| storage chip news |
Power managed petabyte SSDs
may awake 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 demand for
consumer storage devices.
You'd be forgiven for getting the impression
that SLC is an endangered species - as
SSD controller
designers devize 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. |
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No power is required to
operate the M24LR64 (64k bit capacity) in RF mode. The
chip
gathers both the energy and the data from the RF system.
DRAM market may reach $32 billion this year
Editor:-
February 18, 2010 - iSuppli
announced today it expects global
DRAM revenue in 2010 to
grow
40% to approx $32 billion - compared to 2009.
Micron acquires NOR flash leader
Editor:- February
9, 2010 - Micron
today
announced
an agreement to acquire
privately held Numonyx
in an all-stock transaction worth approximately $1.3 billion.
This
strengthens Micron's position as one of the world's leading memory companies,
with a broad portfolio of
DRAM,
NAND and NOR memory
products.
Analyst comment:- from Objective Analysis
- "By acquiring Numonyx, Micron is buying the current leader in the NOR
flash market - which has been a difficult one for nearly all participants.
Leaders Numonyx and Spansion
have suffered losses for several years, with Spansion recently turning a profit
through a strategy largely focused upon markets for low-density parts used by
markets outside of cell handsets, the largest consumer of NOR flash. Micron
itself participated in NOR starting in the late 1990s, but abandoned this effort
in 2006."
New Name for 20 Year Old Austin Semiconductor
Editor:-
February 4, 2010 - Austin
Semiconductor recently announced it plans to change its name and (along
with some other companies) it will be merged into a new entity and brand to be
called Micross Components.
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.
LSI will Compete with Fusion-io
Editor:- January 26,
2010 - LSI and
Seagate today
announced
they have collaborated on designing
PCIe SSDs for the
enterprise accelerator market which will sample in Q2 2010.
Editor's
comments:- LSI is approximately the 163rd company to enter the
SSD market (not counting
SSD SoC makers - which
would push the score to about 185).
Partly this is due to a strong
suction effect from the SSD
market bubble - and partly an inevitable step given that the high end of the
RAID controller market
is going to disappear.
There's little point in spending money aggregating
IOPS in an
array of hard disks -
if the result costs more, is slower and is less
reliable to
operate.
Samsung Agrees $900 million Settlement with Rambus
Editor:-
January 19, 2010 - Rambus
and Samsung
today
announced
that they have reached agreement settling all claims between them and licensing
Rambus' patent portfolio covering all Samsung semiconductor products including a
perpetual fully paid-up license to certain current
DRAM products.
As
part of the overall agreement, Samsung will invest $200 million in Rambus stock.
Other consideration to Rambus includes an initial payment of $200 million and a
quarterly payment of about $25 million for the next 5 years. In addition the
companies have signed a memorandum of understanding relating to a new
generation of memory technologies and interfaces.
WEDC Launches Secure PATA SSD in PBGA
Editor:-
January 18, 2010 - White
Electronic Designs has
introduced a
4GB secure PATA SLC
SSD in a 22mm x 27mm
PBGA for embedded military applications. |
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This product is designed for
applications in aircraft, communications and missiles. A hardware and software
triggered fast purge
can eliminate all data in less than 10 seconds and device options include
sanitization
compliant with various government agency specifications.
New edition - the Top 10 SSD Companies
Editor:-
January 7, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published the 11 quarterly edition of the
top 10 SSD oems -
ranked by search volume in the 4th quarter of 2009. ...read the article
LSI Samples 600k IOPS ROC for SSD Servers
Editor:-
December 16, 2009 - LSI
announced it is
sampling
the LSISAS2208 - a dual-core
6Gb/sSAS
RAID-on-Chip
IC to OEM customers.
It's
intended to support the forthcoming PCIe 3.0 specification, currently under
development and provide performance levels that meet the needs of
next-generation server platforms based on
flash SSD storage
(up to 600,000 IOPS).
OCZ will show Symwave based USB 3.0 SSD at CES
Editor:-
November 24, 2009 -
Symwave today
announced that
its USB 3.0 controller
has been designed into a new
flash SSD by
OCZ - which will be
shown at CES in January 2010.
