CES: Toshiba Planning 32nm Update to SSDs, Mulls Price Cuts to OEMs

From DailyTech: Toshiba is one of the leaders in NAND flash memory production, second only to Samsung in the amount produced worldwide. It produces its own series of Solid State Drives using a proprietary NAND flash memory controller, and has been fairly successful selling to OEMs.

Although Toshiba began mass production of its 32nm NAND in the third quarter, most of the drives sold by Toshiba are built using 43nm NAND. This means higher costs for OEMs, which are passed along to consumers.

The company is now announcing that it will begin sampling this quarter of two new SSD series using 32nm since it now has surplus capacity. Mass production of the new drives will begin in the second quarter, and OEMs are expected to offer these drives in desktops, notebooks, and netbooks in time for the back-to-school season.

The Toshiba SG2 SSD series will be available in the mSATA (mini-SATA) format, essentially a rebranding of the mini-PCIe interface. It features a maximum sequential read speed of 180 MB/s and maximum sequential write speed of 70 MB/s. The mSATA form factor provides greater design flexibility and saves space and cost compared to SSDs in traditional 2.5 inch and 1.8 inch hard drive form factors and cases. The 128GB modules are only one seventh the volume and one eighth the weight of 2.5-inch SSDs, and consume a fraction of the power. mSATA drives are typically found in netbooks.

View: Article @ Source Site