solid State Drives (SSDs) have been around for a while, but their high costs, limited capacities and sometimes questionable reliability have ensured the drives have remained somewhat niche. But this is all about to change, apparently.

We've been told that with these new 34nm NAND SSDs, users can expect higher performance, higher capacities, and most importantly, lower prices.

Amongst the 34nm offerings hot off the production line will be a 320GB drive, plus 160GB and 80GB capacities too. But there very well could be more. Our sources tell us there will be drives big enough to replace the HDDs in most, if not all laptops.

Intel is said to be really optimistic about SSD prospects in 2010, especially considering the smaller and cheaper process node along with SSD specific optimizations built into Windows 7.

So brace yourselves for these new drives coming out in about two weeks, and watch as prices fall to lower levels.