The popularity of low-cost PCs around the world is driving "explosive growth" for SSDs, according to Samsung, which today announced three new drives aimed at the budget crowd. Available in 8, 16 and 32GB sizes, these drives incorporate Samsung's multi-level cell Flash chips and are each about 30 percent smaller than 2.5-inch HDDs.
As for performance, the top-spec 32GB drive reportedly rivals desktop hard drives with 90MB/s sequential reads and writing at 70MB/s. The smaller 16GB and 8GB versions can also read data at 90MB/s, but their write speeds drop to 45MB/s and 25MB/s respectively. These low-density SSDs all use the same 3Gb/s SATA II controller as that being used on Samsung's recently introduced MLC-based 128GB SSD.
Although no details have been announced on pricing, you can expect these drives to be cheap in comparison to SLC-based SSDs. The three new SSDs are sampling now, with mass production set to start in September.