Friday, March 21st 2008

Toshiba Begins Mass Production of MLC Nand Solid State Drives

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malware
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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

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22 Comments on Toshiba Begins Mass Production of MLC Nand Solid State Drives

#2
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
wazzledoozleThey only want a limb in compensation.
last year buying one of these drives would have cost about 5 limbs per person, so its a lot better off these days.
Posted on Reply
#3
SrKag
Going Far in laptops

Watch out that limb may not be so big next year. :eek:
I love the concept of SSD for laptops, not much for desktops. Most people want a extra huge drive in there desktop and just a big drive in there laptops. The fumbling and dropping would be lest of a heart ache for laptops with SSD's. I can really see them going a long way in the portable area.
As soon as limbs are not required as down payment.
:nutkick:
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#4
Nemesis881
I don't understand why they cost so much..I mean they're basically giant flash drives right?
Posted on Reply
#5
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
Nemesis881I don't understand why they cost so much..I mean they're basically giant flash drives right?
Faster and more reliable than normal flash drives - remember that flash drives have a limited number of uses (in the thousands) while these have tens of thousands, and that the performance is 3-4x that of normal drives (30MB/s is impressive off a USB flash drive, vs. the 100-120 of these drives)
Posted on Reply
#6
ktr
I would only care about SSD only if they are cheap.
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#7
FreedomEclipse
~Technological Technocrat~
ktrI would only care about SSD only if they are cheap.
join the rest of the club - as much as i like everthing thats kick ass my paycheck somehow doesnt rise to the occasion
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#8
largon
MLC? (-> 40MB/s write)
Brrrr...
Come on, do it with SLC!
Posted on Reply
#9
97sslude
Hopefully the prices will come down on SSD once there's alot of them out in the market.
Posted on Reply
#10
ktr
97ssludeHopefully the prices will come down on SSD once there's alot of them out in the market.
It will really come down only if mechanical hard drives get discontinued.
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#11
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
ktrIt will really come down only if mechanical hard drives get discontinued.
which they will eventually - compare a floppy drive to a 1GB flash drive. Floppies are unreliable, easy to damage, slow, and low capacity. Early gen flash drives were small compared to say, a CD or DVD - but they've overtaken those two easily enough.

SSD will follow the same path, mechanical drives will slowly stop increasing in size (2TB maybe, for the last ones?) because around that point SSD's will have caught up in size, leaving no real reason for mechanical drives to stick arond (like thje good old floppy today)
Posted on Reply
#12
ex_reven
Ive noticed SSD's being included as optional in the Dell Laptop range.

Any idea how they are coupled up with the regular hard drive?
I.E is windows and pagefile run off the SSD and applications/music off a regular disk? (due to size restrictions, tho I suppose you could fit some of your stuff directly onto the SSD).
Posted on Reply
#13
largon
I see little point in running the OS from a SSD.
It's not like the operating system would do continuous heavy disc accesses - except when booting up. And what does it matter if boot-up takes 30 seconds from a HDD instead of 10 from a SSD? Apps/games on the other hand read/write all the time on the disc (level loading, eg.).
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#14
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
largonI see little point in running the OS from a SSD.
It's not like the operating system would do continuous heavy disc accesses - except when booting up. And what does it matter if boot-up takes 30 seconds from a HDD instead of 10 from a SSD? Apps/games on the other hand read/write all the time on the disc (level loading, eg.).
actually, the OS does have continuous HDD access. every time you click something, at some point it had to be loaded from HDD to ram - huge amounts of ram is a buffer (and superfetch to buffer it more) but these are merely workarounds - a fast hard drive is the core of a responsive system.
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#15
ex_reven
largonI see little point in running the OS from a SSD.
It's not like the operating system would do continuous heavy disc accesses - except when booting up. And what does it matter if boot-up takes 30 seconds from a HDD instead of 10 from a SSD? Apps/games on the other hand read/write all the time on the disc (level loading, eg.).
I like quickbooting :p
Posted on Reply
#16
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
and just another point: apps and games DONT load all the time. They tend to load the one level into ram, and thats it - you only ever have issues if you dont have enough ram to hold the whole thing, in which case it loads from the HDD.

OS is constant small access, games are spaced out large accesses.
Posted on Reply
#17
mandelore
Well I guess since the bottom fell out of the DDR2 market these companies have to make up the money somewhere, and throttling the customer around the throat for the pleasure of buying a SSD appears they way they have chosen to go ^^
Posted on Reply
#18
largon
Musselsactually, the OS does have continuous HDD access. every time you click something, at some point it had to be loaded from HDD to ram - huge amounts of ram is a buffer (and superfetch to buffer it more) but these are merely workarounds - a fast hard drive is the core of a responsive system.
As you said yourself - but didn't actually realize it: it's the apps you use that access the disc, not the OS. There is no heavy disc accessing going on within the OS after boot-up.
Posted on Reply
#19
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
largonAs you said yourself - but didn't actually realize it: it's the apps you use that access the disc, not the OS. There is no heavy disc accessing going on within the OS after boot-up.
so what, you load windows and never do aything - no web browsing, no chat windows? everything is an app, be it explorer.exe or a chat window.
Posted on Reply
#20
largon
you load windows and never do aything - no web browsing, no chat windows?
Huh? What are you talking about?
What has web browsers and chat got to do with the OS?
Posted on Reply
#21
DanishDevil
Musselsso what, you load windows and never do aything - no web browsing, no chat windows? everything is an app, be it explorer.exe or a chat window.
He added within.
Posted on Reply
#22
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
yeah he did... these programs are typically installed to the OS drive however. i dont understand the point you're making as all these things are linked together, and they DO tie in with the OS to make a lot of HDD access. Its not like XP or vista are nothing more than a GUI, there is a lot of data there to be read at some point or another.

If you want to get my point, go into your bios and lock your OS drive down to PIO mode or something and see how much slower things are - a fast OS hard drive is the key to a fast system.
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