May 26, 2008 - Samsung Electronics announced today that it has developed the world’s fastest, 2.5-inch, 256 Gigabyte (GB) multi-level cell (MLC) based solid state drive (SSD) using a SATA II interface at the fifth annual Samsung Mobile Solution Forum held at the Westin Taipei Hotel. Samsung’s new 256GB SSD is also the thinnest drive with the largest capacity to be offered with a SATA II interface.

Samsung has said that in September of 2008 the 2.5-inch, 256GB SSD should be available and a 1.8-inch version of the 256GB SSD is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Through major advancements in proprietary controller technology, Samsung’s new MLC 256GB SSD, besides being comparable in speed to an SLC-based SSD, also boasts reliability equal to that of SLC SSDs, with a mean time between failures (MTBF) of one million hours, while costing considerably less. Power consumption is also exceptionally low at 0.9 watts in active mode.

In addition, the drive offers a sophisticated data encryption process that prevents data stored on the SSD from being accessed in an unauthorized manner, even after the SSD is removed from the PC.