Samsung Develops Flash Memory Hard-Drive

Samsung has developed a storage device with no moving parts that would replace conventional hard drives – the first solid-state disk (SSD) based on NAND Flash memory technology. The company said it will begin shipping 1.8-inch 16 GByte SSD drives in August this year.

THG – According to Samsung, the SSD [Solid State Disc], the developed drive uses 4 and 8 Gbit Flash chips. Combing up to 16 of these devices, the company claims to be able to offer SSDs with a capacity of 8 and 16 GByte. Power consumption of the SSD is about five percent of a typical harddrives. Considering the fact that harddrives usually consume up to 20 percent of a battery’s capacity, the use of the SSD translates in about 34 minutes of additional computing time in a notebook that needs to be recharged after 3 hours.

ComputerWorld – The 16GB devices will contain 16 memory chips holding 8Gbits each, it said. Such chips sell for about $55 each on the spot memory market, according to DRAM Exchange Tech Inc. That would put the chip cost of the 16GB SSD at almost $900.

Because Samsung is a major manufacturer of flash memory chips, it can likely source the chips internally at a lower price. Even so, it will be difficult to compete with hard disk drive makers on cost. Laptop drives at capacities of up to 30GB can easily be found for less than $200.

Grammar corrected – thanks, Lars Hoel

1 gigabyte (GB) = 1,073,741,824 bytes (B) = 8,589,934,592 bits (b)
Online Bits to Bytes conversion – Wilkinson PC