Toshiba Corporation today announced its entry into the emerging market for NAND-flash-based solid state drive (SSD) with a series of products featuring multilevel-cell NAND flash memories. Offered in a range of form factors and densities, Toshiba's solid state drives are designed primarily for notebook PCs. Toshiba's first solid state drives offer three densities: 32 gigabytes (GB), 64GB and 128GB. SSD realize low power consumption, a fast boot time, and lightweight. Toshiba's new SSD integrate an original MLC controller supporting fast read-write speeds, parallel data transfers and wear leveling, and achieve performance levels comparable to those of single-level NAND flash SSD. By applying MLC technology, Toshiba has realized a 128GB density in a 1.8 inch form factor. Toshiba NAND-flash-based solid state 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 a second, and the maximum write speed of 40MB a second with the SATA2 and 1,000,000 hours operating life. >

Toshiba NAND-flash-based solid state drive 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.