256GB solid-state drives next year?

[Nick Batzdorf]

http://www.macworld.com/article/132358/2008/03/256gbssd.html Samsung to deliver 256GB solid-state drive in 2009 by Agam ShahMar 4, 2008 3:36 pm5 Comments 19 Samsung Electronics could deliver 256GB solid-state drives next year, quadrupling the capacity of SSDs it is currently shipping to PC makers, the company said. Samsung recently plugged 64GB SSDs into Lenovo’s ThinkPad X300 laptops, which only have SSD storage built in, said Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor. The drive maker also supplies the 64GB SSD available as a storage option for the MacBook Air. Samsung is due to ship samples of 128GB SSDs in the middle of this year. The 128GB samples will only reach hardware makers, and Samsung will continue to work with PC makers like Lenovo and Dell to deliver SSD drives in capacities from 64GB to 128GB, Elliott said. He declined comment on when Samsung would make SSD drives available directly to consumers, or to say more about 256GB SSDs other than that they could be out next year. Samsung is trying to double SSD capacity every 12 months, he said. In the long term, SSDs may replace hard drives as primary storage for notebook PCs because they are lightweight, power-efficient and fast. Samsung’s SATA II SSD drive is two to five times faster than conventional hard drives, weighs 73 grams (0.07 pounds) and consumes 30 percent less power than a typical hard drive, according to Samsung. Pricing on SSDs are prohibitive at the moment, but the cost-per-gigabyte equation will improve once the industry moves to multilevel cell (MLC) SSDs by the second half of this year, Elliott said. Most of the drives shipping now are single-level cell SSDs (SLCs), which cost more. The price of a 64GB single-level SSD is around $600, said Nam Hyung Kim, director and chief analyst at iSuppli. Apple charges MacBook Air owners $999 to install an SSD in the laptop. SLCs are roughly twice as fast and have at least an order of magnitude better reliability than MLCs in terms of endurance cycles, said Joe Unsworth, principal research analyst at Gartner. However, MLC SSDs are far cheaper, less than half the cost of SLC SSDs, Unsworth said. “MLC SSDs are currently sampling, but are having a difficult time proving the performance and reliability” compared to SLC SSDs, Unsworth said.

[Nick Batzdorf]

 Fricking Safari and the VSL site. :( Let me try that again in Firefox.

http://www.macworld.com/article/132358/2008/03/256gbssd.html 

Samsung to deliver 256GB solid-state drive in 2009
by Agam ShahMar 4, 2008 3:36 pm5 Comments 19
Samsung Electronics could deliver 256GB solid-state drives next year, quadrupling the capacity of SSDs it is currently shipping to PC makers, the company said.

Samsung recently plugged 64GB SSDs into Lenovo’s ThinkPad X300 laptops, which only have SSD storage built in, said Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor. The drive maker also supplies the 64GB SSD available as a storage option for the MacBook Air.

Samsung is due to ship samples of 128GB SSDs in the middle of this year. The 128GB samples will only reach hardware makers, and Samsung will continue to work with PC makers like Lenovo and Dell to deliver SSD drives in capacities from 64GB to 128GB, Elliott said. He declined comment on when Samsung would make SSD drives available directly to consumers, or to say more about 256GB SSDs other than that they could be out next year. Samsung is trying to double SSD capacity every 12 months, he said.

In the long term, SSDs may replace hard drives as primary storage for notebook PCs because they are lightweight, power-efficient and fast. Samsung’s SATA II SSD drive is two to five times faster than conventional hard drives, weighs 73 grams (0.07 pounds) and consumes 30 percent less power than a typical hard drive, according to Samsung.

Pricing on SSDs are prohibitive at the moment, but the cost-per-gigabyte equation will improve once the industry moves to multilevel cell (MLC) SSDs by the second half of this year, Elliott said. Most of the drives shipping now are single-level cell SSDs (SLCs), which cost more.

The price of a 64GB single-level SSD is around $600, said Nam Hyung Kim, director and chief analyst at iSuppli. Apple charges MacBook Air owners $999 to install an SSD in the laptop.

SLCs are roughly twice as fast and have at least an order of magnitude better reliability than MLCs in terms of endurance cycles, said Joe Unsworth, principal research analyst at Gartner.

However, MLC SSDs are far cheaper, less than half the cost of SLC SSDs, Unsworth said. “MLC SSDs are currently sampling, but are having a difficult time proving the performance and reliability” compared to SLC SSDs, Unsworth said.

 

[PolarBear]

This market is so fastly evolving and announcements are pilling up. I only believe it's really there until I can buy it in a shop. Afterall it only then is interesting... they also said that those 800GB SSD drives (I'm presuming using that MLC technolgy then) could be availible thisyear already. Anywa, prices have to come down first to be of use for bigger sample libraries.

PolarBear 

PS: There's an Edit button? ;)

[Jann]

...and while we're waiting for affordable 256 Gb SSD drives to appear, OCZ recently announced new SSD drives which are much lower priced.

"MSRPs at time of launch are USD $169, $259 and $479 for 32GB, 64GB and 128GB models respectively."

For more information read the news at OCZ.

[cm]

be aware there are already 2 types of so-called SSD on the market (SLC/MLC) ... testing a wide range of products turned up that throughput is overall satisfying, but almost all procts show reiterating spikes with up to 200 ms latency during access.

 

i was hoping we could reduce the size of the preload buffer since access time is significantly lower, but tests with a pre-series samsung 64GB have not been too encouraging ...

christian