The drives are sampling now, and will be displayed at the CEATEC show in Tokyo beginning Sept. 30.

The SSDs fit within a 2.5-inch form factor, but also feature a SATA 3-Mbit interface. Performance-wise, read speeds are about 120 Mbytes/s, with 70 Mbytes/s write speeds. That's well below Intel's rated 250 Mbytes/s for its own SSDs. And assuming Toshiba can manufacture these for about Intel's goal of $8 per gigabyte puts them at the hefty sum of $2,056. Toshiba didn't announce prices, however.

Earlier in the week, Toshiba's vice president of marketing of its storage division pooh-poohed the impact of SSDs in announcing its own 250-Gbyte, 1.8-inch magnetic hard drives, claiming that an SSD will always cost several times more than a hard drive. He's right, of course, but the timing is still a bit odd.

Toshiba also announced 16- and 32-Gbyte flash modules.