R E L A T E D C O N T E N T

Flash drives scale to 128GB

Samsung and BitMicro Networks unveil new products at CES

Martin Veitch, IT Week 09 Jan 2008

Flash drives will take the leap to mass storage in the first half of this year when Samsung releases a 128GB drive for use in PCs and mobile devices and threatens to make the hard drive redundant for some systems.

The Korean giant will offer the solid-state drives in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch formats. Demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the drive will write data at 70MB/s and read at 100MB/s, thanks to an optimised controller and firmware, Samsung said. Transfer speeds are aided by a 3Gbit/s SATA II interface.

Also, a 1.8-inch drive that is just 5mm thick will be available for ultra-thin laptop designs.

There is no end in sight for Flash storage capacities. Also at CES, BitMicro Networks said it plans an 832GB Flash drive for late-2008, using a 2.5-inch form factor.

Ultra-mobility is also an aim. At the Storage Visions conference last week, also in Las Vegas, Intel showed off its tiny Z-P140 Flash drives that will be available in 2GB capacities this quarter and 4GB next quarter. Smaller than a fingertip, the drives are aimed at ultra-mobile PCs and other small-format devices, including those built on its own Menlow platform that uses the forthcoming “Silverthorne” processor and “Poulsbo” chipset. Menlow-based products are scheduled for mid-2008.

The announcements come as demand for Flash drives is expected to grow at a rapid clip. Samsung cited Web-Feet Research in predicting that the market will grow in value from $570m in 2007 to $6.6bn by 2010.

However, experts do not expect a sudden transition from rotating media to solid state.

“Our forecasts suggest that price declines on spinning drives will mean there remains a significant price difference for some years to come,” said Claus Egge of analyst IDC.

“For certain form factors it’s only a question of time that the industry buys Flash rather than spinning – it’s not acase of ‘if’ but ‘when?’. But for most computers it’s going to be a hybrid model where Flash is used for fast boot-up, but spinning [disks] for storage.”

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