Toshiba Begins Mass Production of MLC Nand Solid State Drives
Written on March 22, 2008 – 11:40 am | by admin
Toshiba America entered today into the emerging market for NAND-flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) with the company’s first multi-level cell (MLC) NAND-flash-based SSDs. The initial drives to begin shipping this month are 128GB drives in a lightweight, 15 gram embedded module form factor. “Our first customer for these drives will be the PC Division of Toshiba Corp., in Japan, which will be the first to feature a 128GB SSD in a notebook PC, said Scott Nelson, vice president, memory for TAEC. “We believe that Toshiba MLC SSDs offer the right mix of cost and performance to satisfy today’s demanding storage requirements for notebooks and Ultra Mobile PCs.” To achieve performance levels of 100MB/second read and 40MB/second write in these first generation drives, Toshiba utilized a SATA II interface and an innovative MLC controller. As a result, Toshiba SSDs achieve better scores than today’s 5400rpm and 7200rpm HDDs and comparable to selected SATA SLC NAND SSDs. The Toshiba 64GB embedded module MLC NAND SSD is also ready for mass production. Additional models in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch drive enclosures are also scheduled to sample next month.
Source: Toshiba
