Samsung announced that they will begin delivering a 256GB solid state drive (SSD) later this year. The drive uses a standard SATA II interface, making it compatible with existing Macs. Besides becoming the largest Solid State Drive on the market, Samsung promises remarkable read and write performance:
With a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write speed of 160MB/s, Samsungs MLC-based 2.5-inch 256GB SSD is about 2.4 times faster than a typical HDD.
The drive will begin sampling in September, with mass production "by year end". Samsung will deliver the drive in 2.5" and 1.8" versions, though we are uncertain if the 1.8" version will be thin enough to fit in the MacBook Air.
Apple first introduced the use of a SSD in their products with the $999 SSD upgrade for MacBook Air. The price to performance benefit of the current SSDs has been somewhat disappointing, though there does appear to be a small battery life advantage. As the economics of solid state drives continue to improve, we are likely to see them being introduced into future Apple laptops. Unfortunately, Samsung has not yet announced the pricing of their 256GB drive, which will likely remain a very expensive option.
