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Aiming notebook computers, Samsung Electronics started mass-producing 1.8-inch solid-state drives (SSD) at 64GB (gigabytes). The new drives are the highest density SSD available today for mobile computing applications.

Offering greater reliability, faster boot times and faster application start-up times than hard disk drives SSDs are growing in popularity. SSDs can also improve battery life by up to twenty percent in notebooks. The 64GB SSD consists of 64 eight Gigabit (Gb) single-level cell flash memory chips. Samsung’s use of 51nm process technology permits fabrication of much smaller components, with each chip having circuitry 1/2500th the width of a human hair.

In addition to their new 64GB SSD, Samsung has already introduced 32GB SSDs into ultra-mobile personal computers (UMPCs). Not just for notebooks, SSDs also are being considered for server applications such as in advertising and for Web search engines. On the home front digital consumer products such as camcorders, PDAs and printers can now be equipped with SSDs ranging from 4GB to 64GB.

Samsung also recently released their new N2 Series drives. “The N2 Series drives offer the fastest boot times, lowest power consumption, and quietest operation available in the 1.8 ’form factor’. The new drives, with capacities ranging from 80GB to 120GB, are designed to meet the demands for high-capacity storage in compact mobile consumer devices such as PDAs, MP3 players, cell phones, camcorders, digital cameras and ultra-light notebook PCs.

The N2 Series drives features a 4,200rpm spin rate, PATA/ZIF interface with 8MB cache memory, a 15,0ms seek-time, and a two second Drive Time to Ready. Samsung’s SpinPoint N2 120GB Series is currently shipping with a $249 MSRP.