Samsung Electronics announced that they have begun to mass-producing 1.8-inch solid-state drives (SSD) at 64GB (gigabytes). Aimed at notebook computers, the new drives are the highest density SSD available today for mobile computing applications.
“We see sharply increasing interest in SSDs among OEMs worldwide amid a growing push to launch premium SSD-based notebooks, particularly in the ultra-mobile category,” said Jim Elliott, director, flash marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.
SSDs are growing in popularity because they offer greater reliability, faster boot times and faster application start-up times than hard disk drives. This makes them a popular choice for IT managers looking to get more “bang” for their buck when ordering hardware for notebooks. SSDs can also improve battery life by up to twenty percent in notebooks, Samsung says. The 64GB SSD consists of 64 eight Gigabit (Gb) single-level cell flash memory chips. Samsung’s use of 51nm process technology permits fabrication of much smaller components, with each chip having circuitry 1/2500th the width of a human hair.
Samsung said that industry wide attention on ultra-light, ultra-slim notebook PCs with flash memory based SSDs reflect early market support for this new storage medium. In addition to their new 64GB SSD, Samsung has already introduced 32GB SSDs into ultra-mobile personal computers (UMPCs). Not just for notebooks, SSDs also are being considered for server applications such as in advertising and for Web search engines. On the home front digital consumer products such as camcorders, PDAs and printers can now be equipped with SSDs ranging from 4GB to 64GB.
Samsung also recently released their new N2 Series drives. “The N2 Series drives offer the fastest boot times, lowest power consumption, and quietest operation available in the 1.8” form factor,” the company said in a press release. The new drives, with capacities ranging from 80GB to 120GB, are designed to meet the demands for high-capacity storage in compact mobile consumer devices such as PDAs, MP3 players, cell phones, camcorders, digital cameras and ultra-light notebook PCs.
The N2 Series drives features a 4,200rpm spin rate, PATA/ZIF interface with 8MB cache memory, a 15,0ms seek-time, and a two second Drive Time to Ready. Samsung’s SpinPoint N2 120GB Series is currently shipping with a $249 MSRP.