Samsung announced yesterday, at its fifth annual Mobile Solution Forum, the company’s development of the world’s fastest, 2.5 inch, 256 GB MLC SSD with a SATA II interface.

At 9.6 mm thick and measurements of 100.3x69.85 mm, Samsung’s new 256GB SSD is also the slimmest SSD with the largest capacity to be offered with a SATA II interface. With sequential read and write speeds of 200 MB/s and 160 MB/s respectively, Samsung’s latest addition to the SSD family is roughly 2.4 times faster than your bog-standard HDD.

MLC memory SSDs are known for not having write speeds that match up to those that incorporate SLC memory but it seems Samsung has had a breakthrough in “proprietary controller technology”, which VP of Memory Marketing, Jim Elliot claims will see a change in the notebook PC comparable to “the evolution from the Sony Walkman to NAND memory-based MP3 players”.

Aside from being comparable in speed to an SLC-based SSD, Samsung claim the 256 GB boasts reliability equal to that of SLC SSDs, with a mean time between failures of one million hours, while costing considerably less and using less power (0.9 watts in active mode).

Samsung is expected to begin mass-producing the 256GB SSD by the end of the year, with customer samples available in September. A 1.8-inch version is expected to be available in Q4.

Samsung revealed little or nothing with regard to the price of either the 256 GB version or the 1.8-inch version, however, the company claims that the 256 GB "will mark the largest capacity SSD from the global market leader in SSD sales, effectively eliminating density as a barrier to SSD adoption in the consumer space."