2010 - year 1 of the SSD Market Bubble - article on storagesearch.com
2010
year of the SSD bubble?
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Flash Memory Chips, Cards & nvRAM

This page includes news, articles and oems related to chips and cards which incorporate flash memory and other non volatile memory technologies. Traditionally these products didn't include wear leveling and complex controllers. That is changing - but to differentiate the content - we have separate pages for Flash SSDs
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Micron's embedded memory market video

Editor:- July 21, 2010 - Micron's VP of Embedded Solutions, Glen Hawk discusses the company's strategy with respect to the embedded memory market and how the Numonyx business (which they acquired in February for $1.3 billion) fits in - in a video interview on YouTube which also mentions prospects for extending the life of NOR architectures using PCM and also hints at other applications - which I assume are SSDs.


2010 Memory market may reach $67 billion - says IDC

Editor:- July 6, 2010 - IDC forecasts that revenues for the semiconductor memory sector (DRAM and flash) will reach $66.7 billion in 2010.


SSD readers intro to Nanocrystal Memories

Editor:- June 30, 2010 - a recent blog from Denali Software describes the characteristics of nanocrystal memories - a flash-like nv memory technology from Freescale Semiconductor.

This comparison table on Freescale's web site suggests 10x faster write cycle - and upto 30x endurance (10 million cycles) than traditional flash. The technology is shipping in some embedded microprocessors.


Macronix research pushes flash density

Editor:- June 16, 2010 - Macronix today announced its research results related to its patented BE SONOS (barrier engineering) charge-trapping technology which could make terabit NAND flash feasible.

Using 3D stacking, NAND Flash may achieve higher data storage capacity and effectively lower fabrication cost without relying on advances in lithography technology. Consequently some memory manufacturers have invested in 3D research recently.


Samsung ships 512Mb PRAM

Editor:- April 28, 2010 - Samsung Electronics today announced shipments of a 512Mb PRAM MCP which is is backwards compatible with 40nm NOR flash memory in both its hardware and software functionality allowing mobile handset designers the convenience of retrofitting the 3x faster writing PRAM into exisiting designs based on NOR.


Everspin samples industry's first 16Mb MRAM

Editor:- April 19, 2010 - Everspin Technologies announced it is sampling a 16Mb MRAM.

The MR4A16B is a 3.3-volt, parallel I/O non-volatile RAM that features 35ns access times with unlimited read/write cycles. Data is always non-volatile after each write for more than 20 years. In addition, MRAM is immune to soft error rates associated with cosmic rays that impact other memories. The 16Mb MRAM is organized as 1,048,576 words of 16 bits. Pin and function-compatible with asynchronous SRAM, the MR4A16B targets industrial automation, robotics, network and data storage, multi-function printers and a host of other systems traditionally limited to SRAM-based designs.


Web-Feet publishes flash market share report

Editor:- March 30, 2010 - Web-Feet Research has published a report - Non Volatile Memory Market Shares (2009) by Vendor ($2,500) - which segments component shipments by memory type and vendor.

Web-Feet says the 2009 flash memory market was worth $20.8 billion, only 2% more than 2008. The top 5 flash vendors were:- Samsung, Toshiba, SanDisk, Micron and Hynix.

Power managed petabyte SSDs may be new market for SLC flash
Editor:- March 16, 2010 - in recent years flash memory makers have made much more MLC than SLC flash memory to feed the demands for consumer storage devices.

You'd be forgiven for getting the impression that SLC is an endangered species - as SSD controller designers device cunning ways to make the cheaper consumer flash live longer in acceleration apps.

But in a new article published today - SSDs - reaching for the petabyte - I explain why SLC may see a resurgence in an entirely new type of SSD device which may appear in the market in the future. And there are no design tricks which can make MLC work reliably in this type of architecture.


