New Macbook Airs Offer Blistering Ssd Speeds Thanks To Direct Pcie Connections

Apple’s new Haswell-powered MacBook Airs produced SSD read and write speeds so fast in benchtests by French site MacBidouille that they initially thought it must have been a bug in their test software. A second run in different software revealed that, no, the latest Airs really do offer read & write speeds higher than the maximum possible with SATA 3.

The secret, noted by AnandTech in its own tests, is that Apple is using the same PCIe-based SSDs in the latest MacBook Air as they announced for the new Mac Pro … 

PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) is the standard already used in the ExpressCard slot used in some laptops, and offers a direct link to the motherboard without the bottleneck created by a SATA interface (SATA 3 tops out at 600MB/s).

AnandTech‘s tests confirmed MacBidouille‘s results, with even higher speeds seen on larger file transfers, describing it as the first time PCIe storage has been seen in a mainstream consumer device.

While Apple’s focus for the new CPU was better battery-life rather than faster speed, tests by Primate Labs (via MacRumors) show that the processor speeds are 3-8% faster than the previous models.