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OCZ dusts off memory flour
business to focus more on SSD cake
Editor:- August 24, 2010 - OCZ today announced plans
to wind down its commodity DRAM
business and focus more resources on
SSDs.
Ryan
Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group, Inc. said - "Our R&D
driven SSD business is performing well and is anticipated to be the majority of
our revenue going forward..."
Editor's comments:- Once you've got a market acceptable
recipe - the profit margins for cake can be much better than those for flour.
So if you have a choice it's better to make cake.
The SSD market
isn't big enough yet for huge memory makers like
Samsung to make the
grind or bake decision. They have to do both. But in the distant future
it may be
different.
STEC
made the SSD bake
decision in Februray 2007.
MOSAID and Nanya sign 7 year DRAM patents agreement
Editor:-
July 20, 2010 - MOSAID
Technologies today
announced
that it has licensed its DRAM patents to Nanya Technology as
part of a 7 year, royalty bearing patent portfolio agreement.
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.
Radar buffs get 8GB SDRAM XMC
Editor:- March 25,
2010 - Curtiss-Wright
today announced it has
doubled the memory from 4GB to 8GB on its
MM-617
buffer memory XMC card - which is designed to provide volatile, deep storage
for a wide range of military applications including RADAR, signal intelligence,
and image processing.
Editor's comments:- customers always want more memory for
this type of application. In one project I managed in 1991 - we designed a
system which captured radar data and streamed it continuously to 16 x 6U of the
fastest COTS memory cards then available at the maximum operating speed of the
VMEbus. That required weeding out badly designed backplanes and memory cards -
and playing with early generations of
Altera FPGAs.
It was similar projects streaming to hard disk arrays (and analyzing the data
ASAP) where I learned a lot of useful things about storage too.
Apacer scores max on Windows 7
Editor:- March 9,
2010 - Apacer
today said its
Giant
II DDR3 Tri-channel Overclocking Memory Module Series has scored the maximum
7.9 in the
Windows
Experience Index when running on Windows 7.
The company was the
official exclusive memory supplier at the
World
Cyber Games 2009 Grand Final, held last November in Chengdu, China.
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.
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.
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.
3D Memory Market Reality Check
Editor:- September 13,
2009 - How is the 3D memory chip market stacking up? - An article in Semiconductor
International reviews the market's progress.
Author Philip
Garrou says - "3D memory surely will happen, just not that quickly"
- and reminds readers that a few years ago
analysts were
predicting it would be an established market by 2010. ...read
the article
Innovative Silicon to Discuss Future of DRAM
Editor:-
September 3, 2009 -
Innovative Silicon today
announced its
co-founder and chief scientist, Dr. Serguei Okhonin, is participating in
a tutorial at next week's 2009 ESSDERC
conference (in Athens, Greece) titled "Disruptive
Technologies for More Moore."
Dr. Okhonin has long recognized
that DRAM, which was first
released by Intel in 1970, is running out of steam. The basic DRAM memory cell,
consisting of a transistor and complex capacitor element, is becoming
increasingly difficult to scale to smaller process geometries. While the DRAM
industry has achieved miraculous results over the years by packing more and more
memory bits onto ever smaller silicon die and selling it for cents, this is no
longer feasible. Dr. Okhonin will cover the next frontier of memory
technologies: floating body memories.
Dr. Okhonin will talk about
the memory advancements that must be adopted to enable semiconductor
technologies to effectively scale to sub-45nm process geometries.
Silicon Power Launches Cool DDR3 DRAM
Editor:-
August 3, 2009 - Silicon
Power launched new server class DDR3
DRAM modules.
They
have built-in thermal sensors and are made specifically for servers and
workstations.
Available in 1333/1066 speeds, they are compatible with
Intel Nehalem-based Xeon 5500 platform in tri-channel operation.
Unbufferred
ECC DIMM are available in 6GB(2GB*3) / 3GB(1GB*3) / 4GB(2GB*2) / 2GB(1GB*2) /
2GB / 1GB capacities.
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."
Rambus Unveils Technologies for Next Generation Fast RAMs
Editor:-
May 26, 2009 - Rambus
today unveiled a set of innovations that can advance computing
main memory beyond current
DDR3 data rate limits to
3,200Mbps.
Through this collection of licensable innovations, designers can
achieve higher memory data rates, higher effective throughput, better power
efficiency and the increased capacity necessary for future computing
applications.
storage chips
Sonics Solves Complex On-chip Memory Connectivity Problems
MILPITAS,
Calif., - May 5, 2009 - Sonics, Inc. has announced the Sonics Network
for AMBA Protocol or SNAP.
The product is a cost-effective,
turn-key solution designed to simplify the on-chip bus design for complex
embedded SoCs by turning multilayer bus designs into an IP block. SNAP's
easy-to-use development environment allows developers to quickly and intuitively
capture their design with little or no training.
As the number of IP cores in embedded SoC designs continues to grow,
current bus structures are becoming complex and time consuming to design. In
addition, memory access problems can arise because there are now multiple
processors competing for memory resources. SNAP addresses both of these problems
by first turning the complex interconnection of multiple cores into a customized
IP block, thus reducing the chip design effort. And 2nd, SNAP improves the
overall data flow in the systems, thereby improving bus performance and
eliminating memory bottlenecks.
...Sonics profile
Editor's
comments:- this is the kind of technology needed inside very high speed
next generation SFF SSDs. |
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3rd
Party RAM, Your Rights on Server Warranties - article by Keystone Memory
Users
know that
memory and
hard disk drives aren't
made by most of the companies from whom they buy their servers, notebooks and
desktops. But they are often intimidated from competitively buying 3rd party
upgrades by sales tactics aimed at locking them in to a single source.
Such
tactics often hint that maintenance contracts and warranties will be void or
negatively impacted by the presence of 3rd party upgrade products. That kind of
anti competitive pressure is illegal in many countries. This article provides an
overview of the legal protection that users may have under a US law called
Magnuson and Moss. ...read
the article | |
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Megabyte
found that RAM gave him the
fastest access to what he was seeking. | |
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| the Solid State
Disks Buyers Guide |
| The
SSD Buyers Guide
lists all SSD products commercially available in the market by form factor,
interface type and memory technology. It also includes a summary of key
milestones in the SSD market in the past year. | |
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| There
are
hundreds
of articles about SSDs on StorageSearch.com |
Here, below, are some
examples.
- 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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