Samsung Electronics told customers attending this month’s Samsung Mobile Solutions Forum in Taipei that it has developed the world’s fastest, 2.5-inch, 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) for use in laptops and other consumer electronics gear.
Based on multi-level cell (MLC) technology with the ability to store more than a single bit of information per cell, the new SSD will effectively eliminate density as a barrier to SSD adoption in laptops and other consumer products, Samsung executives say.
“With development of the 256GB SSD, the notebook PC is on the brink of a second stage of evolution,” said Samsung Semiconductor Vice President Jim Elliott. “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.”
A Steep Growth Curve
Samsung has not released pricing information for its forthcoming 256GB drive as well as a smaller 1.8-inch SSD due out in the fourth quarter of this year. But Samsung Semiconductor Senior Marketing Manager Steve Weinger thinks the historic price declines for flash memory provide a good indicator.
“Price declines have been occurring at a 40 to 45 percent year-over-year clip for the last 10-plus years pretty steadily,” Weinger noted. “And now we have the first drives based on the technology leading that decline.”
One benefit of MLC is lower cost, Weinger observed. “Today at the gigabyte level, the cost of an MLC chip is less than two times that of an SLC (single-level cell) of comparable density,” he said. “Having MLC at a higher-density price point is opening up that consumer market for us.”
Samsung’s forthcoming 128GB SSD will hit the density level that Weinger thinks best fits the full spectrum of business uses for the technology. “The 256GB SSD…