Editor's
comments:- Symwave's controller design includes a fully integrated USB 3.0 to
SATA controller
device (SoC with software) - making it easier to adapt existing designs for
SATA SSDs. It's very
fast. In September 2009 - Symwave demonstrated
270MB/s
R/W throughput.
DDR PHY Cartoon from Denali
Editor:- November 17,
2009 - Denali Software
today published a simple cartoon style guide which introduces the complexities
involved in
designing
DDR PHY.
What's a DDR PHY? - To quote one of the captions - "I
sit between the memory controller and I/O pads and make your SoC shine!"
Even
if you're not a chip level
storage designer - appreciation of these design issues are helpful to an
understanding of product architectures, strengths, weaknesses and adaptibility.
SandForce Announces $21 million C Round Funding
Editor:-
November 10, 2009 - SandForce
today
announced
that it has closed $21 million in Series C funding.
Led by new
investor TransLink Capital, the round also included new
investors UMC Capital,
LSI Corporation, Red Maple Ventures, Darwin Ventures, and A-Data Technology as
well as all of the existing SandForce investors –DCM, Storm Ventures, and
Tier-1 storage OEMs.
"We have made rapid progress into the
marketplace since our launch just 6 months ago, and we are now shipping silicon
to top-tier SSD OEM customers," said Alex Naqvi, president and CEO of
SandForce. "This new funding will help us through our expansion phase as
well as accelerate our new products development that will help us maintain our
market leadership."
Editor's comments:- SandForce has
achieved remarkable brand
recognition for a company which designs
SSD SoCs. Here's a
test... how many other companies in this category can you even name?
Reputation
will become an important factor in buying
SSDs next year. Newer SSD
oems who haven't already established trusted brands in their own right - may
have to start leveraging the reputations of their technology partners.
PS
- SandForce says it's hiring. There are
13 jobs available on its
website.
Global Unichip takes SSD SoC HeadCount to 23
Editor:-
November 2, 2009 - Global Unichip
announced mass-production of its
ARM7-based
GP5080
series PATA / SATA compatible
SSD SoC platform for
use in portable consumer products.
There are 2 different models.
GP5080 is optimized for cost sensitive applications by removing the need for
external DRAM cache (skinny SSDs),
while GP5086 supports DRAM cache for (regular SSD)
applications needing extra extended lifetime (write attenuation).
Error Correction in MLC Flash SSD RAID
Editor:-
October 28, 2009 - ECC
Technologies has published a new article which examines
data reliability
issues in RAID systems using MLC flash.
In his survey of
RAID and error correction
related to SSDs the author
Phil White said he thinks that "MLC NAND Flash memories should
implement nonbinary error-correcting codes such as a Reed-Solomon (RS) codes so
that all of the bits from one cell are in one symbol. The communications
industry has been doing that for decades, but the Flash industry has been
implementing a scheme that forces the bits from one cell to be in separate
records (pages) so that one cell failure can cause multiple binary symbol
failures – which seems illogical."
I asked him to expand on
this for our readers.
In reply - Phil said he doesn't think that
most NAND Flash (SSD) companies have a high level of expertise in the field of
error-correcting codes.
"Many of the
NAND Flash controllers
that are out in the market now have ECC Tek's ECC designs in them. None of the
controller companies who have come to us have any idea how to implement binary
BCH encoders and decoders in hardware. I doubt if any of the Flash
manufacturers have that expertise either."
"For years the
Flash manufacturers implemented a simple binary scheme that corrected only 1 bit
in a page. I don't have evidence to prove this, but I believe the NAND Flash
manufacturers simply decided to extend their original scheme to correct N bits
in instead of 1 bit to handle higher error rate devices. I also believe that
they implemented a scheme for MLC NAND Flash to "randomize" the errors
when a cell fails.
"Consider 4-bits/cell. When a cell fails,
0-4 bits may be in error. In order to keep using binary error-correcting codes
that only correct bits, they designed the chips so that all of the bits from
that cell are in different pages.
"To the best of my knowledge, they never considered using RS
codes so that all of the bits from one cell are in one RS symbol. For example,
assume a RS code with 12-bit symbols. Each RS symbol can hold the data from
three 4-bit cells, and if those three cells happen to fail, it will only corrupt
one RS symbol. RS codes can correct t "symbol" errors and s "symbol"
erasures as long as 2t+s is less than or equal to R where R is the number of "symbols"
of redundancy. The most natural and powerful thing to do is to put all of the
bits from one cell in one RS symbol." ...read the article
See
also:- Data
Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design - a recently published article by
SandForce.
