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."
| |
| . |
| |
|
| 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.
| | |
| . |
|
|
| . |
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 | |
| . |
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. |
 | |
| 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, | |
| . |
| 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. |
| |
| 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 | |
| . |
 |
|
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 | | |
| . |
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 |
 | | |