STMicroelectronics samples dual port RFID EEPROM

Editor:- March 2, 2010 - STMicroelectronics is sampling a pioneering new family of dual technology access EEPROMs - which add a standard RFID interface to the conventional serial interface.

The chip gathers both the energy and the data from the RF system. No power is required to operate the M24LR64 (64k bit capacity) in RF mode.

"This highly innovative ability to program or read a memory wirelessly, as well as electrically, will provide tremendous added-value to our customers, enabling highly flexible supply-chain management and also stimulating new types of products with powerful features and capabilities," said Benoit Rodrigues, General Manager, Memories Division, STMicroelectronics.


25nm Flash will Double SSD Capacities in Q2

Editor:- February 1, 2010 - Intel and Micron today announced they are sampling the world's 1st 25nm NAND flash memory.

This gives 8GB MLC (classic 2 bit) flash memory in a stackable TSOP. The new chips will enable higher density SSDs to ship in volume in Q2.


Cactus Launches Rugged Reliable CF PATA SSD

Editor:- January 25, 2010 - Cactus Technologies today launched a rugged 32GByte industrial grade CF form factor PATA compatible SLC flash SSD.

The 303 Series offers high endurance (>2M write cycles per block), wear leveling, defect management and 4M hours MTBF.


New Report on MLC in the Enterprise

Editor:- November 2, 2009 - Forward Insights publishes a new market report this month - SSDs: Enabling MLC Technology in the Enterprise (price is $6,499).

The report's author - Gregory Wong - says "Due to demanding performance workloads, SLC technology has been the technology of choice for SSDs in enterprise computing environments. Therefore, it came as a surprise when in August of this year, STEC, a leading enterprise SSD vendor, announced that it will offer MLC based enterprise SSDs."

Are these products aimed at niche applications or do they suggest the beginnings of broader adoption of MLC technology in SSDs in the enterprise space? This report provides analysis of SSD usage models and what applications could conceivably be addressed by MLC technology. ...more info (pdf)

See also:- SSDs - market analysts , Are MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Apps?, Hybrid Storage Drives


Samsung Puts its Stamp on Consumer Flash Upgrades

Editor:- October 16, 2009 - Samsung is launching a branded range of flash cards aimed at the consumer market - initially in Taiwan.

Previously Samsung manufactured "white-label" digital memory cards for a variety of leading electronics companies and memory card companies.

Samsung's new premium "Plus" memory cards, which comply with the Secure Digital class 6 ratings for performance, are available in SD, microSD and CF formats with densities of 4GB and 8GB, with a 16GB density for an SD Plus card. Designed to ensure that valuable data is not lost, Samsung memory cards are shock-resistant, water-resistant and protected from damage caused by magnetic interference. iSuppli estimates the NAND flash-memory retail market is already worth $12 billion in revenues annually.


Samsung Wheels Out PRAM (Problematic RAM)

Editor:- September 22, 2009 - Samsung today announced it has begun producing 512Mb PRAM memory.

PRAM combines the speed of RAM for processing functions with the non-volatile characteristics of flash memory for storage.

"We believe PRAM will make a highly significant contribution to the efficiency of mobile phone designs, particularly for multimedia handsets and smartphones," said Sei-Jin Kim, vice president, mobile memory planning and enabling group, Memory Division, Samsung Electronics. "We expect it to become one of our core memory products in the future."

Editor's comments:- let's do a reality check here. This has been a Problematic (rather than a Perfect) RAM technology. Samsung originally announced a working prototype of the 512Mb PRAM 3 years earlier - in September 2006.


Will Flash Torch Hard Disk Market? - Reprise

Editor:- September 21, 2009 - 2 years ago StorageSearch.com published an article - How Solid is Hard Disk's Future? - in which I looked at - what impact would the fast growing solid state disk market have on the overall hard disk market?

Readers had asked - "Is SSDs' gain really HDDs' loss?" - My analysis concluded - "In some segments yes. But it's not a zero sum game."

