AMD Prepares For Storage War By Building A Branded Line Of SSD Products Using Toshiba Chips

We're getting awfully close to the point where, if you wanted to, you could build an entire PC using only AMD branded parts. One area that's missing is storage, though not for long --AMD is said to be expanding its product portfolio with a line of high performance solid state drives boasting the company's Radeon label.

What look to be official slides from AMD detailing the drives have started making the rounds on the web. Based on those slides, it looks like AMD will launch a trio of Radeon R7 Series SSDs in 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB capacities. These will be labeled as Radeon R7 120G, Radeon R7 240G, and Radeon R7 480G.

AMD SSD

The runt of the litter is the 120GB model, though it will hold its own in terms of performance with max read and write speeds rated at up to 550MB/s and 470MB/s, respectively. Other performance metrics include up to 85,000 random read IOPs, up to 90,000 random write IOPs, and up to 12,000 steady state random write IOPs.

As for the 240GB model, it's rated for up to 550MB/s read and 530MB/s write speeds, up to 95,000 random read IOPs, up to 90,000 random write IOPs, and up to 20,000 steady state random write IOPs.

Finally, the 480GB model will deliver up to 550MB/s read and 530MB/s write speeds, up to 100,000 random read IOPs, up to 90,000 random write IOPs, and up to 23,000 steady state random write IOPs.

All three drives will use Toshiba's 19nm Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips. Other features include a SATA 6Gbps interface, 2.5-inch form factor with an ultra slim 7mm width, 256-bit AES encryption. and S.M.A.R.T. health monitoring.

No word yet on pricing or availability.