Intel and Micron have a joint venture in which the companies are promising us cheaper SSD in the fourth quarter of the year. The companies have reduced the size of the transistors to an unbelievable 25nm with the hope of being able to produce drives in the 160GB, 320GB and 600GB for less.

But before you run out with the hope of grabbing a cheap SSD unit, it may not be until 2012 before we see inexpensive SSD replacing mechanical drives. In a recent article it states the following:

Today IMFT is announcing that it has begun sampling 2-bits-per-cell MLC NAND flash manufactured using 25nm transistors. The company believed it had a 6 month head start over the competition in 34nm, and now believes that with 25nm NAND it’s roughly a year ahead of anyone else.

Volume production will happen sometime in Q2, with products shipping before the end of the year. In my last SSD article I mentioned that Intel’s 3rd generation X25-M would be shipping in Q4 at 160GB, 320GB and 600GB. These drives will use IMFT’s new 25nm flash.

The first 25nm product is an 8GB (64Gbit) 2-bits-per-cell MLC NAND flash. A single 8GB die built on IMFT’s 25nm process has a die size of 167mm². Immersion lithography is apparently necessary to produce these 25nm NAND devices, but the extent is unclear. This is technically Intel’s first device that requires immersion lithography to manufacture.

What would be nice is if we could get cheaper SSD for booting the operating system and the standard mechanical drives for storage of our stuff. That should provide quicker, almost instant, boot times. For now we need to be patient and rely on our continued use of the traditional hard disk until SSD come down in price.

Comments welcome.

Source.