IBM Previews Racetrack
Solid State Storage
San Jose,
California - April 10, 2008 - IBM researchers have published details
about a new type of high density non volatile memory.
"Racetrack"
memory is so named because the data "races" around the wire "tracks".
IBM suggests that in the next 10 years - the new memory could compete with
flash at a much lower
price per gigabyte. The new technology uses magnetic domain storage but without
the high current needed by earlier solid state magnetic devices.
SMART Launches XceedCF Industrial-Grade CompactFlash
FREMONT, CA
- March 17, 2008 - SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. announced today the
release of its new XceedCF line of low-power high-performance CompactFlash
products. |
 |
Available in densities from
64MB to 16GB, the new XceedCF cards have 47MB/s read/write speeds combined with
low power operation and support self-monitoring analysis and reporting
technology.
As with all of SMART's industrial-grade flash products,
the XceedCF cards incorporate advanced static and dynamic wear-leveling
algorithms for extending lifespan in the most demanding applications with
greater than 2 million program/erase cycles. ...SMART profile |
|
STEC
Shows Fastest CompactFlash SSD
SANTA ANA, Calif - February 26,
2008 - STEC, Inc. today announced the industry's fastest CompactFlash
SSD - the MACH4 CompactFlash.
Built with STEC's proprietary
controller technology, the MACH4 implements multiple Flash channels to enable
sustained throughput speeds of 90MB/s for read and 55MB/s for write. STEC is
displaying the MACH4 this week at
Embedded World
in Nuremberg, Germany.
"With the MACH4, we expect to see an entirely new wave of
adoption of flash-based
storage in embedded applications," said Patrick Wilkison, VP of
marketing at STEC. "As the preponderance of our customers strive to reduce
the physical footprint of their applications, from blade servers in the data
center to ultra portable computing devices, STEC optimizes around the key
dimensions of capacity, form factor, performance and
reliability."
STEC's MACH4 CompactFlash offers very low latency compared to
traditional hard disk
drives and consumes much less power (approximately 200 milliamps or 1 watt
compared to 12 watts for a standard 7,200 RPM ATA disk drive. ...STEC profile,
Storage Events,
CompactFlash,
Record Breaking
Storage
iSuppli Says Flash Prices Are Dropping
Below Costs
Editor:-
February 20, 2008 - iSuppli Corp. is cutting its outlook for global
NAND flash revenue growth in 2008 to the single digit percentage range, down
from their previous outlook of a 27% rise.
In an early warning
sign of consumer weakness, Apple
has slashed its 2008 NAND order forecast significantly and has informed
suppliers that its demand growth will slow in 2008 compared to 2007, according
to iSuppli sources. This is expected to have a huge impact on the NAND market.
With its extremely popular flash-memory based
iPods, Apple was the world's
3rd largest OEM buyer of NAND flash
memory in 2007.
On the supply side, slower NAND demand will have a
major impact on suppliers' financial results. Capital spending on NAND
production will rise by more than 20% this year, ensuring easy availability of
parts. This will cause prices to decrease. iSuppli believes that NAND prices
already are below suppliers' fully loaded costs.
...iSuppli profile
Editor's comments:- buyers in the fast growing
flash SSD market
will be the beneficiaries of this downturn. As I predicted last year
overcrowding in the notebook SSD market means that prices are already well below
previously forecast levels.
Traditionally the big memory chip makers
switch fab production between RAM
and flash to whichever
reaps the highest price. But many
analysts already
predicted this would not be a good year for RAM oems either.
SanDisk Shows 16GB Flash Drive for Mobile
Handsets
Spain
- February 11, 2008 - SanDisk Corp today announced a 16GB iNAND
embedded flash drive which is being showcased this week at the Mobile World
Congress in Barcelona.
iNAND 16GB is expected to be available for
sampling to mobile handset vendors in Q2 2008, with iNAND 32GB slated for
introduction in H2 2008. ...SanDisk profile
MCP Flash Report - to be or NOR to be?
Los Gatos, CA - February
8, 2008 - Objective Analysis has completed a new study entitled -
Flash Packaging: What Phone Makers Want & Why.
This 32-page report is an in-depth review of the flash MCP market for
cell phone handsets and looks into the reasons that OEMs choose the chip
configurations they do. One finding - flash multichip packages are
predominantly NOR/RAM configurations today and are likely to remain that way for
the next few years.
