Samsung Now Producing 256GB Solid State Drive - Substantial Performance Gains
Written by Andreas G 20 November 2008 19:46

Samsung is one of the leading harddrive and memory manufacturers and that it is also a spearheading the development of Solid State Drives is anything but shocking news. It has now announced the mass production of a 256GB flagship model. Samsung claims that its new SSD doubles the performance of previous models, I.e. read speeds up to 220MB/s and read speeds of 200MB/s. This despite the fact that the drive uses MLC chips, but with in-house memory chips, memory controller and firmware Samsung has managed to reach new levels of performance. Samsung's 256GB will appear on the market relatively soon, but the price is yet to be announced.

Press release follows after the break;

SEOUL, South Korea-Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing 256 gigabyte (GB) solid state drives for use in notebooks and desktop PCs. With the addition of the high-speed 256GB drive, Samsung now offers the most extensive line of SSDs in the industry with 8, 16, and 32GB SSDs for low-density designs and 64, 128 and 256GB alternatives for the higher densities.

The new 256GB SSD more than doubles the performance rates of Samsung 64GB and 128GB SSDs to become the SSD with the highest overall performance in the personal computer industry, combining sequential read rates of 220MB/s (megabytes per second) with sequential write rates of 200MB/s. This sharply narrows the performance gap between read and write operations to only 10 percent, compared to a read-write speed difference of between 20 and 70 percent for other SSDs. In addition, erase cycles are a rapid 100GBs per minute, allowing the entire drive to be re-written much faster, when needed.

”While SSD’s have always been touted for their performance, Samsung is turning the storage industry upside down now with an SSD that delivers truly disruptive performance,” said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. ”Getting our exceptionally high performing 256GB SSD in a notebook is analogous to having a 15,000rpm drive, without all of its size, noise, power and heating drawbacks.”

The Samsung 256GB SSD expedites data transfer when large multimedia files are simultaneously read and stored. It can store 25 high-definition movies* in just 21 minutes, a significant advancement over a 7200rpm hard disk drive (HDD), which takes about 70 minutes. Furthermore, the 256GB SSD launches applications 10 times faster than the fastest 7200rpm notebook HDD.

The 256GB SSD’s advanced performance can be attributed to a new, optimized, single platform design consisting of a chip controller, NAND flash and special drive firmware all developed by Samsung. This single platform is designed to easily adapt to Samsung’s 40nm class NAND flash memory.

Also offering a high degree of energy efficiency, the new drive consumes 1.1 watts of power versus two or more watts for a comparable HDD, while delivering outstanding reliability and durability. The high operating speed of the 256GB SSD translates into longer periods in either stand-by or idle mode resulting in up to 40 minutes of extended operation on a single battery charge.

Similar in weight to a 128GB SSD (81 grams), the 2.5-inch multi-level cell (MLC) 256GB SSD retains the standard 9.5 millimeter (mm) drive thickness.

Samsung's 256GB SSD is also available with optional proprietary encryption programming that provides full disk encryption, a key feature for many corporate users.

About Samsung Electronics

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2007 consolidated sales of US$105 billion. Employing approximately 150,000 people in 134 offices in 62 countries, the company consists of four main business units: Digital Media Business, LCD Business, Semiconductor Business, and Telecommunication Business. Recognized as one of the fastest growing global brands, Samsung Electronics is a leading producer of digital TVs, memory chips, mobile phones and TFT-LCDs. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com.

* Each HD movie has approximately 10GB of data storage.

¹ Based on PC Mark05 test results

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