Fusion-io preps 700MB/sec home flash drive

Typically known for its business storage, Fusion-io provided a glance at an upcoming solid-state drive built for very high-performance home systems. The ioExtreme card will hold just 80GB but switches from SATA to PCI Express and is tuned for sheer transfer rate above all else: data reading speeds hover between 500MB and 700MB per second, or about five times as quick as current SSDs. The extra speed is pitched as ideal for particularly disk-heavy tasks such as compiling code, content editing or large games.

The card is still in the development stage and hasn't received its official operating system support or complete technical details. Fusion-io plans to release the ioExtreme in early 2009 and is targeting a price below $1,000, putting it in the same price range as high-end traditional but slower SSDs.