When it comes to solid state disks (SSDs), pricing concerns have ensured that consumers only see relatively small storage capacities. While traditional mobile 2.5" HDDs can be had in capacities of up to 300GB, typical consumer SSDs are only available in sizes of 32GB or 64GB. Despite those meager capacities, pricing hovers around $450 and $1,000 respectively for both.

Some manufacturers have bucked the trend by offering larger capacity SSDs aimed at industrial and military markets. Mtron, Adtron and PQI offer SSDs in capacities of up to 128GB, 160GB and 256GB respectively.

Thanks to the latest bit of news to come through the DailyTech inbox, we can report that BiTMICRO is surpassing all rivals with a 416GB 2.5" ATA-133 SSD. The E-Disk Altima family of SSDs (4GB to 416GB) uses single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory and offer 133MB/sec burst speeds. BiTMICRO also claims that the drive has sustained read/write speeds of 100MB/sec and can crank out 20,000 Random IOPS.

"The launch of the E-Disk Altima series of cutting-edge solid state flash drives will usher in a new computing era, where solid state mass storage will combine with multi-core processors to deliver unprecedented levels of performance required by next-generation operating systems and applications," said Rudy Bruce, BiTMICRO Networks' Executive VP for Marketing and Sales.

BiTMICRO will ship samples of its E-Disk Altima family in Q1 2008 and production models will ship in March 2008.