Aliso Viejo, Calif. -
October 14, 2008 - SiliconSystems, Inc. said it will extend the range
of interfaces available in its miniature SiliconDrive II Blade form factor.
Already
available with USB,
SiliconDrive II
Blade products featuring the SD, MMC and
SATA interfaces will
be available for volume shipment in the first quarter of 2009.
"...SiliconSystems
clearly saw the market need for a smaller, more rugged
SSD form factor that could
accommodate a broad range of storage interfaces," said
Gary Drossel, vp
of product planning at SiliconSystems. "The rapid and wide-spread adoption
of our SiliconDrive II USB Blade product led us to move quickly to develop
additional SiliconDrive II Blade products featuring a variety of
industry-standard storage interfaces."
...SiliconSystems
profile, SSDs &
HDDs - 1.0" and under
Hifn Launches Hardware Dedupe Accelerators
LOS GATOS, Calif. - October
14, 2008 - Hifn today introduced new hardware-accelerated, data
de-duplication products.
The Hifn De-Dupe Accelerator
250
(PCI-X) and 255 (PCIe) can deliver upto 250MB/sec combined hash filtering,
compression and encryption per card. Upto 4 cards can be combined into a single
node. OS support includes Suse and RedHat Linux. List price starts at $1,995 per
unit with OEM volume discounts available. ...Hifn profile,
deduplication faqs
LSI Announces 16 Port SAS I/O Processor
SNW, TX -
October 14, 2008 - LSI Corp today introduced a 16-port SAS storage
processor chip.
The new LSISAS2116 is the industry's first
single-chip, 16-port 6Gb/s
SAS storage
processor for external storage systems. It integrates a PowerPC application
processor, x8 PCIe 2.0 bus and support for 8GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory.
...LSI profile,
storage chips
1.5TB Removable Disk Available for Teralyte D2d
Gaithersburg, MD -
October 14, 2008 - Idealstor announced today availability of a 1.5TB
removable SATA disk option for use with their line of removable disk backup
systems.
Jeff Main, President of Idealstor Channel Partner
Questec said - "We used to sell
LTO-3 drives for these customers because of the capacity LTO offered. We have
since switched to selling the Idealstor
Teralyte because it not
only offers faster transfer rates and more reliable backups, their native
capacity is nearly 4 times that of LTO-3 and twice that of LTO-4. Now with 1.5TB
drives available this product is even more compelling as we can offer up to
1.5TB of removable media capacity/cartridge for only $1,995." ...Idealstor profile,
Disk to disk backup
Austin Semiconductor Offers First US Assembled TSOPII Military
SDRAM
Austin,
Texas - October 13, 2008 - Austin Semiconductor, Inc. has expanded their
semiconductor assembly services by adding the only onshore (US) TSOPII
capability.
The first product is a 512Mb, 54-Pin TSOPII SDRAM with
copper lead frame. The TSOPII features a Lead on Chip (LOC) design, which allows
the size of the package to be approximately the chip size, which reduces the
size to the minimum. The device is a 512Mb, 32Mb x 16, 3.3V, SDRAM, measuring
22.30mm x 11.76mm, with a height of 1.2mm. Full Military temp (-55°C to 125°C)
processing is available. This product is currently available and Austin Semi is
capable of providing 8,000 – 10,000 parts per month.
"Austin
Semiconductor is pleased to be able to support the Hi-Rel community's need for
thermal efficient and mechanically robust plastic packaging with our 54-pin
TSOPII. In addition, we are offering our Hi-Rel customers more security and
confidence by being the only domestic supplier with the TSOPII capability,"
says Frank Muscolino, President of Austin Semiconductor.
The TSOPII is ideally suited for High-Temp applications in the
Automotive / Industrial / Military industries, cellular base stations, gas / oil
explorations, Aerospace & Avionics, Engine Control, On-Board Flight
Computers and Radar / Sonar. ...Austin Semiconductor
profile, RAM,
storage chips
Apple Co-Founder, Joins Fusion-io Advisory Board
Salt Lake City, UT -
October 13, 2008 - Fusion-io today announced that Steve Wozniak
has joined the company's advisory board.
Wozniak is
co-founder of Apple.
and the engineer who launched the home computer revolution. In his role at
Fusion-io, Wozniak will advise the company's CEO, Don Basile, on future market
trends; consult with senior management on company R&D efforts and product
road-mapping; and introduce Fusion-io to key strategic alliances in the
industry, as well as sales opportunities.
"Seldom have I seen
technology advances that win in almost every way at the same time, in terms of
speed, capacity, reliability, endurance, power usage and simplicity," said
Wozniak. "The products from Fusion-io are extremely useful to so many
different applications, not to mention most of the world's servers."
...Fusion-io profile,
Storage People
Editor's
comments:- also today Fusion-io announced that the performance of its
PCIe SSD had been
validated by
Medusa Labs
6
years later - in November 2014 - Steve Wozniak rejoined the band of
Fusion-io's founders at their next startup -
Primary Data.
