Today, Samsung announced that they had started mass production of 1.8″ and 2.5″ Multi-Level Cell (MLC) Solid State Drives (SSD) in 64GB and 128GB capacities. They should be quite a bit cheaper than previous Samsung SSD offerings (and as mentioned back in May, Samsung plans for a 256GB SSD release later this year, using MLC technology).
In the past, MLC can’t match Single-Level Cell (SLC) SSDs performance wise, but Samsung is claiming that these new drives approach the performance of SLC SSDs. While they don’t match the longevity of the SLC-based SSDs, Samsung is claiming that they’ll last up to 20 times longer than conventional (mechanical) laptop hard drives (we are looking at 80 years or longer).
In their press release, they mention they expect SSD sales to increase 800 percent over the next few years. That’s a huge increase, but if they can lower the price quite a bit (and we’ve already seen low-cost SSDs up to 128GB for $479, earlier this month), then there is no reason why SSDs can’t grow at a tremendous rate.
Read: Akihabara News