Samsung begins production on new high-speed SSDs

The growth of the solid-state industry continues. Samsung is doubling its previously-released SATA model’s data transmission speed with a new 6Gb per second iteration. Upcoming SSDs which will leverage SATA Revision 3.0 are now in production, says the company. By the end of 2011, Samsung expects the replacement will be inside notebooks and tablets.

The new SSD, which comes in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities, is extremely quick. The company explained in a statement that the jump from 3Gb/second to 6Gb/second means users can download five DVDs in under a minute. Additionally, they won’t have to wait long to do just that; the boot-up time should be just 10 seconds. It’s all thanks to the revision’s read and write speeds, which are now at 500 Mb/s and 350 Mb/s respectively.

“Samsung’s new line-up of advanced SSDs will raise the performance bar to the next level for ultra-slim notebooks and tablets and accelerate growth of the market for high-performance SSDs,” said Wanhoon Hong, executive vice president, memory sales and marketing, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics.

Hong believes the new SSD will become an industry standard and that Samsung’s 256GB SSD should “increase market interest” in high-capacity models.

Research group IHS iSuppli divulged that the SSD business could have some stiff competition thanks to Seagate’s Momentus Thin HDD. The platter-based storage option will be included in upcoming ARCHOS tablets – a first for any tablet according to the company. Seagate is also making strides in the burgeoning hybrid hard drive (HHD) side of the industry. The company announced last week it had shipped 1 million units of its HHD, the Momentus XT.