Like every other technology, solid state drives (SSDs) are expanding in capabilities as the price drops. Samsung, the top Flash manufacturer in the world, introduced a 256GB SSD drive at the Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei on Monday, with plans for both a 2.5" and 1.8" unit by year end.

The 2.5" drive is the standard size of a laptop hard disk, while 1.8" drives are frequently found in ultra-mobile PCs and handheld devices.

The drives are based on Samsung's multi-level cell (MLC) technology, which increases storage density through multiple bits per cell. Early flash drive technology stored one bit of data per cell, but Samsung has been working on storing two or even three bits per cell, thus adding capacity to the same amount of flash memory space.

Samsung said the 2.5" drive will have data read rates of 200 MB/sec and sequential read rates of 160 MB/sec, much faster than your traditional platter-based hard drives, and double that of Samsung's existing SSD drives, for that matter.

Samsung did not say how much the drives would cost, but given that a 64GB drive is around $1,000, it won't be cheap. The company plans for mass production of the drives by year-end.