[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

Micron has introduced the M500 solid state drive (SSD), which utilizes 20-nanometer (nm) multilevel cell (MLC) NAND flash to achieve terabyte-class capacity. The 960GB Crucial M500 SSD will be initially priced under $600.

The drive is available in three thin, lightweight form factors with capacities from 120–960GB. It packs nearly half a terabyte into an M.2 SSD module—a new form factor the size of a stick of gum.

The M500 SSD enables lightning fast boot-up, near instant wake from sleep, and fast application loading, says Micron. It uses a SATA 6Gb/s controller combined with Micron’s custom firmware to deliver up to 80,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS). The drive’s sequential read and write speeds reach up to 500 MB/s and 400 MB/s, respectively.

The new SSD will be available to consumers, businesses, and system builders under the Crucial brand, and to OEM customers under the Micron  brand.