Samsung has announced a record-breaking solid state drive, which also sports a decent storage capacity, and it's made from MLC (Multi-Layer Cell) flash memory chips. Samsung has specified the sequential read speed to 200MB/s and the write speed to 160MB/s, which is a big step up from the current record holder. Previous record-breaking solid state drives have been using SLC (Single-Layer Cell) flash chips, which are in general faster, but also sports less density. The new drive use the SATA 3Gbps interface and is of the 2.5" formfactor. The MTBF is estimated to 1 million hours. The drive will go into mass production before the end of the year, consumer samples in September, with a 1.8" model coming in Q4.
The use of MLC chips, instead of SLC, will hopefully help keep the price down, although there was no mention of any kind of price in the press release. With Samsung's new drive, and Intel's promise of faster and cheaper SSDs with its Centrino 2 platform, it looks like we're starting to get somewhere. Maybe 2009 will be the year where the solid state drive finally becomes a commodity.
"With development of the 256GB SSD, the notebook PC is on the brink of a second stage of evolution. 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," said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.
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