Apple adopts native PCIe flash storage
 

In what might be the kiss of death for a promising new technology, Apple has announced that it will adopt PCIe Flash Storage.

The move appears to follow Sony's announcement that it will begin selling the VAIO Pro 13 laptop with a high-speed PCIe SSD.

Michael Yang, an analyst at memory and storage research firm IHS iSuppli, pointed out that Apple's move is more evolutionary than revolutionary because PCIe flash cards for servers have been around for years.

But he told Computerworld that the addition of native PCIe flash in the Mac Pro and MacBook Air "officialises" the technology for the masses.

However Apple has a poor record when it comes to bringing in new technology. Historically Apple has bought in new technology, such as Thunderbolt and Firewire and watched as other standards do better.

PCIe however does show some signs of wider adoption already. example, Intel and Plextor are working on Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) SSDs that will use a mini-PCIe connector. Plextors NGFF SSD measures just 22mm by 44mm in size and connects to a computers motherboard through a PCIe 2.0 x2 interface.

Chipzilla has gone on record as saying that it sees a future for PCIe especially in desktops and notebooks. But then it worked with Apple over the largely unseen Thunderbolt technology.

It appears that they will be headed to higher end devices as they will be a little on the pricey side.

PCIe-based flash is solid-state performance on steriods. It uses switch architecture, which has multiple end points to allow the sharing of one endpoint with lots of different devices.

A new Apple's Mac Pro will boast 1.25GBps reads and 1.0GBps writes. Which is more than double SATA III SSDs today which offer about 550MB/sec speeds.

http://news.techeye.net/mobile/apple...-flash-storage