This theme is revisited in a new article published today by - Coughlin Associates - Flash & HDD - Symbiosis, or Survival of the Fittest? (pdf).

The new white paper, written by esteemed storage analysts - Tom Coughlin, Jim Handy and Roger F. Hoyt shows how many hard disk drives are sold because of digital storage required to support flash memory consumer electronics applications such as digital cameras, camcorders, and music and video players. The paper makes the case that there is more symbiosis than competition between hard disk drives and flash memory for consumer electronics applications. ...read the article (pdf)


Sonnet Launches Camera to Hard Drive Transfer Module

Editor:- September 10, 2009 - Sonnet Technologies today announced the Qio professional universal media reader/writer.

It's a convenient high speed alternative to stand-alone card readers, SATA controllers and various adapters, combining their functionality in a compact rugged case, and fulfilling the data handling needs of videographers with multiple cameras using different memory card formats.

We talked to many customers who had combinations of Sony, Panasonic and Red cameras who wanted some way to transfer the data from any of them at full speed to hard drives, needed drive-to-drive copy capability, and desired a compact, portable, rugged, and battery-operable package," said Robert Farnsworth, CEO of Sonnet Technologies. "The Qio does this and more!." Removable Storage


Intel Promises 3-bits-per-cell MLC Flash for Christmas

Editor:- August 11, 2009 - Intel and Micron Technology today announced the development of a new 3-bit-per-cell MLC NAND technology, leveraging their 34nm geometry process.

The new 32Gb chips, expected to ship in the 4th quarter, will typically be used in consumer storage devices such as flash cards and USB drives, where high density and cost-efficiency are paramount.

Analyst comments:- from Jim Handy, Objective Analysis - "The chip is not for all markets. Just as SLC NAND was once thought to be poorly suited to SSDs, then poorly suited to enterprise SSDs, this chip, with a very low endurance level, is currently being promoted by the companies as a device well suited to USB flash drives and flash cards for cameras and cell phones, but the companies explained that they need more experience in production volumes before they will be confident to position it as a chip suitable for the high-write environment of the SSD."


Report Senses New Ways to Tap MLC

Editor:- July 24, 2009 - Forward Insights has published a market report - Key NAND Flash Memory Design IP (price is $9,999).

Technical innovations in NAND flash memory design are key enablers of MLC flash memories, especially 3 and 4 bit-per-cell technologies.

The report identifies important intellectual property related to sensing architectures, source voltage noise compensation, programming algorithms, disturbs reduction, temperature compensation, high voltage switch, coding schemes and error correction codes from Hynix, Micron, Samsung, SanDisk, STMicroelectronics and Toshiba.

The author, Luca Crippa is an MLC flash memory designer with more than 10 years of experience and is the author/co-author of 20 U.S. patents. SSD analysts , SSD IP, XLC Disk (spoof)


Looking for Cheaper Flash?

Editor:- July 17, 2009 - "Future NAND price reductions will be much less than what we have experienced" - according the analysis in a new article by Lane Mason, Memory Market Analyst at Denali Software.

Lane Mason analyzes the market assumptions, and historic cost base for SLC and MLC flash (including x4) for various geometries and suppliers - and discusses the likely cost per GB upto 2103. ...read the article , Analysts - SSD market


Most Secure USB Memory Stick

Editor:- July 13, 2009 - IronKey today announced the launch of its S200 USB flash drive for government and enterprise customers.

