Toshiba plans 512 GB SSDs for 2009

Toshiba has announced that production improvements will allow it to ship 512 GB solid-state drives (SSDs) by 2009. This is a four-fold increase over its 128 GB drives that will start shipping in June.

The Japanese company estimates that it can reduce the price of making SSDs by as much as 40 to 50 percent every year, resulting in far less expensive drives at greater storage levels. While a 1.8-inch SSD costs 2.9 times as much as its rotating hard disk equivalent, a reliable price drop could reduce the cost to a comparatively reasonable 40 percent premium within the near future. When this will occur is uncertain.


This is important because SSDs are small, light, sturdy, less prone to physical failure, more power and heat efficient, and above all - FAST. This surprising rate of growth would mean that by the end of 2009, SSDs will be able to compete with conventional hard disks on space and, not long afterwards, price as well. Current models have some writing problems - namely, a lower maximum number of writes and slower write speeds than conventional hard disks. However, this is increasing all the time and will probably not be an issue in the next couple of years.

This is an exciting technology for the film industry for both acquisition, post production and, potentially, distribution that I will be keeping my eye on.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Wednesday April 23 2008 2:34 PM to Hardware, Analysis
Post ID: 249

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