Samsung has developed one of the largest-capacity and highest-speed solid state drives to date. At the fifth annual Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei, Taiwan, Samsung Electronics announced the world’s fastest, 2.5″, 256GB multi-level cell (MLC) based solid state drive (SSD) using a SATA II interface. Performance data of the new Samsung 256GB SSD features a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write speed of 160MB/s. Samsung’s new MLC 256GB SSD, besides being comparable in speed to an SLC-based SSD, also boasts reliability equal to that of SLC SSDs, with a mean time between failures (MTBF) of one million hours, while costing considerably less. Power consumption is also exceptionally low at 0.9 watts in active mode. The Samsung MLC-based 2.5-inch 256GB SSD is about 2.4 times faster than a typical HDD. That is a pretty big improvement in terms of SSD speeds. In laptops especially, these drives with no moving parts unlike conventional ones, have the potential to save power and boost battery life along with operating system responsiveness. Samsung’s new 256GB SSD is also the thinnest drive with the largest capacity to be offered. In addition, the drive offers a sophisticated data encryption process that prevents data stored on the SSD from being accessed in an unauthorized manner, even after the SSD is removed from the PC. Samsung is expected to begin mass producing the 2.5-inch, 256GB SSD by year end, with customer samples available in September. A 1.8-inch version of the 256GB SSD is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2008.
