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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.
Dataram Acquires Micro Memory Bank
Editor:- April
22, 2009 - Dataram
announced it has
acquired
Micro Memory
Bank.
MMB maintains a particular niche in legacy memory
products by being one of the few companies in the industry that carries and
stocks virtually every memory upgrade ever made.
Dataram's President
and CEO John Freeman said "David Sheerr (who founded MMB in 1994) is the
3rd executive to join Dataram in the past 12 months who has had previous
experience as the president of a company. David's entrepreneurial skills and
business success in our industry are valuable additions to our executive team."
Samsung Ships Highest Density DDR3
Seoul, Korea -
March 19, 2009 - Samsung
Electronics
announced
today that it has just made the initial shipment of the world's 1st and smallest
high-density memory modules based on 2Gb, 50nm-class
DDR3.
Samsung
is shipping 18 configurations of its new DDR3-based modules, which are
designed for servers. They include a 16GB RIMM and an 8GB RDIMM.
Editor's
comments:- although Samsung's press release talks about how much
RAM you can get in a server
(192GB for a 2-socket CPU server system) the new products will also advance
the density and lower the cost of high end multi-terabyte
RAM SSDs.
Court Rules Against Rambus - Re Ban on Hynix DRAM Sales in USA
SEOUL,
Korea - February 24, 2009 - yesterday the US District Court for the Northern
District of California denied Rambus's request for an injunction barring
Hynix from selling its DRAM products in the United States.
The
order also finalizes a prior ruling awarding damages to Rambus and imposes
royalties of 1% on SDR SDRAM and 4.25% on DDR SDRAM and later generations of
DRAMs sold in the US before the final judgment. Hynix and Rambus were ordered to
negotiate over royalty rates for sales after the date of final judgment. Hynix
expects that a final judgment reflecting this order will be entered soon.
Hynix is gratified that the court rejected Rambus's request for an
injunction, but is disappointed by the district court's damages ruling and will
file an appeal when the final judgment is entered. Hynix believes that Rambus's
patents, as has been recently confirmed by certain rulings of the US Patent &
Trademark Office, are invalid. In addition, Hynix maintains that Rambus's
conduct in destroying evidence relevant to the litigation between Hynix and
Rambus, and Rambus and the rest of the
DRAM industry, bars Rambus
from enforcing its patents.
The United States District Courts for
Delaware and Virginia have already ruled that Rambus is guilty of destroying
evidence; the decision of the California court conflicts with these other court
decisions. While Hynix's appeal is pending Hynix is not required to pay the
judgment; if, as it expects, Hynix prevails on the appeal, the judgment will be
reversed. The appeal will take 1 to 2 years under the normal U.S legal
procedure. Hynix's US sales of DRAMs will continue uninterrupted. While the
appeal is pending Hynix anticipates that the direct damage under the district
court's ruling will not be substantial and will be greatly dependent on the
results of the appeal.
...Hynix profile,
...Rambus profile
New Article Looks at Recession in the Memory Market
Editor:-
February 9, 2009 - Lane Mason, Memory Market Analyst at Denali -
has published a new article - "Memory Market's Recession - Actions and
Realities."
This give a good explanation of why the woes in
the memory market are so bad. ...read
the article, storage
analysts
Cypress Announces Change in Memory Division
SAN
JOSE, Calif. - February 5, 2008 - Cypress Semiconductor Corp. today
announced that Ahmad Chatilla, EVP of the Memory and Imaging Division
will be leaving the company this month to pursue an opportunity as the CEO of a
semiconductor wafer supplier.
He will be replaced by 21-year
Cypress veteran, Dana Nazarian, who is currently the VP of the synchronous SRAM
business unit of MID.
"Ahmad has been a valuable member of the Cypress executive team.
Working with Dana and the rest of the management team in MID, he has created an
extremely profitable and cash-flow-generating enterprise-even in the current
economic environment," commented T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress. "We are
sorry to see Ahmad leave after 15 years with Cypress, but we take pride in what
he has been able to accomplish and we wish him the best in his new career as CEO
of MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc."
Dana Nazarian joined Cypress in 1988 as a new college graduate from
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a BSEE and rose steadily throughout the
company in a variety of technical and business roles.
...Cypress
Semiconductor profile, storage
people, storage chips
Qimonda Bust
Munich,
Germany - January 23, 2009 - Qimonda AG has petitioned for the
opening of insolvency proceedings due to illiquidity.
To comply
with German law the company has announced the appointment of insolvency
administrators.
...Qimonda profile
Editor's
comments:- Qimonda's revenue in 2008 was 1/2 the level it had been 2 years
earlier, and the outcome (in today's press release) was predicted in an
article I wrote in 2006 - the
names change but the problems remain the same.
Objective Analysis
has published an article about the lead up to Qimonda's insolvency and
explores the possible
fallout
for Qimonda's stakeholders.
ASI Announces Smallest Mil Temp 4.8Gb DDR2
Austin,
Texas - January 19, 2009 - Austin Semiconductor, Inc. announced
volume availability of a new mil temp DDR2 memory device.
Packaged
in a 16mm x 23mm, 208 ball BGA with a ball pitch of 1.00mm, the 4.8Gb device is
organized as 64M x 72 and offers performance benchmarks up to 667Mbps data rate
while operating within the Mil-Temperature range of -55 to +125 degrees C,
which makes it ideal for hi-reliability applications. The 208 PBGA offers 61%
space savings, 55% I/O reduction, reduced part count and reduced trace lengths
for lower parasitic capacitance.
"With 208 PBGA we continue to
expand our product line of high performance highly integrated iPEMs (Integrated
Plastic Encapsulated Microcircuits). The AS4DDR264M72PBG1 is our smallest device
in the 4.8Gb product offering and will continue to drive towards smaller, lower
power and more reliable memory products using our integration process" says
Frank Muscolino, VP of Business Development. ...Austin Semiconductor
profile, storage chips,
Military & Rugged
Storage |
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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 Re-enters the SSD Accelerator 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 almost 40 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. |
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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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| 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 160G 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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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, ...Keystone
Memory profile, US
Storage VARs | |
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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.
The storage market was worth over $150 billion
last year, and as it 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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Sanitization
Methods for Cleaning Up Hard Disk Drives - article by Intelligent Computer
Solutions
Removing the data on old unwanted disk drives has
become a concern for all users.
This article reviews the various
methods available to sanitize hard disks along with the advantages and
disadvantages in each case....read the article,
...Intelligent Computer
Solutions profile,
disk sanitizers | | | |
