Toshiba Announces First 512GB 2.5-Inch SSD

Toshiba has just announced an expansion of its Flash-based storage lineup with the addition of the industry's first 2.5-inch 512GB Solid State Drive, which is to become available in the upcoming year. The company has also announced several new SSDs, which will further expand the current range of SSDs. The new drives have been designed so as to boast fast read/write speeds, and are built on a 43 nanometer (nm) Multi-Level Cell NAND.

"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 Vice President of Toshiba Corporation's Semiconductor Company, Mr. Kiyoshi Kobayashi. "This new 43nm SSD family balances value/performance characteristics for its targeted consumer applications, through use of MLC NAND and an advanced controller architecture."

The company plans to showcase the new high-capacity NAND Flash-based SSDs at the next Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, scheduled to take place on January 8-11, 2009. Toshiba has also introduced new 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch SSDs, which are based on the company's 43nm NAND process technology. The new drives will come in capacities of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB. Samples are expected to become available in the first quarter of 2009, with Toshiba having plans to start mass production for these drives in the second quarter.

Toshiba's newly announced range of Solid State Drives boasts the company's second-generation SSD technology, having been designed to provide increased capacity and performance for portable computer systems. The drives are based on an advanced MLC controller, and are said to be capable of providing users with a maximum sequential read speed of 240MB per second and a maximum sequential write speed of 200MB per second, thus further improving the system's capacity and performance. Unfortunately, Toshiba hasn't released any specific pricing details yet.