Samsung is getting ready for producing a 4GB solid state disk (SSD).

The slowest component in any modern computer is definitely the hard-drive. No matter how fast is your CPU or your RAM they still have to wait for the hard disk to provide them with information. An average modern hard disk can sustain transfer rates of up to 111.4 MB/s and have a random access time from 5 ms to 15 ms compared with a modern CPU or memory bus which have net superior performances.

The IT world has always been preoccupied about making the hard-drives faster. From increasing the spinning speed of the hard-disk plates to improving the bus interface, the hardware manufacturers have outdone themselves trying to obtain better performance from hard-drives.

Samsung has foreseen that improvements in hard-drives speeds will pretty much come to their technological limits so they just announced the 4 GB solid state disk. The new device will virtually eliminate hard drive delays with the help of a new Windows Vista application.

The 4 GB SSD is a high speed NAND flash memory which will serve as a cache memory between the classical hard-disk and the CPU/memory.

“By caching Hard Drive data using Samsung’s flash SSD and the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system, a typical user will see performance gains that will make working with their PC lightning fast,” said Don Barnetson, Director, Flash Marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.

The Windows ReadyBoost feature of the Windows Vista operating system will intelligently populate the SSD with the data a user needs before they ask for it. It readies a user’s favorite applications and data in the background, accelerating everyday actions such as starting applications and switching users. When a user requests that data, rather than being limited to servicing 100-200 requests per second (as with a traditional HDD), Samsung’s SSD can service up to 5000 request per second, virtually eliminating data seek delays.

Samsung’s new performance booster can be located virtually anywhere on the motherboard and is connected through the ATA port. The flash cache compliments DRAM and because Windows Vista automatically compresses all data stored in a ReadyBoost device, the 4 gigabyte drive would, in practice, act as up to 8 gigabytes of user data.

Even though hard drives constantly increase their capacity, their speed remains limited as they are still the only mechanical devices in a computer. With devices like Samsung’s 4 GB SSD, which will hopefully increase their capacity too, we are quickly marching towards the pure electronic computer.