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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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Flash SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
Z's Laws - Predicting Future Flash SSD Performance
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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."


Phase Change Memory Designers Promised 2nd Source

Editor:- June 23, 2009 - Numonyx announced a technology agreement with Samsung Electronics to develop common specifications for Phase Change Memory (PCM) products.

Both companies expecting to have compliant devices ("pin for pin" comatible) available next year.

Editor's comments:- some large oems prefer to have alternate sources before designing in new chips. It was IBM's insistence than Intel allow an official 2nd source for its x86 processors - as part of the original Wintel PC design - which sowed the seeds for decades of legal acrimony with AMD. (Intel and AMD didn't like each other much before that anyway.)


Crocus Ports MRAM to Tower Fab

Editor:- June 18, 2009 - Tower Semiconductor, announced it has taken an equity position (value approx $1.25 million) in Crocus Technologies, and announced it is porting Crocus's MRAM to its 200mm wafer fab.

Editor's comments:- Crocus's whitepaper - the Emergence of Practical MRAM (pdf) - gives the best explanation I've seen of why, despite so many companies entering the MRAM market, so few useful products have actually come out. It describes flaws in the intrinsic technology which lead to data corruption (similar in concept to read-disturb errors in flash - although completely different physically). It's necessary to fix these problems to enable reliable data storage.

The paper describes the proposed solution and also compares MRAM's data density to other semiconductor memory technologies, including SRAM, DRAM and flash.


AGIGA Tech Samples High Density Non Volatile RAM Chips

Editor:- May 26, 2009 - AGIGA Tech started sampling its new AGIGARAM non-volatile system ( technology which delivers densities between 4 megabytes (32 megabits) and 2 gigabytes (16 gigabits) and peak transfer rates equivalent to DRAMs.

"Today's memory technologies all have a problem. DRAM is volatile, flash is slow, SRAM with batteries is unreliable, and alternative technologies are too costly to use in large densities," said Jim Handy, Director of Objective Analysis. "Products like AgigA Tech's that combine the best attributes of DRAM and NAND are likely to meet with broad acceptance."

PhotoFast Announces Faster 1.8" Notebook SSDs
Editor:- May 27, 2009 - PhotoFast launched its G-Monster 1.8" SATA SSD with internal 64MB DRAM cache and upto 128GB capacity.
PhotoFast Announces Faster 1.8" Notebook SSDs
It supports R/W speeds upto 230MB/s and 160MB/s respectively. The company says - what's important in this type of notebook product is not just sequential R/W throughput for large blocks - but also write performance for small random blocks. It claims its 12MB/s (for 4KB blocks) is best in class.

Unity Semiconductor Unveils Flash's Successor

Editor:- May 19, 2009 - Unity Semiconductor exited stealth mode and stated its aim to have the lowest manufacturing cost per bit in the non volatile memory industry with a new breakthrough technology called CMOx.

The company said it will ship 64Gb devices in volume in 2011. Unity Semiconductor says it will develop and produce NAND flash successor technologies and products that, in time, will extend into high ]performance embedded and enterprise applications.

"It's a Technology for Terabits that will challenge high volume rotating magnetic media" said Unity Semiconductor Chairman, President & CEO Darrell Rinerson a former executive at Micron Technology and at AMD.

The company, also announced today it has closed a Series C funding round for $22 million. This brings to nearly $75M the total funding to date in Unity Semiconductor.


Article Peers into Nanocrystal NAND

Editor:- May 18, 2009 - a good article published on Semiconductor International called - Peering into Nanocrystal NAND - looks at factors affecting the potetial for future shrinks in flash memory.

The author David Lammers tackles an issue which I know has been worrying many flash SSD designers. He starts with this sobering observation... "As the polysilicon floating gate becomes smaller, fewer electrons are used to store a single bit. Any rupture in the floating gate allows the electrons to leak away, presenting reliability challenges." ...read the article


Ramtron's F-RAM Casualty of Auto Market Crash

Editor:- May 7, 2009 - Ramtron said its revenue declined 26% in the 1st quarter of 2009 compared to the year ago period.

A sharp decline in orders from the automotive market was cited as a principal cause.

Ramtron also announced an update on a legal suit related to in-field failures of one of its F-RAM memory products in an unspecified application. (In July 2008 Ramtron confirmed that specific batches of product had failed due to manufacturing process defects in one of its partners fabs.)

Ramtron also announced today that, over the next 2 years, it will transition the manufacturing of products that are currently being built at Fujitsu's chip foundry located in Iwate, Japan to its foundry at Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas and to its newest foundry at IBM Corp in Essex Junction, Vermont.


Samsung Pays Spansion $70 million

Editor:- April 7, 2009 - Samsung Electronics will pay Spansion $70 million as part of a flash memory patent settlement announced today.

The companies have also exchanged rights in their patent portfolios in the form of licenses and covenants subject to a confidential settlement agreement.


