The Japanese company Toshiba has announced that starting with Q4 2008 it will start the mass production of its 256 GB SSD and the small-sized Flash Modules for netbook computers, ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs) and other mobile and peripheral applications.

The new drives will be showcased CEATEC in Makuhari, Japan, from September 30 to October 4.

Toshiba's new high density SSD brings 256GB of capacity to a 2.5-inch drive form factor with an advanced Multi-level Cell (MLC) controller that achieves higher read-write speeds, parallel data transfers and wear leveling to optimize performance, reliability and endurance.

The MLC technology permits the production of reliable and stable solid-state drives, and it is also used by many other manufacturers. Even though MLCs allow higher data densities, they are not as fast as single-level cells (SLC).

Alongside this, Toshiba provides support for the growing market for small, netbook computers, UMPCs and other personal equipment with the launch of small SSD Flash Modules supporting 8GB, 16GB and 32GB densities.

The new 256GB SSD mounts NAND flash memory on a 70.6mm (L) x 53.6mm (W) x 3.0mm (H) platform. The drive offers a maximum read speed of 120MB per second (MBps) and maximum write speed of 70MBps, via a SATA 3.0Gb per second  interface.

Flash Modules are fabricated on a 50mm x 30mm platform, and offer maximum read and write speeds of 80MB and 50MB per second, respectively.

SSDs feature far greater reliability, faster boot times and faster application start-up times than hard disk drives. They can also improve battery life by up to 20 percent in notebooks.

Although, with no moving parts, the flash-based SSD starts working almost immediately to achieve far better access speeds than a conventional hard disk drive. Analysts expect to witness a continuous SSD market growth at a fast rate by 2012.