Source: Toshiba
April 2, 2008

Toshiba begins mass production of MLC NAND Solid State Drives

128GB MLC NAND Drive is the Largest Capacity SSD to be Featured in a Notebook PC
Toshiba has announced, that its first multi-level cell (MLC) NAND-flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) have started mass production. Developed by Toshiba Corp., initial models to begin shipping this month are 128GB drives in a lightweight, 15 gram embedded module form factor. The first customer for these drives will be the PC Division of Toshiba Japan.

To achieve performance levels of 100MB/second read and 40MB/second write in these first generation drives, Toshiba utilized a SATA II interface and an original MLC controller supporting fast read-write speed, parallel data transfer, and wear-leveling. As a result, Toshiba SSDs achieve overall PC Benchmark scores better than 5400 rpm and 7200rpm HDD and comparable to selected SATA SLC NAND SSDs1. The SSD drives excel in Windows Vista™ boot speed, application loading, general usage and virus scan. Compared to hard disk drives, SSDs realize a number of advantages that address needs in the mobile computing market for performance, ruggedness, and lightweight, compact form factors. For more information on the Toshiba SSD product family, please visit ssd.toshiba.com.
The Toshiba 64GB embedded module MLC NAND SSD is also ready for mass production. Additional models in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch drive enclosures are scheduled to sample next month.
1 Based on internal test results from Toshiba Corp.

About Toshiba

Toshiba Corporation is a leader in information and communications systems, electronic components, consumer products and power systems. The company’s integration of these wide-ranging capabilities assures its position as an innovator in advanced components, products and systems. Toshiba has more than 172,000 employees worldwide and annual sales of over US$54 billion (FY2005).

Toshiba Electronics Europe (TEE) is the European Headquarters for the electronic components business of Toshiba Corporation, which is the world's fourth largest semiconductor vendor according to estimates by Dataquest.

Providing design, manufacturing, marketing and sales, TEE was formed in 1973 in Neuss, Germany. The company now has headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany and subsidiaries in France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Company president is Mr Shikama and the total number of personnel in Europe is around 400.

Toshiba Electronics Europe offers one of the industry's broadest IC and discrete product lines including high-end memory, microcontrollers, ASICs, ASSPs and display products for automotive, multimedia, consumer, telecoms and networking applications. The company also has a wide range of power semiconductor solutions.

For more company information visit Toshiba's web site at www.toshiba-components.com