SuperTalent adds Ram to SSD to boost write speeds

SuperTalent has begun shipping SSDs with 128MB of on-board DRam in a bid to beat the poor random write performance of so many solid-state drives.

The 2.5in MasterDrive SX line includes capacities of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB. The latter have the same read and write speeds of 220MB/s and 200MB/s, respectively, SuperTalent said. For the lower-capacity unit, those speeds fall to 200MB/s and 120MB/s, respectively.

All three drives connect over 3Gb/s Sata. They're based on multi-layer cell (MLC) Flash, not the fastest form of the non-volatile memory, but SuperTalent said it was using an eight-channel architecture with an "advanced new eight-channel controller".

All that Ram is used to cache random writes which can then be combined to mask slow MLC random writes and take advantage of the Flash chips' higher sequential write speeds. Just so long as the power doesn't go before the cache contents have been written out.

ST didn't put a price to the 256GB drive, but online prices put the 64GB model around the $175 (£107/€126) mark and the 128GB version at $359 (£219/€258). ®