Toshiba Readies 512GB Lightning Quick SSD

Author	Gordon Kelly
Published	18th Dec 2008

Toshiba Readies 512GB Lightning Quick SSD

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It had all been rather quiet from Toshiba on the SSD front, but it is back with a thunder clap...

Having talked up the prospects of a half terabyte model earlier in the year the SanDisk fab sharing giant has at last formally announced the expansion of its line-up to include a 2.5in 512GB drive based on 43nm MLC NAND flash.

Potentially even more exciting however is what Toshiba has managed to squeeze out of this SSD in terms of performance with the company quoting heart stoppingly quick 240MBps read and 200MBps write speeds and MTBF rates (mean time before failure) of one million hours.

"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 Toshiba Semiconductor VP 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."

Kobayashi (sorry, can't get The Usual Suspects out my head) isn't kidding either since the controller tech could prove the biggest breakthrough here with additional lines of 1.8in and 2.5in drives ranging in capacities from 64GB to 256GB all matching the 512GB speeds stride for stride.

Frustratingly however these models won't sample until Q1 2009 with mass production not occurring until Q2 so it looks like it'll be summer time at least before the little beltas are being slotted into our machines.

Who knows what other delights we'll see between now and then? 1TB SSD with 500MBps read and write times anyone?

Link:
Press Release via PR Newswire