A new technology for solid state drives could help shrink them down by 90 percent, while increasing their energy efficiency by 70 percent.
The result could be a 1 TB SSD the size of a postage stamp, The Nikkei reports (via CrunchGear). Researchers at Keio University, along with other institutions, have created a prototype in that size, containing 128 NAND flash chips. Transfer speeds reportedly reach 2 Gbps.
It was almost a year ago when we last checked in on this development. Keio University had come up with a method for creating more memory-dense solid state drives, but only in theory. The method, called "inductive coupling," uses radio transmissions between each NAND flash memory chip when stacked together on a single controller chip. That eliminates the need for more than a thousand wires that pass around internal data.
SSDs that use inductive coupling will probably be a little thicker than conventional drives, because the chips are stacked on top of one another instead of being laid out on a flat panel, but I imagine it won't make much of a difference to the human eye.
Don't get too excited yet; the technology won't be commercially ready until 2012. That's about the same time that Samsung expects SSDs to match the price of hard disk drives. In the meantime, there are other SSD-related breakthroughs to be excited about, such as Intel-Micron's recent development of a 25 nm process that effectively doubles the capacity of flash drives. And if you absolutely need a 1 TB SSD now, OCZ has one in 3.5-inch form, though it'll set you back a whopping $3,572.
