Intel Ships 160GB X25-M Solid State Disk

In our initial look at Intel's X25-M 80GB solid state drive, we mentioned that the company had plans to introduce 160GB variants a some point in early 2009. According to Intel's PR Chip Shots website, however, 2.5" 160GB SSDs have just begun shipping and a 1.8" model will follow shortly...

"Intel is expanding its award-winning Intel X25-M and X18-M SATA Solid-State Drive (SSD) family by announcing the production release of a 160 gigabyte (GB) capacity drive in a 2.5-inch form factor. The product is shipping now, and a 1.8-inch 160GB version will begin shipping next month."

Information listed on the Intel site would lead us to believe the new 160GB SSD and original 80GB model share the same specifications, and differ only in capacity. According to the site, both drives feature Intel Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory in a 10 Channel Parallel Architecture and both offer read speeds up to 250MB/s and write speeds up to 70MB/s with read latency of 85 microseconds.

There is no official word on pricing and the drives haven't hit the major price search engines, but considering the 80GB X25-M sells for about $500, we expect the 160GB model to sell for well north of that figure.