SanDisk pushes SSDs for UMPCs

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 04 June 2008 12:31

Business IT - Technology

A new range of solid state drives (SSDs) intended for use in low-cost and ultra-mobile PCs will arrive from SanDisk in August.

The SSDs will be available in 4, 8 and 16G models, and are intended as hard disk replacements.

"We're excited to be involved in this emerging market of ULCPCs, which take the concept of affordability into new directions – ones that are ideally suited to the multiple benefits of SanDisk's technology," said Rich Heye, senior vice president and general manager at SanDisk's SSD business unit.

"Based on consumer response to some of the first ULCPCs" - we think he's talking about the Eee, among others - "these devices are quickly developing a popular following. Our new pSSDs [parallel ATA SSDs] are enablers for manufacturers to create what could become the next wave of personal and portable computing devices."

SanDisk's pSSDs are built using flash memory chips produced at plants in Japan that are shared with Toshiba.

The idea of devices larger than PDAs and smartphones but smaller than notebooks seems to be catching on. SSDs help keep down the size, weight and power consumption, and increase shock resistance. But storage capacity may be an issue with consumers getting used to mobile devices with as much as 32G.

Gartner predicts the low-cost SSD market may grow from 635,000 units in 2007 to over 33 million units in 2012.