Micron Pays $400 million for Bigger Slice of Nanya Technology
Boise,
Idaho , Sunday, October 12, 2008 - Micron Technology, Inc., today
announced that it is expanding its partnership with Nanya Technology Corp
and signing a definitive agreement to acquire Qimonda AG's 35.6%
ownership stake in Inotera for $400 million in cash.
In the
current Qimonda and Nanya partnership, Inotera operates 2 state-of-the-art 300
millimeter wafer fabrication facilities producing a total of 120,000 wafers per
month. Under the agreement, Micron will acquire access to half of the total
manufacturing capacity of Inotera, with the other half allocated to Nanya.
Micron will also share its industry-leading Stack DRAM technology with Inotera
for the production of Stack DRAM products for Micron and Nanya. ...Micron profile,
...Nanya profile,
...Qimonda profile,
Acquired storage
companies
Background and comments from - Jim Handy,
Objective
Analysis
A Shrewd Mover in Tough Times - Micron is once again doing
its part to consolidate the DRAM
market. The company has a successful track record of acquiring struggling
competitors' manufacturing capacity when the market is depressed. This is a
strategy that has worked well for Micron to date, and will give them some
much-needed 300mm capacity.
We remind our audience that manufacturing costs in a 300mm plant are
about 30% lower than they are for the same process running in a 200mm plant.
With today's DRAMs selling at or below cost, all competitors need to shed
themselves of their 200mm capacity as soon as they can.
This announcement comes only 3 days after Micron announced the
closing of their 200mm facilities in Boise. While other companies are
converting plants from 200mm to 300mm, Micron is taking the approach of closing
200mm capacity and purchasing 300mm capacity at bargain-basement prices, and
this deal is indeed a bargain!
The $400 million that Micron is paying
for 60,000 wafer starts in Inotera's 300mm line is significantly less expensive
than the $550 million the company had planned to invest in the MeiYa JV for an
output we estimate to be roughly half that size.
Nanya – Planning for Tomorrow - Nanya will be playing the same
role in with Micron the future that the company has played with Qimonda in the
past: Nanya supplies capital and manufacturing competence in return for
technology.
Death Knell for Trench? - Qimonda is the last
company to continue to support a trench cell process for DRAM – all other
DRAM makers use a stacked-capacitor approach. Trench technology, pioneered in
the 1990s by IBM, Siemens, and Toshiba, has seen its support base shrink mainly
through consolidations. Qimonda is the remnant of the DRAM manufacturing arms
of the 3 trench pioneers.
Nanya was the only other company supporting
trench technology through its relationship with Qimonda, and in March Nanya
signed an MOU with Micron to obtain rights to Micron's stacked-capacitor design.
Qimonda itself explained that their path to the 30nm process node would be
through their buried wordline design, which harnesses aspects of both trench and
stacked capacitor designs.
And What about Qimonda? - This transaction brings some
much-needed cash to Qimonda. The company has been suffering significantly
during the current protracted downturn. We believe this is the reason why the
deal involves cash, rather than stock.
Dataram Forward Integrates into the SSD Market
Redding, CA
- October 8, 2008 - it was announced today that Dataram Corp has
acquired the strategic assets of Cenatek, Inc.
"I am very pleased that we have successfully completed this
transaction," said Jason Caulkins, CEO of Cenatek. "Dataram is
providing significant resources to build upon the Cenatek product line, roadmap
and IP portfolio."
"This acquisition signifies the beginning of a series of focused
efforts to move Dataram into new, growing markets that align well with Dataram's
existing products and customer base," said John Freeman, President and CEO
of Dataram. "We are moving very quickly to license, acquire and develop
these new products, including software, into our customer-focused product
lineup."
Caulkins has joined Dataram to lead the company's return to solid
state storage, an area they pioneered
32 years ago.
"I am looking forward to contributing to the continued growth and success
of Dataram," Caulkins added. "I would also like to thank Cenatek's
investors and employees for their hard work and commitment to success."
...Dataram profile,
...Cenatek profile,
RAM based SSDs
Editor's
comments:- this is a very significant milestone for the
SSD market because it shows
the strategic value that memory makers place on SSDs.
In the past
companies like Intel have
resold 3rd party SSD cards, STEC
divested itself of its vanilla memory business and
Samsung would like to
own and control MLC patents now in the hands of
SanDisk.
Look
at it from the viewpoint of a memory maker.
Future server systems
will have orders of magnitude more memory in the attached SSDs than installed
as main RAM memory. Who
owns the brand of the SSD boxes will mean a dramatic difference to attainable
revenue. Being locked out of the SSD box - will mean that a memory maker can
only access smaller markets - or supply other SSD oems at commodity proces.
I expect to report many more such
acquisitions during
the next few years.
...Later:- when discussing this story my
wife said this is an example of a marketing
concept called "forward
integration."
11 months later:- we saw the next
stage of Dataram's SSD strategic plan - when it launched of the XcelaSAN
SSD appliance in September
2009 |
