64GB 2.5- and 1.8-inch SSDs (Solid State Drives) will soon become the norm in ultra portable computers giving faster operation and longer battery life thanks to manufacturers like Samsung, SanDisk and others – are hard disks dead? SSDs have now reached 64GB in capacity while shrinking further in size, challenging traditional hard drive technologies but still unable to best them in the sheer gigabyte capacity and much cheaper pricing. Still, that hasn"t stopped Samsung from bringing their own 1.8-inch 64GB SSD to market, a mere 20 days after SanDisk made a similar announcement with 2.5- and 1.8-inch SSD drives. With the introduction of their 64GB SSD now in mass production, Samsung claims it the largest producer of high-capacity SSDs in the world, outstripping all competitors.
Jim Elliot, the Director of Flash Marketing at Samsung Semiconductor said that: "We see sharply increasing interest in SSDs among OEMs worldwide amid a growing push to launch premium SSD-based notebooks, particularly in the ultra-mobile category". And why not? Although SSDs are still costlier than larger sized hard drives, they are much more reliable, able to withstand drops and great temperature variances that could cause hard drive technology to be damaged, promise faster boot times and program start-up times, generates less heat than hard drives and thanks to a lower power requirement promises to boost notebook battery life by "up to" 20%. Samsung explains that their new 64GB SSD consists of "64 eight Gigabit (Gb) single-level cell flash memory chips. Use of 51nm process technology permits fabrication of much smaller components, with each chip having circuitry 1/2500th the width of a human hair".