Toshiba Corp. on Wednesday became the industry’s first company to announce 512GB solid-state drive. In addition, the company said that its multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips will enable it to bring a plethora of new high-capacity products in small form-factors.

In addition to the 2.5”, 512GB drive, the family of SSDs powered by 43nm chips also includes capacities of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB, offered in 1.8” or 2.5” drive enclosures or as SSD fash modules. Toshiba declared 240MB/s sequential read speed and 200MB/s sequential write speed for the new family of solid state drives, which is very high performance compared to competing devices even based on more advanced single-level cell NAND flash.

(Full article ‘Toshiba First to Announce 512GB Solid State Drive, Promises to Launch in Q2 2009′)

2005 was the year of the RAM drive. Gigabyte and a smaller company called HyperOS released their storage products, which were both meant to replace the conventional hard drive with blazing fast SDRAM. Both provided an exciting look to the future of performance storage products, as they blow away any other hard drive. Gigabyte’s i-RAM was the faster solution, thanks to its SATA/150 interface, while the HyperDrive III was limited to UltraATA/100, but supported more memory. HyperOS wants to adjust the ranking with its fourth generation HyperDrive, which offers both SATA/150 and UltraATA/133 interfaces. HyperOS even calls its HyperDrive 4 the fastest internal hard disk in the world. Memory is typically divided into volatile and permanent storage: your system memory or random access memory (RAM) is volatile, as the DRAM transistor states are lost when the power is gone, so any data stored goes as well.
(Full article ‘HyperDrive 4 Redefines Solid State Storage’)

BitMicro Networks Inc. unveiled details of the first product in its next-generation E-Disk Altima flash solid state drive family on Tuesday at the Defence Systems & Equipment International Exhibition in London.

The new flash memory-based device will begin shipping by March 2008, the Fremont, Calif.-based company said.

Featuring capacities ranging from 4GB to 416GB, BitMicro’s 2.5-in. E-Disk Altima E2A133BL ATA-133 model will be geared toward large sites looking to upgrade from systems based on Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment. The new solid-state hardware offers ATA/ATAPI-7 PATA specifications and supports PIO 0-4, DMA 0-2 and UDMA 0-6 data-transfer modes, according to BitMicro officials.

The new drive offers throughput of up to 133MB/sec.

(Full article ‘BitMicro unveils plans for 416GB solid-state drive’)