Toshiba this week unveiled a format factor for Solid State Drives that it says is 42 percent smaller than already small mSATA SSD modules. Available in standard configurations of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB, the 2.2mm thick Blade X-gale SSD series offers pretty good performance as SSDs go, with read speeds of 220MB/sec and write speeds of 180MB/sec. The company is obviously targeting a niche of the market that places a premium on extremely small, light and fast laptops. As with any consumer-level SSD on the market today, the Blade X-gale uses the cheaper MLC NAND flash chips.

For now, speculation is rife that the Toshiba Blade X-gale is the same "custom" SSD part used by the recently unveiled MacBook Air laptop, which is attributed as a major reason for its slimness. In fact, MacRumors says that both drives "have the same model numbers and storage capacities." If that's true, then I suppose we can look forward to slimmer and lighter Windows-based laptops soon as PC-makers start incorporating the new SSD into their laptops.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld
- check out this article at PC World
- check out this article at MacRumors.com

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