Kingston Considers USB 3.0 SSD for August Release

It can certainly be said that this year's expo in Taipei saw Kingston making its entrance in full force. Not only did the company show off a 2,544MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory kit, but it also came up with a 2,533MHz triple-channel version. This definitely turned some heads and, to take advantage of this attention, the memory and storage solution developer has put on display an upcoming portable solid state drive.
Dubbed HyperX SSD, the device represents a merger between high-speed flash memory and the next-generation SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard.

Similar to the heatspreaders found on the HyperX DDR3 memory line, the drive is colored blue and should prove quite fast, even among its own kind. It should probably be noted, however, that 'its kind' isn't exactly widespread, since external SSDs are far fewer than external/portable hard drives. This is because the high data transfer rates that Flash memory is capable of would be wasted on the limited USB 2.0 interface and even the eSATA connection.

When USB 3.0 enters the picture though, the situation changes, because the theoretical maximum data transfer rate of 5Gbps can definitely take advantage of an SSD's potential Kingston's HyperX will supposedly read at 190MB/s and write at 160MB/s. These numbers are quite noteworthy, especially considering the decent storage capacities of not just 64GB, but also 128GB and 256GB.

According to The Tech Report, the HyperX SSD is currently on display at Computex, alongside a 64GB flash card based on the SDXC standard and capable of 60MB/s and 35MB/s when reading and writing, respectively. The hardware maker even said that the SDXC standard had a maximum of 104MB/s and that it would eventually be scaled to 300MB/s. This item will start selling in about two weeks, unlike the SSD itself, which won't be out until August.