Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest producer of memory, has begun mass producing 1.8” and 2.5” multi-level cell (MLC)-based solid state drives (SSD) with a 128GB storage capacity. Mass production of such drives may lower the price of such products worldwide.

“With the 64 GB and 128GB MLC SSDs, we are satisfying the density requirements of most business users and many PC enthusiasts, who will appreciate not only the performance gains and added reliability, but also the more attractive pricing,” said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor.

The Samsung MLC-based SSD has a write speed of 70MB/s and a read speed of 90MB/s, which is not very high performance compared to premium-class solid state drives, but should satisfy needs of the vast majority of users. The 128GB MLC-based SSD consists of 64 MLC NAND flash memory chips of 16Gb each. Power consumption for the Samsung SSD in standby mode at approximately 0.2W and in active mode at 0.5W.

Samsung is aggressively expanding its SSD market offerings. It introduced a 64GB SSD in the second half of 2007, and plans to begin producing a 256GB at the end of this year. Samsung’s mass production of 128GB SSDs helps it to maintain its position as the leading producer of SSDs in the world, with capacities ranging from 32GB to the highest available today.

Samsung expects sales of SSD units to increase 800% between now and 2010, keeping SSDs on pace to be the largest growth segment in the NAND flash market over the next few years.