Sony to launch world's first solid-state laptop

By Simon Aughton

Posted on 23 May 2006 at 12:30

Sony will introduce the first laptop to use solid-state flash memory instead of a traditional hard drive next month, according to the Korea Times.

The compact notebook will use the 32GB solid-state drive (SSD) that weighs half as much as an HDD, but reads data three times faster and writes 1.5 times faster. The absence of moving parts also makes it more reliable.

While Samsung acknowledged that an SSD laptop would be released in the 'very near future', it declined to comment on the report it would be scooped by Sony, having unveiled its prototype in Taiwan in March.

'We cannot confirm about a specific deal with a specific company,' a spokesperson said. 'All we can say now is that SSD is developed by Samsung.'

The president of the US-based Semiconductor Industry Association has predicted that as far as laptops are concerned hard drives could be obsolete by the end of the decade.

George Scalise told a meeting in Seoul, Korea that changeover will begin once the price of flash memory falls below $50.

'I think one of the things that is quite clear when you look at the advances that are being made today is that when the cost of flash memory gets below $50, it will replace rotating memory,' he said. 'I think it will happen within five years. We'll have laptops that have no rotating memory.'

Samsung said that it expects 30 per cent of laptops to have SSDs by as early as 2008.

However, the high price and low capacity means that they will not be replacing HDDs in desktop machines or the majority of laptops. Instead they are likely to feature hybrid drives, HHDs, that combine flash storage with a magnetic disk.

Samsung will unveil its first HHD at a Microsoft conference next week and plans to begin shipping it when the software giant launches Windows Vista next year. With either 128MB or 256MB of flash memory, the drive will cut boot and restore/wake times. Laptops will be able to boot almost instantaneously and battery life will be extended by as much as 10 per cent.

'We see the hybrid hard disk as the most advanced and cost-effective means of improving the performance of a notebook computer's storage functionality,' said Jon Kang, senior vice president of Samsung's Semiconductor Division. 'The Samsung HHD addresses the two biggest consumer desires: extending battery life and improving boot and resume performance.'