How 3D Memory Stacks Up - New Market Report

Editor:- April 1, 2009 - Forward Insights has released a new 70+ page report (price $5,499) called - How 3D Memory Stacks Up.

3D memory technologies offer the promise of continued increases in storage capacities and lower cost per bit necessary to enable emerging applications such as solid state drives.

Among the candidates: stacked NAND technologies employing charge trapping technology, vertical memory cells etched in a pillar and stackable cross-point memory arrays. This report explores the feasibility of each of these alternatives as a candidate to replace NAND flash memories within the next 4 years.


Aleratec Launches High Volume USB Flash Duplicators

Chatsworth, CA - March 10, 2009 - Aleratec Inc. announces 2 new USB flash duplicators.

Both the 27 way model (ESP $3,799) and 118 way model (ESP $15,749) can copy up to 33MB/s. Aleratec's President and CEO, Perry Solomon says - "The performance of the duplicators is not degraded when simultaneously copying large numbers flash drives, a common shortcoming in most USB flash drive duplicators." ...Aleratec profile, Disk Duplicators


RRAM Steps Closer to Commercial Fabs

Editor:- March 10, 2009 - 4DS announced additional funding as part of a multi-million dollar equity investment to port its RRAM technology to existing semiconductor fabs.

"PPP's investment during a very tepid investment climate is testimony to the strength of our technology and strategy," said Kurt Pfluger, CEO of 4DS, Inc. "We have demonstrated the leaps in performance, flexibility and cost from our proprietary process that will help enable a variety of compelling future memory applications. With this additional investment from PPP, we are better positioned to bring this technology to market."


Spansion Files for Bankruptcy

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - March 1, 2009 - Spansion Inc. the world's largest pure-play provider of flash memory solutions, today filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

The company believes that its current and anticipated cash resources will be sufficient to pay its expenses and maintain its business operations while it explores and implements options to address its long-term cash needs. Spansion emphasized that it intends to maintain customer service throughout the reorganization. ...Spansion profile

Analyst comments:-
Jim Handy at Objective Analysis explores what is likely to happen next? (pdf)


Hyperstone Launches CF SSD Controller

Konstanz, Germany - February 19, 2009 - Hyperstone launched a controller chip for oems designing industrial grade CF compatible SSDs.

The F4 provides safe power-fail handling, error detection and correction and static wear leveling. Data transfer rate to the attached flash memory array (16 chips) is upto 80MB/s. Sustained R/W via the CF interface is upto 50MB/s and 40MB/s respectively. Alternatively oems can add a SATA bridge, or RAID controller for other markets. ...Hyperstone profile


SanDisk and Toshiba Confirm Flash Fab Assets Swap

MILPITAS, CA - January 29, 2009 - SanDisk announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement with Toshiba to restructure their flash manufacturing joint ventures operating at the 300-mm Fab 3 and Fab 4.

As part of the agreement, more than 20% of the joint ventures'capacity will be transferred to Toshiba. The restructuring will result in the transfer of equipment lease obligations from SanDisk to Toshiba and a cash payment to SanDisk for the transfer of certain equipment currently owned by the joint ventures. The total value to SanDisk is approximately 80 billion yen, or approximately $890 million based on current exchange rates. The lease transfers and cash payment are expected to be completed by the end of the first calendar quarter of 2009. ...SanDisk profile, ...Toshiba profile, merged & gone away storage companies

Editor's comments:-
this simply confirms earlier public announcements made by both companies last October.


pureSilicon Unveils Terabyte 2.5" SSD

Editor:- January 8, 2009 - according to a news report on Marketwire - pureSilicon is sampling the highest density 2.5" SSD - with 1TB capacity in a 9.5mm high form factor.

Sustained read / write performance is said to be 240MB/s and 215MB/s respectively. The SATA SSD has latency under 100 µsec and is rated at 50,000 read IOPS, and 10,000 write IOPS.

The company emerged from stealth mode in October 2008 as a military storage oem - but the new products could find a much bigger market in commercial servers. I asked if compression was involved in achieving the capacity - but was told - no. Internally it's got 128 pieces of 64Gb MLC NAND.
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Flash Memory / Storage oems
4DS

Abcron

ACARD Technology

Adtron

Advanced Media

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ATP Electronics

BiTMICRO Networks

Cactus Technologies

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Imation

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Transcend Information

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Unigen

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Verbatim

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White Electronic Designs

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ssd specs article Can You Trust Your Flash SSD's Specs & Benchmarks?
No - sadly you can't! There are many intrinsic technical reasons why you can't believe most published benchmarks for flash SSDs (whether done by magazines or vendors) and why even the tests you carefully do yourself don't give reliable results which correlate with how the SSD will perform in real-life applications.

We warned you of it this problem here on StorageSearch.com last year - and now other publications and vendors are starting to take it seriously too. ...read the article
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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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