IronKey's CEO David Jevans said: "The IronKey S200 is the first and only USB flash drive to achieve the demanding FIPS 140-2, Level 3 security validation from NIST, giving even more proof that IronKey is the world's most secure flash drive. We are also releasing a suite of new enterprise remote management capabilities, available over the Internet from the IronKey managed service, or from our enterprise server software that companies can install and operate themselves."
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Solid state disks
There are hundreds of articles about SSDs on StorageSearch.com
Here, below, are some examples.
  • SSD Market History - lists product and technology milestones in the 30 years of the SSD market upto the end of 2009.
  • RAM Cache Ratios in flash SSDs - it's important to know the underlying RAM cache architecture - even if you're happy with the R/W and IOPS performance.
  • 2010 - 1st Fizz in the SSD Bubble? - even the dogs in the street know this is going to be a multibillion dollar market. Greed will play as big a part as technology in shaping the SSD year ahead.
  • the pros and cons of using SSD ASAPs - auto tuning SSD appliances are a new category of SSD which entered the market in the 2nd half of 2009 to accelerate servers without needing human tune-ups. How can you tell if they are right for you? And how well do they work?
  • the Problem with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs - long established as a useful performance modeling metric - this article explains why some specs are exaggerated when applied to flash SSDs - or predict the wrong results for many common applications.
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Fujio Masuoka - inventor of flash memory.
Find out more about people who have shaped storage history.
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SSDs Pass HDDs in Storage Density?

2009 may well be remembered as the year that flash SSDs surpassed HDDs in storage capacity in the same form factor.

I'm not talking about itsy bitsy 1 inch and smaller drives here. I'm talking about the hard core 2.5" form factor.

That's the size which once seemed to offer the best hopes for hard disk makers staying in business - in applications like disk to disk backup, entertainment bulk storage etc.

In January 2009 - pureSilicon started sampling a 2.5" MLC SSD - with 1TB capacity in a 9.5mm high form factor.

A few weeks later Western Digital temporarily restored the parity in storage density when it announced a 2TB 3.5" hard drive. Since you can put 2x 2.5" drives into a single 3.5" enclosure - you can think of them as being equivalent. That is until either the next amplification in MLC (if it ever works) or the next shrink in flash memory (maybe later than sooner).

Price of the 2.5" terabyte SSD wasn't mentioned. I expect it will cost a lot. But nowhere near as much as the 1st terabyte SSDs cost - when they appeared in 2002 - at a cool $2 million.

So you may well ask - when will SSDs cost less than HDDs for the same capacity?

In some high-performance grades (15K RPM server drives) - I expect to see that happen this year - in smaller capacities like 100GB. Looking Ahead to the 2009 SSD Market
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the Fastest Solid State Disks

Speed isn't everything, and it comes at a price.
But if you do need the6speediest SSD then wading through the web sites of over 100 current SSD oems to find a suitable candidate slows you down.

And the SSD search problem will get even worse.
the Fastest Solid State Disks
I've done the research for you to save you time. And this page is updated daily from storage news and direct inputs from oems. ...read the article,
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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.
read the article - SSD Myths and Legends
RAM based SSDs have been used alongside RAID for years - but flash SSDs are physically smaller and have bigger capacity (upto 412G in 2.5", 512G in 3.5") 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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click to see profile and editor's analysis for Intel
SSD Bookmarks

suggested by - Kevin T Crow, Strategy Specialist, NAND Solutions Group, Intel
Here's an article written by or about Intel

Enterprise-wide Deployment of Notebook PCs with Solid-State Drives

Kevin says he chose this article because "It will give the reader an overview of the benefits experienced by the enterprise after deploying notebooks with solid state drives."

The article is a case study about the productivity benefits of using SSD based notebooks instead of hard drive notebooks inside an enterprise (Intel). Following an internal evaluation Intel found the benefits so "compelling" that it decided to deploy up to 10,000 SSD notebooks to its own employees.

Other SSD article suggestions...

The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD - published by AnandTech

Kevin says "This is the latest in a long series of reviews that compare solid state drives and discusses the technology behind them. Overall the series does a very good job educating the reader on what they need to know when making a solid state drive purchase decision."

Editor:- thanks Kevin for sharing your SSD links.

see also:- Intel - editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com
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Squeak! - Animal Brands and Metaphors in the Storage Market
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.

As the storage market 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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