The market of Flash drives is increasing at a very fast rate. New companies are ever entering this market. Now, Toshiba Corp. and Toshiba America Electronic Components, its subsidiary in the Americas, have announced their entry into this market for NAND-flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) with a series of products featuring multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory.

They will be available in a range of form factors and capabilities. The first batch would be offered in three capacities: 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB, in three form factors - an embedded module, and 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch drive enclosures.

These solid-state drives have been primarily designed for notebook PCs. These will be showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, from January 7th to 10th. The production and samples are expected to come from first quarter of the next year.

These new SSDs integrat an original MLC controller, which has made them able to build up a 128GB capacity in a 1.8-inch form factor and also helps them to support fast read-write speed, parallel data transfer, and wear-leveling.

The new products utilize NAND flash memory fabricated with 56nm process technology, along with controller chips and DRAM, on a 70.6mm (L) x 53.6mm (W) x 3.0mm (H) platform. The maximum read speed is 100MB per second, and the maximum write speed is 40MB per second with the SATA II interface (transfer rate of 3Gbps), which is compliant with a high-speed serial interface.

The rated operating life is 1,000,000 hours though the prices haven’t been declared yet up.

Details.