Just in time for the ultrabook onslaught of 2012, Samsung has started production of a new line of high-performance mSATA solid state drives that will offer a marked performance increase over its current models. The drives utilize 6Gbps controllers for theoretical read and write speeds of up to 500MB/s and 260MB/s, respectively. Samsung's current line of mSATA SSDs — like those used in some MacBook Airs — use 3Gbps controllers, with read times around half of what Samsung is claiming here. Of course, theoretical performance is often very different from what users see in real world applications. The OEM-only drives will be available in capacities of 256GB, 128GB, and 64GB, with a 32GB variant being offered for use as a caching solution. With Asus already having taken the leap to 6Gbps SSDs in the ZenBook courtesy of Adata and SanDisk, we expect manufacturers will be adopting Samsung's new drives sooner rather than later.