Toshiba Corporation (Tokyo: 6502) announced the expansion of their line up of NAND-flash-based solid state drives (SSD) with the industry’s first 2.5-inch 512-gigabyte (GB) SSD and a broad family of fast read/write SSDs based on 43 nanometer (nm) Multi-Level Cell NAND. The new drives provide a high level of performance and endurance for use in notebook computers, gaming and home entertainment systems, and will be showcased at International CES 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada from January 8 to 11, 2009.

In addition to the 2.5-inch, 512GB drive, the 43nm NAND SSD family also includes capacities of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB, offered in 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch drive enclosures or as SSD Flash Modules. Samples of the new drives will be available in first quarter (January to March) 2009, with mass production in the second quarter (April to June) 2009.

Toshiba’s second-generation SSDs bring increased capacity and performance for notebook computers, utilizing an advanced MLC controller which is also compatible with further advanced process, that achieves higher read/write speeds, parallel data transfers and wear leveling to optimize performance, reliability and endurance. The drives enable improved system responsiveness with a maximum sequential read speed of 240MB per second (MBps) and maximum sequential write speed of 200MBps, enabling an improvement in overall computing experience, and faster boot and application loading times. The drives also offer AES data encryption to prevent unauthorized data access.

"The solid state drive market is evolving rapidly, with higher performance drives to meet market requirements, and differentiated product families targeted for appropriate applications,” said Mr. Kiyoshi Kobayashi, Vice President of Toshiba Corporation’s Semiconductor Company. "This new 43nm SSD family balances value/performance characteristics for its targeted consumer applications, through use of MLC NAND and an advanced controller architecture."

Toshiba and many market analysts expect SSDs to begin to gain significant traction in the market in 2009, growing to approximately 10% of the notebook market by 2010, and 25% of the notebook market by 2012. Toshiba expects the value/performance of its MLC NAND-based SSD line-up to help speed the acceptance of solid state storage.

Toshiba will continue to promote innovations that widen the horizons of the NAND Flash market and support its continued leadership in that market. The company will spur demand for SSD in notebook PCs, netbooks and digital consumer products by enhancing its lineup, offering products with different densities and interfaces in a range of packages, while advancing device performance.

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