Both Indilinx and Sand Force are extremely powerful SSD controllers, and the only thing holding them back right now is the need for more bandwidth. The SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, which effectively caps the bandwidth at around 280MB/s, this is currently the barrier for performance improvements.
Unfortunately, this is not scheduled to appear until the end of the year. Crucial Micron has already shown what the new 6Gbps SATA standard can do for SSDs in terms of performance. We’ve seen it in their Crucial RealSSD C300, which will remain the best-performing drive for several months to come.
According to Bit-Tech, both Indilinx and Sand Force are aiming for a SATA 6Gbps launch in the fourth quarter of 2010. Whether any other players in the market such as Intel or JMicron have other plans is unclear – if not, Micron and Crucial’s RealSSD remains the only SSDs with the new standard until the end of the year.
Micron has also stated that it’s licensing their SATA 6Gbps controllers to A-DATA, something the manufacturer mentioned during CeBIT in March. The new 3rd party Micron-based solid-state drives are expected to launch after the Computex trade show this June.