Computer chip manufacturer Samsung Electronics announced a solid state drive (SSD) that could render laptop hard disk drives obsolete.

The device, built with a 256GB capacity, reportedly is almost 2.5 times faster than today's hard drives.

Samsung stated that the SSD will provide users the technology that would equip notebooks with faster and larger storage.

The 2.5-inch long, 9.5 millimeter-thick SSD will have a 200mbps read capacity, and a write capacity of 160mbps.

The company will be putting out a limited number of the SSDs for sampling this coming September, with mass production and distribution to follow before the close of the year. It went on to predict that about 35 percent of available notebooks would be running with the SSD by the year 2012.

PC World reported that a smaller, 1.8-inch version of the device would most probably be available later this year.