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Toshiba starts volume shipments of 512GB SSD

The sheer potential of solid-state drives to boost the performance and other aspects of computers is starting to show in the regular announcements of SSD developments from manufacturers. The drive to capture a large piece of the pie is accelerating the evolution of the technology, and one of the major factors under focus now is capacity, with a race to catch up to the standard HDD.

Toshiba has begun volume shipments of new SSD drives with capacities of up to 512GB. These drives are already featured in new (expensive!) Toshiba laptops. The new drives, offering capacities of 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB are manufactured on a 43-nanometer process using multi-level cell (MLC) technology, and available in either a 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch enclosure.



For whatever improvements the SSDs might offer over a standard run-of-the-mill HDD, the price is a hard pill to swallow. The component costs themselves aren't quite clear yet, but consider that a Toshiba Portege R600 laptop with a 512GB SSD will set you back $3,499.

There are also other areas of the technology that are being built-on, such as random access speeds which can fall behind their mechanical HDD counterparts.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 6 Aug 2009 17:17

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• 9 comments

• llongtheD

  The cost per gigabyte for these drives is still way to high for the average user, considering the performance gain. When the price drops substantially, I'll definitely get one though. With no moving parts, they would have to be more reliable.

  6.8.2009 21:37 #1

• KillerBug

  Based on the price difference, the drive's OEM cost should be around $1450. This is around $100 less than the Retail price for the only other 512GB SSD I have seen (made by super talent, and priced at $1575 retail with an external carrier.
  
  The prices will drop soon enough...it wasn't long ago that a 32GB SSD was was out of reach, now it can be had for under $100.
  
  Also remember: SSD's don't just improve performance. They also lower heat, increase battery life, and increase reliability in high vibration/shock environments. This is clearly Toshiba's intent here, as the drive comes installed in a 12" notebook with a crummy little SU9400 processor.

  7.8.2009 00:32 #2

• Interestx

  Be nice when they get bigger and cheaper.
  
  With no HDD noise and less heat they'll probably be very useful on the next gen of game console too.

  7.8.2009 11:25 #3

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by KillerBug: Based on the price difference, the drive's OEM cost should be around $1450. This is around $100 less than the Retail price for the only other 512GB SSD I have seen (made by super talent, and priced at $1575 retail with an external carrier.
  
  The prices will drop soon enough...it wasn't long ago that a 32GB SSD was was out of reach, now it can be had for under $100.
  
  Also remember: SSD's don't just improve performance. They also lower heat, increase battery life, and increase reliability in high vibration/shock environments. This is clearly Toshiba's intent here, as the drive comes installed in a 12" notebook with a crummy little SU9400 processor.
  Whats the difference in flash on USB/SDHC and and SSD?

  7.8.2009 11:36 #4

• DXR88

  Quote:Whats the difference in flash on USB/SDHC and and SSD?not much think of SSD like 20 SDHC raided together by a controller in the drive. its the controller in the SSD itself thats the price killer.
  
  other than that there the same.
  
  some older SSD from way back in the late 80 used EDO-RAM on a MCA or VESA controller boards to produce the same effect they usually connected to a batter rack connected to the front of the case using a AA battery type the only catch is the battery's where 3.3 volts you can find them at the shack at 23 dollars a pop.

  7.8.2009 21:09 #5

• ZippyDSM

  Quote:Quote:Whats the difference in flash on USB/SDHC and and SSD?not much think of SSD like 20 SDHC raided together by a controller in the drive. its the controller in the SSD itself thats the price killer.
  
  other than that there the same.
  
  some older SSD from way back in the late 80 used EDO-RAM on a MCA or VESA controller boards to produce the same effect they usually connected to a batter rack connected to the front of the case using a AA battery type the only catch is the battery's where 3.3 volts you can find them at the shack at 23 dollars a pop.So...... wht about flash write limtis? 0-o
  
  Or am I thinking the older flash/rom had a write limit of a a few 1000 or 100 thousand times.

  7.8.2009 22:54 #6

• KillerBug

  Quote:
  not much think of SSD like 20 SDHC raided together by a controller in the drive. its the controller in the SSD itself thats the price killer.Not realy, such a controler can be made for about $100 if one has the manufacturing capabilities. Most of the price comes from the massive amount of high density flash memory involved, all of which must be top-notch to prevent massive data loss.

  7.8.2009 22:57 #7

• ZippyDSM

  Quote:Quote:
  not much think of SSD like 20 SDHC raided together by a controller in the drive. its the controller in the SSD itself thats the price killer.Not realy, such a controler can be made for about $100 if one has the manufacturing capabilities. Most of the price comes from the massive amount of high density flash memory involved, all of which must be top-notch to prevent massive data loss.I thought it was higher grade stuff.

  7.8.2009 23:00 #8

• DXR88

  Limited write (erase) cycles: Flash-memory cells will often wear out after 1,000 to 10,000 write cycles for MLC, and up to 100,000 write cycles for SLC[18], while high endurance cells may have an endurance of 1–5 million write cycles (many log files, file allocation tables, and other commonly used parts of the file system exceed this over the lifetime of a computer).[34][35][36] Special file systems or firmware designs can mitigate this problem by spreading writes over the entire device (so-called wear leveling), rather than rewriting files in place.[37] In 2008 wear leveling was just beginning to be incorporated into consumer level devices.[18] However, effective write cycles can be much less, because when a write request is made to a particular memory block, all data in the block is overwritten even when only part of the memory is altered. The write amplification, as referred by Intel, can be reduced using write memory buffer.[38] In combination with wear leveling, over-provisioning SSD flash drives with spared memory capacity also delays the loss of user-accessible memory capacity. NAND memory can be negatively impacted by read and program (write) disturbs arising from over accessing a particular NAND location. This overuse of NAND locations causes bits within the NAND block to erroneously change values. Wear leveling, by redirecting SSD writes to lesser-used NAND locations, thus reduces the potential for program or write disturbs.[39] An example for the lifetime of SSD is explained in detail in this wiki.[dubious – discuss] SSDs based on DRAM, however, do not suffer from this problem.
  
  strait from the wiki.

  7.8.2009 23:28 #9