AMD plans to throw its hat into the solid-state drive (SSD) arena and compete against Intel, Samsung, Kingston and others for a share of the fast growing consumer flash market.
Information leaked from an AMD educational website in China and reported by KitGuru.com shows AMD plans to release a series of The Radeon-branded R7 SSDs for gamers and professionals later this year.
The SSDs will come in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities and will use Toshiba's 19-nanometer flash lithography technology.
AMD today confirmed the leak of the data and said it plans to make an official announcement about the drives next week.
Rumors surrounding the announcement by AMD have been around since April.
According to a leaked AMD chart describing the new SSDs, they will have a top performance speed of 550MB/s and a four-year life expectancy. The 120GB, 240GB and 480GB models will have a max read/write speed of 550MB/s and 530MB/s, respectively.
The SSD market is a ripe one and it is even expected to come close to matching hard disk drive shipments over the next four years.
From 2014 to 2018, the compound annual growth rate for PC SSD shipments is expected to grow by 25% and revenue will increase by 17%, while PC hard disk drive shipments are expected to drop by 2.9%, according to IHS.
"SSDs are still a fast growing segment. AMD may see this gaming segment as an opportunity to enter," IHS analyst Fang Zhang wrote in an email reply to Computerworld. "SSD market is growing in all [market] segments."
Leading the SSD march is the enterprise market, where shipments for data centers are expected to grow by 42% and revenue will surge by 15% over the next four years, according to IHS. However, desktop SSDs are close to follow with 39% growth in shipments and an even greater 27% growth in revenue by 2018.
Additionally, SSDs are expected to experience a 35% shipment growth rate in notebooks, a 20% increase in the ultrathin market and a 14% rise in shipments in industrial settings, according to IHS.
Lucas Mearian covers consumer data storage, consumerization of IT, mobile device management, renewable energy, telematics/car tech and entertainment tech for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.