Toshiba has announced the expansion of their line up of NAND-flash-based solid state drives (SSD) with the industry’s first 2.5-inch 512-gigabyte (GB) SSD and a broad family of fast read/write SSDs based on 43 nanometer (nm) Multi-Level Cell NAND. The new drives provide a high level of performance and endurance for use in notebook computers, gaming and home entertainment systems, and will be showcased at International CES 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada from January 8 to 11, 2009.
In addition to the 2.5-inch, 512GB drive, the 43nm NAND SSD family also includes capacities of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB, offered in 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch drive enclosures or as SSD Flash Modules. Samples of the new drives will be available in first quarter (January to March) 2009, with mass production in the second quarter (April to June) 2009.
Toshiba’s second-generation SSDs bring increased capacity and performance for notebook computers, utilizing an advanced MLC controller which is also compatible with further advanced process, that achieves higher read/write speeds, parallel data transfers and wear leveling to optimize performance, reliability and endurance. The drives enable improved system responsiveness with a maximum sequential read speed of 240MB per second (MBps) and maximum sequential write speed of 200MBps, enabling an improvement in overall computing experience, and faster boot and application loading times. The drives also offer AES data encryption to prevent unauthorized data access.
“The solid state drive market is evolving rapidly, with higher performance drives to meet market requirements, and differentiated product families targeted for appropriate applications,” said Mr. Kiyoshi Kobayashi, Vice President of Toshiba Corporation’s Semiconductor Company, in the press release. “This new 43nm SSD family balances value/performance characteristics for its targeted consumer applications, through use of MLC NAND and an advanced controller architecture.”
Toshiba and many market analysts expect SSDs to begin to gain significant traction in the market in 2009, growing to approximately 10% of the notebook market by 2010, and 25% of the notebook market by 2012. Toshiba expects the value/performance of its MLC NAND-based SSD line-up to help speed the acceptance of solid state storage.
Toshiba will continue to promote innovations that widen the horizons of the NAND Flash market and support its continued leadership in that market. The company will spur demand for SSD in notebook PCs, netbooks and digital consumer products by enhancing its lineup, offering products with different densities and interfaces in a range of packages, while advancing device performance.
Source: Toshiba
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Note: Pricing for these drives has not yet been announced by Toshiba.
…and they will be available soon for the paltry sum of $10,000,000,000.00 each.
At some point, the mini will be pencil thin. At that point, my life will be complete.
Sad…
But complete.
These are MLC SSD drives…not SLC SSD. Thats a HUGE difference. MLC SSD’s rate much lower in terms of longevity of the drive itself when compared to SLC SSDs, in almost 10 to 1 ratio. If this was a 512GB SLC SSD, then that’s truly stunning. This is not as big as it seems people
Still, traditional hard-drives have their days numbered.
Pricing: If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
Pencils and paper will make a come back as soon as Planet X comes within eye sight of Earth.
Can I smell the beginning of the end of the CD? A no-moving-parts Hi-Fi setup would be the obvious next step. Only media cost holds it back.
Wake me up in 2011 when these are affordable for the average joe.
I have to admit that technology has changed tremendously over my 50 year lifetime. I learned how to use a slide rule in high school, then bought my first TI calculator which was truly amazing in its capabilities. Now it runs as an app on my MBP and iPhone.
It appears that most laptop apps are going to migrate to the handheld device. The only capability really missing is the large (HD) display. I guess the next step in technology evolution is a means to create a virtual HD or better display, either with glasses or neural implant or something. May the desktop, and now the laptop rest in peace!
@Gary – Right you are. I bought an HP80 Business Calculator in 1974 for $320 under an employee discount program. In todays world, that $320 would be about $1,387, the price of a brand new Aluminum MacBook. Isn’t technology wonderful?
The end of the CD? not just but ALL OPTICAL discs and considering even the cheapest are not much cheaper to make and involve antiquated “moving parts” technology as the (relative to the flash tech) archaic HDD (in addition to being only a fraction of the read/write speed of HDD) they will be gone too.
….and nothing give me greater pleasure that by FAR the earliest and nastiest CARNAGE will be that EMPEROR’S new clothes of a technology – BLU-RAY – and all the geeks that have personally invested in such so much for so little rip of technology, who are so desperate to delay its ever more inevitable DEMISE they will say ANYTHING,,,,,,,***beats up blue-ray to agonising death with INFINATELY faster,convenient,soon to be much cheaper relative to blu-ray and SUPERIOR SSD*** 😀
@lurker:
I remember a $300 TI calculator my father bought me around ’73. I was amazed that you could PLUG IT IN. Very high tech for the time.
I’m totally jealous of these kids nowadays, though. iPods, iPhones, Macs, OS X are normal for them.
If we’d have had this stuff in the 70’s, by now I’d be richer than Steve Jobs is.
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
Thanks for information
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The “price whining” here is laughable, ‘cos it has ALWAYS been this way for ALL new tech.
Examples of things I’ve bought;
One 1MB SIMM- $120 (Yes, $480 for 4 MEGABYTES)
486DX2-66 CPU (just the chip, no motherboard) $700
60 MB HD- $300
4GB SCSI HD- $380
386SX-16 computer-$3500
NEC 3x CDROM burner- $300
Just tell me when I can have half a terabyte in my iPhone, pleez.
I’ve quit buying all the newest tech.
From now on I wait until the price drops and I buy what I require, not the latest “flashy thing” that may or may not work for me.
Function over Design. Save’s me money.
Soon (3-5 yrs) a mac in every shirt pocket.
Papyri and sytlus are the poor man’s hard drives…look to see more of them around as the economy continues to sour…
Moving ahead in 2009, we will see an increase in the adoption of SSDs, given their progress in the areas of reliability, performance, and energy efficiency. As PM1 commented, the trend for declining flash prices continues as even larger capacity SSDs will cost less than HDDs of the same capacity.
For more information, SanDisk has created a website called the SSD Academy that offers consumers and professionals a lot of information on the SSD market as well as general flash usage. http://www.sandisk.com/ssd