Emulex Offers Bridging Hand to SSD Designers
Editor:-
October 13, 2009 - Emulex
is expanding its
InSpeed
chip bridging technology to simplify the job of designing fast native
SAS and
Fibre-channel compatible
flash SSDs.
"SandForce is working
closely with Emulex to enable customers to build enterprise-class SSDs that
connect to Fibre Channel or SAS systems," said Thad Omura, VP of marketing,
SandForce. "Emulex's next generation InSpeed flexible bridging options
enable our SATA-based Enterprise SSD Processor, to be used with either Fibre
Channel or SAS systems. In initial testing, we've found the new InSpeed bridge
technology provides a robust and high performance solution for SSD applications."
SSD Controllers / IP
Rambus Fellow Named Inventor of the Year
Editor:-
October 1, 2009 - Rambus
today
announced
that Craig Hampel, a Rambus Fellow, has been named Inventor of the
Year by the Silicon Valley Intellectual
Property Law Association.
During his distinguished career, Mr.
Hampel has received 134 U.S. patents. These inventions and associated memory
solutions have played a fundamental role in advancements in 3D realism across a
number of gaming platforms, including the
Nintendo
64, Sony
PlayStation 2 and
3 game consoles.
"I am proud to work alongside some of the best minds in the
industry at Rambus," said Craig Hampel, Fellow at Rambus. "Together,
we have designed 3 generations of
memory architectures that
increased bandwidth nearly 100x and helped enable the rapid rise in
performance of computing and consumer products." See also:-
Storage People.
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.
OEMs Qualifying Virtual RAID Adapter Software
Editor:-
September 15, 2009 -
Dot Hill today
announced
that several tier #1 OEMs are evaluating its virtual RAID adapter
software.
VRA-based
solutions enable server OEMs to offer built-in, high-end
RAID functionality in
multi-core Intel compatible servers without the expense of a dedicated
RAID-on-chip acceleration device.
In September 2008, Dot Hill acquired
certain assets from Ciprico
which included exclusive rights to license
RAIDCore
technology from Broadcom.
The acquisition was part of a strategic initiative to offer software-only
products for the enterprise server data protection market as complementary
offering to its existing external hardware RAID array business.
RAIDCore
VRA technology enables RAID to be offered in volume, entry-level servers where
hardware-accelerated RAID has traditionally been too expensive.
Our Core is Flash - Says Skymedi
Editor:- August 26,
2009 - Skymedi
wants to concentrate efforts on its
flash controller
business and spin off its multimedia processor division according to a report
today in DIGITIMES
.
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."
Micron Names IDT as IP Partner for PCIe SSD
Editor:-
July 27, 2009 - IDT
announced
it was working with Micron
to develop a commercial PCIe
flash SSD for the server market.
Micron had previously tested
market reaction by unveiling a prototype PCIe SSD (with 800MB/s R/W speeds) in
November 2008.
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.
In the past 4 - 5 years the price per GB
for flash memory shrank by approximately x100 - but the author warns
that in the next 4 years the price shrink may be in low single digits.
"Most
of the low-hanging (technical) fruit for NAND cost-reduction has been picked"
- says Lane Mason in this "must
read" article.
See also:-
SSD market analysts
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.
OEMs Race to Design Their Own SSDs
Editor:- May
27, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
disclosed today that search volume for
SSD SoCs (systems on a
chip and controllers) has overtaken
1" SSDs (includes
miniature SSD modules) this month for the first time.
Guess that
confirms my sneaking suspicion that a lot of oems want to
design their own
SSDs. |
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| New
Directory for AoE Storage |
Editor:- January 15, 2010 -
StorageSearch.com has
published a new directory for AoE
(ATA-over-Ethernet) NAS Storage.
Although this
NAS mode first hit our news
pages in 2003 -
support for it hitherto has been miniscule and compatible products are only
available from a handful of vendors. |
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Will 2010 be the year that
it all changes? Maybe.
SSDs could play a part -
because less latency is wasted in this low level network storage interface. | | | |
| . |
There
are
hundreds
of SSD articles on StorageSearch.com
Here 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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