Toshiba Corp. (Toshiba) and Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC)*, its subsidiary in the Americas, today 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)1 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 – 11, 2009.

In addition to the 2.5-inch, 512GB drive, the 43nm NAND SSD family also includes capacitiesof 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 the first quarter (January to March) of 2009, with mass production in the second (April to June) quarter.

Toshiba's second-generation SSDs bring increased capacity and performance for notebook computers. They utilize an advanced MLC controller, which is also compatible with further advanced processes, 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)2 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. "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 SSDs in notebook PCs, netbooks, laptops and digital consumer products by enhancing its lineup, offering products with different densities and interfaces in a range of packages, while advancing device performance. For more information on Toshiba SSDs, please visit ssd.toshiba.com.

Despite the grim market outlook of NAND Flash-based storage solutions, memory makers continue develop the technology, and to release better and higher-capacity Solid State Drives. On that note, one of the most recent announcements of this kind comes from Patriot Memory, a global provider of premium quality memory module and flash memory solutions.
The company has recently introduced its new 256GB Warp SSD v3, which has been designed to boast read and write speeds of up to 240MB/s and 160MB/s, respectively. Basically, the just introduced SSDs will come to boost the storage capacity and the performance capability of today's high-performance computer systems.
“Our new 256GB Warp SSD v3 now gives the consumer the fastest data-transfer rates plus all the storage space largeenough to quench their multimedia thirst,” says Flash Product Manager for Patriot Memory, Meng Jay. “It wasn't long ago that SSDs maxed out at 64GB with read speeds of 130MB/s, now with the Warp v3 we literally 'Warp' into capacities that most consumers demand and speeds far faster than current conventional hard drives.”
The 256GB Warp SSD v3 comes to expand the company's lineup of Flash-based storage products, while also providing users with a high-capacity and high-performance storage solution. The drive boasts a 2.5-inch form factor, and is featured with a SATA connectivity interface. It can easily be considered an alternative storage solution for portable or desktop computer systems, providing fast performance, as compared to that of traditional hard drives. Unfortunately, the company hasn't revealed any details regarding pricing for the newly announced SSD.
Until recently, Patriot's new Warp SSDs would have been considered among the highest capacity Flash-based storage solutions on the market. However, due to Toshiba's 512GB announced earlier today, the SSD market has now been taken to the next level in terms of storage. Still, the adoption rate of SSDs is largely influenced by their price tag, which continues to be considerably higher than that of traditional drives.

Intel and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced plans to jointly develop and deliver Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Fibre Channel (FC) enterprise-class solid-state drives (SSDs) for servers, workstations and storage systems.

The move marks a strategic shift for Hitachi, the world's third-largest hard drive maker, which until now has not made a commitment to SSD technology.

Hitachi GST is leading Enterprise drive supplier while Intel is a major manufacturer of NAND technology. The two companies said that they would work together exclusively to deliver enterprise SSDs with SAS and FC interfaces, with the first products expected to be available in early 2010.

The new generation of solid-state drive technology complements existing enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDDs) and is intended for use in storage applications that require extremely high Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) performance and power efficiency.

The new SSDs will be branded and exclusively sold and supported by Hitachi GST and use Intel NAND flash memory and SSD technology. The the first shipment planned for 2010, the companies said in a joint statement.Hitachi GST said that it would continue to provide its OEM customers with a portfolio of enterprise storage products that includes traditional HDDs and forthcoming SSDs. Intel will also continue to develop, market and sell its product lines of SATA SSDs.

Hitachi's SSD business would market the devices for business-use such as in servers and computer storage systems, and will not follow rivals like Toshiba in targeting laptop PCs and other consumer-based applications.

"The new solid-state drives for the enterprise include a number of architectural breakthroughs and improve performance and energy usage models that will change enterprise computing," said Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager, Intel NAND Solutions Group. "Intel and Hitachi GST share a common objective in delivering SAS/FC products based on solid-state technology that will help enterprise customers meet the skyrocketing demands for performance while reducing space, power and cooling costs."

"We understand the needs of today's enterprise customers and are committed to delivering breakthrough products that increase their data center performance and reduce total cost of ownership," said Shinjiro Iwata, executive vice president, Strategic Business Operations, Hitachi GST. "By expanding our product line-up to include both traditional enterprise hard drives and new SSDs, Hitachi GST will continue to provide customers with a proven set of products tailored to meet the high-performance, high-reliability requirements of today's data center."