News

posted on 09 May 2008 15:26

Toshiba doesn't want much, not if you call having at least half of the notebook flash market in 2010 'not much.'

The firms's president and CEO, Atsutoshi Nishida, set this goal at a corporate strategy meeting yesterday in Tokyo. He said that ten percent of notebook computers should use solid-state drives (SSD) in 2010, rising to a quarter in 2011. He wants Toshiba to have at least 50 percent of that.

Toshiba multi-level SSDs will be designed and built by Toshiba Semiconductor in a project which includes Toshiba's PC and hard disk drive (HDD) operations plus the R&D bosses across the entire Toshiba operation.

It's odd that the Toshiba HDD operation is involved as it doesn't seem to be in their its interest, notebook HDDs competing as they do with flash SSds. Nishida reportedly  said: "I told them that unless they provided their expertise and complete cooperation, the company would not make any further investment in HDD technology."

He didn't give any details of the multi-level cell technology involved beyond describing it as extremely difficult. Toshiba expects to have 512GB SSDs with PATA and SATA interfaces in 2009

This is not going to be an HD-DVD-like project.

^{[Chris Mellor, editor.]}