"NAND is making great headway in cell phone
handsets through both cards and embedded NAND stacks, but the multichip package
is still largely a NOR/RAM product," said Jim Handy, the report's author. "Although
NAND flash is finding some acceptance in handset MCPs, cell phone manufacturers
find that they have more flexibility by leaving the NAND out of this type of
package." ...Objective
Analysis profile, Market
research
Intel and Micron Unveil Fastest Flash
Memory
SANTA
CLARA, Calif - February 1, 2008 - Intel Corp and Micron Technology
Inc. today unveiled a jointly developed new NAND flash technology that is
5x faster than before.
It can sustain speeds up to
200MB/s for reads and 100MB/s for writes.
"The computing market
is embracing NAND-based solutions to accelerate system performance through the
use of caching and solid-state
drives" said Pete Hazen, director of marketing, Intel NAND Group. "At
up to 5 times the performance over conventional NAND, the
high speed NAND
from Intel and Micron, based on the
ONFi 2.0 industry standard,
will enable new embedded solutions and removable solutions that take advantage
of high–performance system interfaces, including PCIe and upcoming
standards such as USB 3.0." ...Intel profile,
...Micron profile
Editor's
comments:- although you can already buy
flash SSDs from
STEC which deliver the
same R/W throughput that Intel and Micron are claiming is the "fastest"
flash throughput - it's a mistake to confuse
chip performance with system
performance.
A flash SSD is a complex sub-system which can deliver
many times the intrinsic flash
memory speed through its host interface using parallel architecture. What
Intel and Micron are saying here is that you can soon expect a new generation of
faster dumb flash storage using their new technology. It follows that SSD
products which amplify raw flash chip performance will faster (and cheaper).
Nanochip Aims to Trash Flash
Fremont,
Calif - January 22, 2008 - Nanochip, Inc. today announced the
completion of a $14 million series C financing round.
It
will allow Nanochip to complete development of its first prototypes later this
year to support design verification testing and limited customer sampling in
2009 followed by full commercialization in 2010.
Nanochip is
developing a new class of ultra-high-capacity non volatile storage chips.
Nanochip says its first products could exceed 100GB per chip set, reaching
terabytes in the future, and at a substantially lower cost compared with
flash memory solutions.
"Flash has become the technology of choice for a variety of consumer and
business applications where cost-effective, non-volatile
solid-state storage is a
must," said Keith Larson, VP and director of
investor Intel
Capital. "However, as flash process technology scaling begins to approach
its limits, Nanochip's technology is well positioned to provide memory capacity
with exponentially higher storage densities at a cost per gigabyte significantly
below that of flash technology. New memory components, such as Nanochip's, will
enable new, innovative electronics devices and increase the performance of
existing computing and other devices." ...Nanochip profile
Editor's
comments:- I'm used to waiting years between the time I first mention a
company on these pages to the time that their first product apears. Nanochip is
a good example. The company was founded in 1996 and was listed here in 2001.
But it doesn't expect to sample its first commercial products till 2009.
That's a 13 year gestation period!
Although the company looks and
talks like a chipmaker - it aims to compete head to head in the
solid state disk market and
I predict it will have to design make and market demonstration SSDs in order to
prove its concept to the oems it hopes will one day use its technology, or
license it or (more likely)
acquire the company.
WEDC Targets Medical CompactFlash Market
Phoenix, AZ - December 19,
2007 - White Electronic Designs Corp is leveraging its defense industry
experience and expertise to develop high-reliability modules for the growing
portable medical device market.
According to the U.S. Census
Bureau, there will be an expected 40 million persons in the U.S. over the age of
65 by 2010, driving the need for portable medical devices, especially for home
use. The portable medical device market is driven by the same requirements
and expectations as the defense segment; such as high quality and reliability,
shorter development cycles, a well-defined and documented supply chain and
extended product lifecycles. Among other products WEDC designs and
manufactures one of the industry's first medical series CompactFlash cards.
...White Electronic
Designs profile
Editor's comments:- WEDC has also recently
published a paper
Is All
CompactFlash Really Created Equal? (pdf) which uses the medical
instrumentation market as the backdrop for a discussion about
flash SSDs similar
to those concerns analyzed in
SSD Myths and
Legends - "write endurance" - which looked at the enterprise
server market.
Samsung and Toshiba Cross License Flash
Technologies
TOKYO
- December 3, 2007 -
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Toshiba Corp today announced a
flash technology licensing agreement.
Under terms of the
agreement, Samsung will license product specifications of its integrated OneNAND
and Flex-OneNAND "fusion" memory chips to Toshiba, while Toshiba will
license product specifications of its single-package LBA-NAND and mobileLBA-NAND
flash chips to Samsung. Both companies will develop and market products that are
compatible with the respective original-source technology.
