Samsung plans to ship the first solid-state drives (SSD) for laptops and PCs using what is called toggle-mode DDR NAND next month. Toggle-mode DDR NAND allows for much faster performance compared to traditional NAND. According to consulting and market research specialist, Forward Insights, standard NAND interface offers only 40Mbps performance, while toggle mode DDR2 NAND can achieve rates of 200Mbps.

Of course, the current limitations imposed by the more common 3Gbit/sec SATA means that the performance is curtailed at the drive interface level. Indeed, the new 512GB SSDs will have a maximum read speed of 250MB/sec and write rates of 220MB/sec, relatively similar to the current crop of commercially available SSDs.

The higher performance does allow for fewer chips to be used compared to standard NAND flash chips however, resulting in power savings. Indeed, Samsung says that the use of a new controller specifically designed for toggle-mode DDR NAND means that the new 512GB SSD uses the same amount of power compared to older 256GB SSDs it has sold earlier.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld
- check out this article at CNET News 

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