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Not to be upstaged by rival SanDisk, Koreas Samsung said March 27 that it plans to roll out a 64GB, 1.8-inch solid state drive sometime this spring for its OEM partners.
Back in January, SanDisk, of Milpitas, Calif., introduced a 32GB SSD that can be used as a drop-in replacement for a standard spinning-disk hard drive.
In February, Fujitsu announced that it will provide SSDs as an option in a few of its LifeBook portable computers.
“Samsung was the first one to [produce] the 32GB SSD and have it destined for the OEM market,” iSuppli analyst Krishna Chander told eWEEK. “Others have also [built] SSDs in the past for military and industrial apps.”
Now, it appears that Samsung also will be the first to market with a 64GB drive. How long might this take to get to the general public?
“The general public would find it expensive in the early years,” Chander said. “Give it another three to four years and the higher end of the consumers [general public] would be receptive. Some price premiums would continue for the foreseeable future.”
The SanDisk 1.8-inch 32GB SSDs are expected to launch with a price tag between $600 and $1000 for OEMs, a company spokesperson said. There was no information available on how Samsung will be pricing its 64GB drive.
Using NAND flash enhanced by SanDisks own TrueFFS flash management technology, the SanDisk SSD delivers 2 million hours mean time between failures, the spokesperson said. Samsungs 64GB drive is comparable.
Samsung said it expects the read/write performance in its forthcoming 64GB SSD to increase from 20 to 60 percent. The 64GB unit can read 64M bps, write 45M bps, and consumes only half a watt of power when operating and a tenth of a watt when idle.
In comparison, an 80GB 1.8-inch spinning disk hard drive operates at 15M bps, writes at 7M mps, and uses 1.5 watts while in operation.
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