...Samsung profile,
...Toshiba profile,
storage chips,
Flash Memory
New Report - Understanding the NAND Flash
Market
Los
Gatos, CA - November 9, 2007 - Objective Analysis has introduced a
report called - Understanding the NAND Flash Market.
This 55-page report (price $4,000) explains how and why this
technology has been able to grow so quickly (to become a $16 billion market in
less than 10 years) and projects what is likely to occur over the next 5 years.
It profiles NAND makers and users, explains the cost dynamics governing
manufacturing, and evaluates end markets and market drivers.
"There has never been a report that pulls together all the
elements of NAND business dynamics to make them clear to NAND makers, buyers,
sellers, or investors," said Jim Handy, author of the report. "This
document explains price, cost, capacity, and demand, and shows how they all work
together to produce oversupplies, undersupplies, and the price collapses for
which this market is notorious."
...Objective
Analysis profile
SiliconSystems Launches Postage Stamp Size
USB SSD
Aliso
Viejo, Calif - October 30, 2007 - SiliconSystems, Inc. today announced
its new SiliconDrive USB Blade solid-state storage product.
SiliconDrive
USB Blade is a postage-stamp sized
USB solid-state drive
designed for embedded storage applications where board space, shock, vibration,
temperature and multi-year product lifecycles are mandatory design
considerations. Evaluation units and host developer tool kits will be available
in December in capacities of 512 megabytes, 1 and 2 gigabytes.
Historically,
many OEM designers have dismissed USB-based storage because they associated
the entire product category with the retail-grade thumb drive form factor which
does not meet the rigorous requirements of embedded system applications. The
new SiliconDrive includes SiliconSystems' patented PowerArmor, SiSMART and
Secure technologies that deliver the high performance, high reliability and
multi-year product lifecycles embedded storage applications demand. ...SiliconSystems
profile, article:-
Increasing Flash Solid State Disk Reliability
Addonics Launches PCI Flash SSD RAID
Adapter
SAN
JOSE, CA - October 23, 2007 - Addonics Technologies today announced a
PCI flash RAID adapter.
The Addonics AD4CFPRJ enables users to
create a low cost large capacity
SSD. It fits into any PCI
slot and allows as many as 4 Compact Flash media of any capacity to be used
like an ordinary hard drive.
The adapter includes built-in firmware, which allows the CF cards to be
configured as one large volume, 4 individual drives, or configured for
redundancy with support for RAID 0 (Striped), RAID 1 (Mirrored), and RAID 10
(Mirrored Striped).
With the increased capacity and lowering costs of
flash media, replacing
the hard drive with CF as a boot drive is now a viable alternative because CF
offers lower power consumption and no moving parts.
The adapter supports UDMA, DMA, and PIO hard drive modes. OS support
includes DOS, Windows 98/ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Vista, and Linux kernel 2.4+ .
The Addonics Quad CF PCI adapter has a MSRP of $49.95 ...Addonics profile
Editor's
comments:- The risk with this approach is that many CF cards aren't
designed for intensive write operations and don't have internal wear levelling
controllers. That's what differentiates a
flash SSD from
vanilla flash storage.
If a user is tempted (by the low price) to install the Addonics adapter in a
server application - with the wrong type of flash cards - the storage media may
fail in under a year.
Spansion Aims at Emerging Phone Markets
SUNNYVALE,
Calif - July 9, 2007 - Spansion Inc. today announced the availability
of its NOR VS family for entry-level phones in fast growing markets such as
China, India and Russia.
The Spansion NOR VS family, with
densities ranging from 16Mb to 64Mb and with up to 30% savings on die size,
enables handset OEM customers to develop more cost-efficient and higher
performance solutions compared to earlier generation products.
With 1.8-volt and burst mode supports of up to 104MHz, the NOR VS
family is compatible with existing interfaces, chipsets, packages and commands.
Additionally, the new Spansion product family enables a seamless pinout
migration and simple software migration for handset designers to the
MirrorBit
technology family, empowering phone manufacturers to quickly bring to market
new handsets that attract new users and grow market share.
...Spansion profile,
storage chips
Samsung moviMCP will Shrink Mobile
Phones
Seoul,
Korea - May 30, 2007 - Samsung today announced that it is sampling a 4
gigabyte multi-chip package for mobile phones that eliminates the need for an
external memory card slot. |
| The new moviMCP stacks
flash and
RAM vertically to enable a
small footprint device which satisfies the high-speed data transmission needs
of mobile phones, while fully supporting the communication features within the
handset. |
 | |
| According
to
iSuppli, the 3G mobile
phone market - which is the main target for Samsung's new moviMCP - is expected
to reach 392 million units in 2007 and will grow 40% annually till 2010. ...Samsung profile,
storage chips,
Storage News
in Pictures | |
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| Squeak!
- SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance" |
| Does the
fatal gene of "write endurance" built into
flash
solid state
disks prevent their deployment in intensive server acceleration
applications - such as RAID
systems? |
It was
certainly true as little as a few years ago.
What's the risk with
today's devices?
This article looks at the current generation of
products and calculates how much (or how little) you should be worried. |
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| RAM based SSDs have been
used alongside RAID for years - but flash SSDs are physically smaller and have
bigger capacity (160G in 2.5") and are lower cost than RAM-SSDs and could
actually be configured in standard RAID boxes. F-SSDs aren't as fast as RAM
based products but a single flash SSD can deliver 20,000 IOPs - which when
scaled up in an array - starts to look interesting. ...read the article,
storage reliability
solid state disks | |
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Squeak! -
Why are Most Analysts Wrong About Solid State Disks?
Most
analysts and editors of other computer publications don't really understand the
solid state disk market. They show their ignorance and naivete by prefacing
every discussion of SSDs with a superficial analysis which compares the cost per
byte of storage between flash and hard disk drives. That's the wrong answer to
the wrong question. And it's far removed from why the SSD market is racing to
become a multi billion dollar market seemingly in blithe ignorance of the cost
per byte proposition.
This article tells you what's important to
users and the main applications in which SSDs are already being used and new
applications where they will be used in the next 3 years. ...read the
article, Solid State Disks | |
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War of the
Disks: Hard Disk Drives vs. Flash Solid State Disks - article by BiTMICRO
BiTMICRO
is the #1 best recognised brand of SSDs (source
STORAGEsearch.com SSD
Survey) and they have published a lot of
articles to help
customers understand the benefits of their products. When I first saw the
submission for this article I was pleased to see that it quoted extracts from
and linked to several other articles that I myself had written or edited - so
that gave me a warm glow.
After years of analyzing this market SSD
vendors and analysts are starting to see some clear patterns emerging. Although
opinions still differ on some subjects, and vendors are prone to pitch their own
solutions as best, this article is a useful synthesis of current industry
thinking by one of the leading flash SSD module manufacturers. ...read the article,
...BiTMICRO Networks
profile, Solid State Disks,
Hard disk drives | |
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| Squeak!
- the Fastest Growing Storage Companies |
This
is the 6th annual edition of this popular article, and is compiled from
analyzing the reported results from the top 1,000 storage companies.
The
top 3 companies had over 300% year on year revenue growth.
If
you're looking to team with successful storage companies or want to emulate
their success, this article will tell you who they are and the market segments
they are in. ...read
the article |
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Increasing
Flash Solid State Disk Reliability - article by SiliconSystems
Solid
state disks, based on flash technology, have greatly improved in performance in
recent years and now compete head to head with RAM based accelerator systems.
Flash also has significant advatanges in servers compared to RAM SSDs due to low
power consumption.
But if you think that all solid state disks which
use flash are equally reliable and enduring then think again.
That's
a bit like saying that a Mercedes 300SL sports coupe is as tough as a Tiger
tank because both were made in Germany and both are built out of metal. But as
Oddball (Donald Sutherland) says in the movie
Kelly's
Heroes "I ain't messing with no Tigers."
This article
by SiliconSystems, shows how their patented architecture cleverly manages the
wear out mechanisms inherent in all flash media to deliver a disk lifetime that
is about 4 times greater than of other enterprise flash products and upto 100
times greater than intrinsic flash memory. ...read the article,
...SiliconSystems
profile, Solid state disks |
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Squeak! -
Animal Brands and Metaphors in the Storage Market
Animal
marketing metaphors are popular in service industries, but you'd be surprised
how many companies have used animals in their marketing of data storage
products and services.
The storage market was worth over $150 billion
in 2005, and as it gets bigger - more companies will turn to animal brands to
help differentiate their otherwise bland products and lend them artificial
(or deserving) characters and virtues.
The idea behind this type of
marketing is to suggest positive connotations so it's unlikely that anyone will
choose to associate their products with gremlins. But you may be surprised by
the population of the storage ark.
This reference articles lists all
known companies who have furry marketing brands, and also includes some which
are slimy, scaly and scary too. ...read the article,
Mice in storage |
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