Samsung is looking to double SSD capacity every year according to Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor. With 64GB SSDs now available and 128GB samples shipping to manufacturers such as Lenovo by the middle of the year, Samsung appears set to unveil 256GB SSDs sometime in 2009.
The high prices of SSDs is the strongest limitation to them becoming more ubiquitous and replacing traditional hard drives. For example, a 64GB SSD sells for about USD$600. But that could change with a move to multilevel cell (MLC) SSDs from the current single-level cell (SLC) SSDs. This transition is expected to happen in the second half of 2008. MLC SSDs could be as much as fifty percent cheaper than SLC SSDs. The catch (there is always one) is that SLCs are more reliable and faster than MLCs.
The reign of the hard drive is not quite over yet.