Toshiba Corp. and Toshiba America Electronic Components, its subsidiary in the Americas, today announced their entry into the emerging market for NAND-flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) with a series of products featuring multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory.
Offered in a range of form factors and capacities, Toshiba's solid-state drives are designed primarily for notebook PCs and will be showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, from January 7th to 10th. Samples and mass production will follow from the first quarter (January to March) of next year.
Toshiba's first solid-state drives offer three capacities: 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB, in three form factors - an embedded module, and 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch drive enclosures.
The new SSDs integrate an original MLC controller supporting fast read-write speed, parallel data transfer, and wear-leveling, and achieve performance levels comparable to those of single-level cell NAND-flash-based SSDs. By applying MLC technology, Toshiba has realized a 128GB capacity in a 1.8-inch form factor. It expects the launch of its MLC NAND-based line-up to speed up the acceptance of solid-state memory in laptops and digital consumer products.
The new products utilize NAND flash memory fabricated with 56nm process technology, along with controller chips and DRAM, on a 70.6mm (L) x 53.6mm (W) x 3.0mm (H) platform. The maximum read speed is 100MB per second, and the maximum write speed is 40MB per second with the SATA II interface (transfer rate of 3Gbps), which is compliant with a high-speed serial interface.
The rated operating life is 1,000,000 hours.
AMAZING! I'll wait until it shrinks to something that will fit in a shirt pocket, or keychain. Kudos to then to get this RAM so "small". It is just a matter of time until they get it down in size, as current 16GB ones are. My top of the line laptop in 2002 only had 30GB in its HD !!! Give 'em another year or 3. It will happen...pwilson357@cfl.rr.com 
URBANEYE