PCIe Flash Storage on Laptops

October 1st, 2013

A friend of mine showed me his brand new Apple Macbook Air.

That thing is very fast.

There are many articles out there about how Apple used PCIe based flash storage to achieve that incredible throughput—but you sorta need to have the jarring experience of running applications on that machine for those numbers to hit home. I found my head involuntarily jerking backward a lot and my jaw hanging slack. Oh yeah, the machine weighs less than 3 pounds.

Anyway, as far as I’ve been able to see, none of Apple’s competitors are offering any laptops that use PCIe flash storage—even in a heavier and uglier package. Is that right? Is the new Macbook Air the only machine that uses PCIe storage?

Update: Sony Vaio Pro Has PCIe Storage

Sony Vaio Pro:

VAIO Pro 13 includes a high speed PCIe SSD drive standard on all models.

Update: Be Careful with the Sony

GP writes:

I ran across this today. Apparently, anyone buying a Sony for the PCIe SSD has to be very careful to get one that makes full use of the PCIe SSD:

“…Something not many people are aware of is that there are actually two physically different Sony VAIO Pro 13 ultrabook configurations being distributed, those that have been constructed for pre-configured sales and those for custom build. Pre-configured configurations may use a SATA based PCIe SSD, while all custom builds use a much higher performing native PCIe SSD. We were a bit confused as Sony was clearly advertising ‘PCIe solid state drive’ in its configurations worldwide, and even stating that the PCIe ‘booted-up faster, launched apps at lightning speeds and enjoy snappier overall performance capabilities versus a traditional mSATA SSD drive’ In the case of pre-configured SATA PCIe SSD systems, this marketing is incorrect….’

http://www.thessdreview.com/hardware/notebooks/sony-vaio-pro-13-ultrabook-review/

Posted in Gear, Off Topic, Technology | Top Of Page

One Response to “PCIe Flash Storage on Laptops”

  1. cryingfreeman says:
    October 2, 2013 at 5:53 am

    I never knew about this until now – shame on me, I try to keep on top of such things.

    I pimped my own laptop by using some of the RAM as a de facto hard drive for blistering speed on some programs. It’s absurdly faster than even the new Samsung 840 SSD on the laptop. Maybe worth looking into for anyone that needs a bit extra kick beyond even SSDs.

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