“According to Asian electronics component company person, Apple seems to adopt 400-Mbps interface ‘Toggle DDR2.0’ by 19nm process NAND flash memory for new MacBook Air,” Macotakara reports.
“Current SSD device Blade X-gale supporting SATA 2.6 will be abolished and new 19nm flash memory will be packaged into smaller chip and will be soldered on base circuit directly,” Macotakara reports.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Last December, Macworld ran some tests on a 2008 2.13GHz MacBook Air with a 128GB SSD, a built-to-order 2010 27-inch 2.93GHz quad-core Core i7 iMac with a 128GB SSD, and a 2010 13-inch 1.86GHz MacBook Air with 256GB flash storage, and found the following results:
AJA System Tests: Read
iMac: 204MBps
2010 MacBook Air: 201MBps
2008 MacBook Air: 104MBpsAJA System Tests: Write
iMac: 177MBps
2010 MacBook Air: 187MBps
2008 MacBook Air: 67MBpsDiskTester Fill Volume: Read
iMac: 213MBps
2010 MacBook Air: 210MBps
2008 MacBook Air: 104MBpsDiskTester Fill Volume: Write
iMac: 172MBps
2010 MacBook Air: 172MBps
2008 MacBook Air: 60MBps
For comparative purposes, does anyone know what the speed of the 2010 MacBook Air is?
100-150 MB/s faster.
Samsung and Toshiba are the only one’s who could provide this tech at volume and they haven’t exactly endorsed this specification yet.
The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) Working Group has published the standard for these speeds but they don’t have Samsung or Toshiba on board yet, which means this whole thing is still iffy for Apple.
For SSD that is soldered in Apple only needs to worry whether the tech will work as expected and supply is available.
I bet Apple with their usage in MBAs are driving the adoption. They must be one of the largest consumers for SSDs and can probably demand the configurations they want.
Apple are in a very healthy place where due to their volume and cash can steer the component industry in the direction they want.
Oh yeah, I forgot that nasty bit of business between Samsung and Apple is over…. oh wait!
From an AppleInsider article on the same:
“That storage was initially provided by Toshiba, but later changed to Samsung. The change allowed for read times to be upgraded to 261.1MBps, from 209.8Mbps, while write times were boosted to 209MBps from 175.6MBps.”
So a 400Mbps rate will be 33% faster. Needless to say this is way faster than a standard drive even with a Thunderbolt interface.
Clearly all portable HDs will be SSD or equivalent in the near future. Cost will start to go down once the chip manufacturers start jumping on the bandwagon. Once a 500GB capacity costs $200 demand will skyrocket. Current prices on Amazon at ~$250 for a 240GB SSD.
What would be really cool is if you could have add on slots for SSD memory. Imagine being able to just pop in a new card to double or triple your SSD capacity.
Ah lads! 400MBps in the headline but only 400Mbps in the article, 1/8th of the headline speed. It can’t be both – Which is it?
Another thing: Why are Flash cards expressing transfer speed in Bps instead of bps? I’m still used to storage size in bytes(B) and transfer speeds in bits(b) per second. (Eight bits in each byte.) Confused
It’s bytes. Many people, including the author of this report it seems, don’t even know that there is a difference.
The original linked article (in Japanese and English) does not appear to have any speed mentioned in the headline, and only 400 Mbps mentioned in the text (in both languages, tech terms in English in the japanese section).
This is a MDN headline error.
I’m just hoping for an higher-capacity SSD option on the 13″er….
This iCloud isn’t boom, It’s ATOMIC BOOM. Noone else is gonna have the seemless experience Apple is going to deliver with breakneck speed. I mean, sure you’ll have some cobbled thing, thats prone to viruses, or you’ll have a blazing fast Mac.
Apple should make a deal with TI and get their revolutionary FRAM technology which beats Flash hands down many times.
RobG, you mean FRAM beats flash hands down. It’s no big deal to beat Flash.
I agree. FRAM oil filters are the fastest around. I can do an oil change in 15 minutes flat.
Yeah, just like this article, it has fewer threads.