Samsung Announces 256 GB MLC SATA II SSD

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."