Samsung has begun mass producing 256Gbyte solid state drives for PCs.
"The 256Gbyte drive more than doubles the performance rates of our 64Gbyte and 128Gbyte devices to become the solid-state drive with the highest overall performance, combining sequential read rates of 220Mbyte/s with sequential write rates of 200Mbyte/s," said 
Samsung. "Erase cycles are 100Gbyts/minuite."
The firm claims this means it can store 25 high-definition movies (250Gbyte) in 21 minutes, compared with 70 minutes for a 7200rpm hard disc drive.
Performance comes from "an optimised, single platform design consisting of a chip controller, NAND flash and special drive firmware all developed by Samsung", said the firm. "This single platform is designed to easily adapt to Samsung's 40nm class NAND flash 
memory."
The drive consumes 1.1W, weighs 81g and is 9.5mm thick.
See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Samsung Electronics, a roundup of content on three main areas of the technology giant's development: memory chips, LCD displays and mobile phone technology.