Toshiba Announced SLC Flash Memory Modules Engraved at 43 nm

Most SSD manufacturers made the choice of MLC memory chips for their models, as it allows them to pile chips and reach high-density device, and subsequently larger storage capacity, at the cost of performance and lifetime. This choice was also defined by much higher cost of high performance SLC memory chips, not compatible with SDD targeting the consumer electronics mass market.
It might however change in the future as Toshiba just announced that it will launch SLC memory chips engraved at 43 nm for Q1 2009. With such thin engraving technology, capacity might reach 8 GB per chips. Even though it will remain less than the storage space allowed by MLC chips, but one could reasonably design a SLC-based SSD offering 128 GB with high speed high performance level of hundreds of MB/s in both reading and writing models. Such models will of course be expensive but might offer opportunities to offer SDD+HD-based notebook.