Samsung Announces High-Performance mSATA SSDs for Ultra-Slim Notebook PCs

[btarunr]

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, announced volume production of SSDs (solid state drives) that support the Mini-Serial ATA (mSATA) interface. The drives are designed for use in ultra-slim notebooks such as Ultrabook PCs.

"Samsung's compact mSATA SSDs will provide performance of the highest quality in helping to deliver the advanced ultra-slim PCs that consumers have been wanting," said Myungho Kim, vice president of memory marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung plans to continue providing timely delivery of advanced SSD solutions, while preserving its leadership position in the SSD market for notebook PCs."



Combining Samsung's new high-performance mSATA SSDs with the latest multi-core processors will help PC manufacturers to substantially improve performance of their Ultrabook-class portable PCs up to that of notebook PCs, in meeting ever-increasing consumer needs.

The new Samsung mSATA SSDs* will be available in 256, 128 and 64 gigabyte (GB) densities as main storage devices, and also at 32GB for caching. They measure 50.95 x 30 x 3.8 millimeters and weigh a mere eight grams.

The new SSDs will be part of the highly popular Samsung PM830 product family that was introduced earlier this year. They make use of Samsung's advanced 20 nanometer class** NAND flash memory components which incorporate the toggle DDR interface.

Utilizing high-performance SATA 6Gb/s controllers based on Samsung's own technology, the new mSATA SSDs can operate at the industry's highest sequential read and write speeds of 500 megabytes per second (MB/s) and of 260MB/s respectively, under optimum conditions. This is, more than six times the speed of hard disk drives typically offering a data transfer rate of 80MB/s. The Samsung SSDs also enable faster system boot-ups (in the 10-second range) and will transmit five DVD files in about a minute.

In addition, the Samsung mSATA SSDs feature an advanced hardware-based security solution including 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) protection, which will prevent unauthorized access to data on a lost or stolen notebook PC.

Beginning this year, the market for Ultrabook-class mobile PCs has been growing rapidly and is expected to expand beyond that of tablet PCs as early as next year due to outstanding performance characteristics, more advanced processors and use of the Windows 8 operating system. According to market research firm IHS iSuppli, the Ultrabook share of global notebook shipments will exceed 40 percent in 2015.

For more information about Samsung Green SSDs, visit www.samsung.com/GreenMemory and www.samsung.com/us/oem-solutions.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[MikeMurphy]

It wasn't so long ago when having an Encyclopedia on a CD-ROM made news.

Geez, 256gb. Its amazing how fast technology is evolving.

 

[N-Gen]

This is actually kind of nice, but something comes to mind when I see it. It seems the same size of a laptop wi-fi card, seeing as in my Alienware there is 2 slots for cards (one for the wi-fi card, other for the tv), couldn't they have used pci-e standards instead of this mSata interface to just achieve better speeds?

I could be wrong, maybe it has been tried, or maybe it's not as power efficient. Still, good to see stuff moving on.

 

[TheLostSwede]

It's a matter of using standard SSD controllers, which as you know use SATA.
There are some mini PCI Express SSDs as well, but the controllers are in general garbage and they're often not bootable, as notebooks aren't set up to boot from 3rd party controllers in the BIOS/UEFI.

 

[N-Gen]

That's true, I forgot about the motherboard at that point, I only had RevoDrive in mind.

 

[Sinzia]

My Lenovo Y570 has an empty mSATA slot, I'm just waiting for prices on the 120's to go down... Samsung's entries mean the price might become a bit more reasonable.