Samsung launches 256GB peak in SSD

Samsung Electronics has announced a compact solid-state drive equipped with a Sata II interface for connectivity.

The 2.5-inch, 256GB, multi-level cell (MLC) solid-state drive (SSD) is only 9.5mm thick, measuring 100.3mm long and 69.85mm wide. According to Samsung's figures, as told to ZDNet.co.uk's sister site ZDNet Korea, it has a sequential read speed of 200MB per second (MB/s) and sequential write speed of 160MB/s, making it about 2.4 times faster than a typical Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

The company announced the new drive, which the company claims is the largest-capacity SSD drive to be offered with a Sata II interface, on Monday at the Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taiwan.

"With the development of the 256GB SSD, the notebook PC is on the brink of a second stage of evolution," said Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing at Samsung. "This change is comparable to the evolution from the Sony Walkman to Nand memory-based MP3 players, representing an initial step in the shift to thinner, smaller SSD-based notebooks with significantly improved performance and more than ample storage."

Along with the high speed of the drive, Samsung is also claiming high reliability. The company quotes a mean time between failures (MTBF) of one million hours. Quoted power consumption is 0.9 watts in "active mode", the company said.

There has been a recent increase in interest in SSDs, with Intel being one of the companies looking at ways to incorporate SSDs with high storage capacity into its technology. In April it announced it was to launch a 160GB SSD later this year, and reports suggest Intel may bundle SSDs with its upcoming Centrino 2 platform.

Samsung said it expected to begin mass-producing the 2.5-inch, 256GB SSD by year end, with customer samples available in September, according to ZDNet Korea. A 1.8-inch version of the 256GB SSD is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2008, but no details of price were given.