SoftwareA-DATA to OCZ: 64MB Cache on SSD? Easy.
Not to be outdone by the impending release of OCZò€™s high-performance Vertex series of solid-state drives, A-DATA has announced a new 256 GB SSD that features the same 64 MB of internal cache as OCZò€™s product.Ò The company was showing off the SATAII SSD 300 Plus, as well as its mammoth 512 GB XPG SSD, at this yearò€™s Cebit show in Hanover, Germany. The loss of capacity isnò€™t that bad of a deal if you look at it like a fat runner shedding weight; A-DATA is boasting speeds of up to 250 MB/secÒ and 160 MB/sec on the driveò€™s sustained reads and writes, respectively. That"s 20 MB/sec faster reads than the company"s XPG SSD.
You can thank the included 64MB SDRAM buffer for the speed boost. Double the size of more typical SSD caches, the extra memoryò€”alongside an alleged new controller design--allows the drive to spit out better performance by providing more room for storing frequently accessed data.Ò Although solid-state drives are known for their speed in accessing data, itò€™s still faster to pull information straight out of the drive cache than the internal memory cells. For what it"s worth, the OCZ Vertex currently wins the tale of the boasting tape, as its drive allegedly delivers 80 MB/sec greater sustained writes than A-DATA"s SATAII SSD 300 Plus.
Thereò€™s no word on the price or estimated street date for the new A-DATA drives.Ò Nor do we know the specifics of the controller in the drive, including how many memory channels it might be able to handle at once. But the company has said that it plans to launch the 300 Plus in four different storage capacities: 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB.