Samsung unveils revolutionary disk drive

Samsung Electronics Co. has developed the world`s fastest solid-state drive, a new-concept storage device promising to replace traditional hard disks in laptop computers, the company said yesterday.
The new SSD can store 256 gigabytes, and is 2.4 times faster than current hard disk drives and only 9.5 millimeters thick, Samsung officials said.It was among three chips that were made public by Samsung`s new chief of semiconductor business Kwon Oh-hyun at the Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei.
The annual forum, where the chip giant identifies what it views as key future trends in the global chip industry and unveils the company`s latest technological innovations, was delayed from March amid a corporate corruption scandal involving its parent Samsung Group.The forum offered the first public appearance of Kwon, who replaced Hwang Chang-gyu in the latest personnel reshuffle.
Kwon led the system LSI unit at Samsung`s semiconductor division before being promoted to the president of the semiconductor business.Samsung said yesterday that it plans to begin mass production of the 2.5-inch 256GB SSD by the end of 2008.
It said that the faster disk will greatly hasten the replacement of HDD by SDD in laptops."With the development of the 256GB SSD, the notebook PC is on the brink of a second stage evolution," it said.The change, which is comparable to the evolution from the Sony Walkman to NAND memory-based MP3 players, represents an initial step in the shift to thinner, smaller SSD-based notebooks with significantly improved performance and more than ample storage, it added.Solid-state drives, or SSDs, are an emerging type of storage device that use NAND flash memory chips in place of the spinning magnetic disks used in hard disk drives. The new device offers several advantages over hard disk drives such as significantly lower power consumption, ruggedness, high reliability, less weight and better performance. Market researcher iSuppli says approximately 18 percent of notebooks will have SSD by 2010.As the world`s largest maker of computer memory chips, including NAND flash memory, Samsung has been leading the development of solid-state disks, betting that SSDs will be used in various computing devices in the near future.The firm is currently working with personal computer and server makers in the United States, Europe and Asia to help design SSDs into their products.At yesterday`s forum, Samsung also introduced a one-chip solution that allows users to view live television programs wherever they are, regardless of the varying mobile TV standards in countries. It also announced the development of a faster mobile application processor chip that uses 30 percent less power than products currently available, 35 percent by 2012.