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New $1.1 billion RAM
Company
Boise,
Idaho - April 21, 2008 - Micron Technology, Inc. and Nanya
Technology Corp announced today that the 2 companies have signed an
agreement to create MeiYa Technology Corp a new DRAM joint venture.
The partnership will leverage both Micron and Nanya’s
manufacturing technology, strengths and experience. As part of the joint
venture, a 200mm Nanya manufacturing facility in Taiwan will be upgraded to
300mm technology starting this year, with the facility coming online for
production in 2009. In addition to MeiYa, the parties will jointly develop and
share future technology.
Both parent companies will own 50% of the
joint venture initially, and each will contribute $550 million in cash
by the end of 2009.
...Micron profile,
...Nanya profile
For Sale - RAM Company with Long Pedigree
Editor:-
April 21, 2008 - do you want to buy a
RAM maker?
Qimonda
is up for sale according to its owner Infineon .
The
company generated net sales of Euro 3.6 billion in its financial year 2007 and
had approximately 13,500 employees worldwide.
Back in
March 2006 - when
the new name Qimonda was first announced - I wrote a short article
Siemens Semiconductors?
Infineon Technologies? Qimonda? the names change but the problems remain the
same.
IBM Previews Racetrack Solid State Storage
San Jose,
California - April 10, 2008 - IBM researchers have published details
about a new type of high density non volatile memory.
"Racetrack"
memory is so named because the data "races" around the wire "tracks".
IBM suggests that in the next 10 years - the new memory could compete with
flash at a much lower
price per gigabyte. The new technology uses magnetic domain storage but without
the high current needed by earlier solid state magnetic devices.
New High-Volume DDR2 SO-DIMM Test Adapter
Houston,
Texas March 11, 2008 INNOVENTIONS, Inc. is now shipping a
rugged adapter for testing 200-pin DDR2 SO-DIMM memory modules with its
RAMCHECK memory tester.
It tests PC2-5300/5400, PC2-4200 and PC2-3200 DDR2 modules and is
manufactured specifically for high-volume testing. During each test, the memory
module's size, structure and type are automatically detected. The tester spots
bad memory chips and alerts the user with a warning tone and visual signal. A
typical test takes less than a minute.
"DDR2 SO-DIMM modules are
now the predominant memory used in laptops," said David Y. Feinstein,
President of INNOVENTIONS. "Manufacturers need a way to quickly test
SO-DIMMs on site, without the need for high-end testing equipment that may be
located in another facility. RAMCHECK and the DDR2 SO-DIMM adapter make this
possible. The new adapter is also great for
distributors and
retailers who need a low-cost way to verify memory quality..." ...INNOVENTIONS profile
SMART Announces 8GB RDIMM
FREMONT, CA
- February 25, 2008 - SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. today announced
an 8GB dual-rank PC2-4200 registered DIMM featuring the MetaSDRAM chipset
from MetaRAM, Inc.
Designed for use in high-end servers,
SMART's new RDIMM doubles available storage capacity, while significantly
lowering cost compared to traditional dual-rank modules, and improving system
performance by lowering power consumption with use of a 4-rank module solution.
...SMART profile,
RAM
Qimonda Announces Roadmap to 30nm DRAM
Munich,
Germany - February 25, 2008 - Qimonda AG today announced its
technology roadmap down to the 30nm generation.
"This new
technology has the potential to deliver improvements in our productivity and
cost per bit that are unprecedented in our company's history," said Kin Wah
Loh, President and CEO of Qimonda AG. "We are the first in the industry to
unveil a DRAM technology
roadmap down to the 30nm generation." ...Qimonda profile
MCP Flash Report - to be or NOR to be?
Los Gatos, CA - February
8, 2008 - Objective Analysis has completed a new study entitled -
Flash Packaging: What Phone Makers Want & Why.
This 32-page report is an in-depth review of the flash MCP market for
cell phone handsets and looks into the reasons that OEMs choose the chip
configurations they do. One finding - flash multichip packages are
predominantly NOR/RAM configurations today and are likely to remain that way for
the next few years.
"NAND is making great headway in cell phone
handsets through both cards and embedded NAND stacks, but the multichip package
is still largely a NOR/RAM product," said Jim Handy, the report's author. "Although
NAND flash is finding some acceptance in handset MCPs, cell phone manufacturers
find that they have more flexibility by leaving the NAND out of this type of
package." ...Objective
Analysis profile, Market
research
Elpida Doubles Mobile RAM Bit Width
TOKYO,
JAPAN - January 16, 2008 - Elpida Memory, Inc. announced the release
of a new x64-bit wide I/O 256-megabit Mobile RAM dubbed the "ECK2664JACN."
It achieves twice the bandwidth of existing 32-bit products while operating at
an ultra-low voltage of 1.2V I/O (VDDQ). It features Elpida's unique product
characteristics: enabling the highest possible performance for mobile phones and
other mobile products and low-power consumption.
In recent years,
mobile phones have gone beyond music downloads and Internet connections to offer
video recording, video output and a number of other high-performance multimedia
functions. Since HD video will be widely adopted soon, the need now exists for
solutions that support the processing of high-resolution graphics and other
high-density data in digital video cameras and other home electronic products.
...Elpida Memory profile
GDDR5 Sampling
Munich,
Germany - November 1, 2007 - Qimonda AG today announcedit has shipped
the industry's first 512Mb GDDR5 (Graphics Double Data Rate 5) samples to
customers.
GDDR5 is anticipated to become the next graphics
DRAM standard. It will be
available with data rates up to 20GBytes / s per component - more than double
the bandwidth of GDDR3 memories today and comes with many power saving
features.
...Qimonda profile
Editor's
comments:- numbers related to chip generations don't always go the way you
expect. I'm surprised to see that DDR has gone as far as the number "5".
I remember Intel's mainstream processor numbers which went from 8080
(first 8 bit), to 8085 (8 bit, single 5V supply) then 8086 (16 bit) then 186 and
286 (the prefix "80" was included but not voiced much). Then after
the 386 and 486 they surprised us all with the Pentium - which was easier to
trademark than a number. Maybe future generations of DDR will have add-on words
- such as "Fast DDR / Ultra DDR" - or
animals -
like "DDR dragon" I haven't looked into it - but numbers start to
lose their sex appeal in product names.
RAM versus Flash SSDs - War for the
Datacenter Core
Editor:- August 20,
2007 - STORAGEsearch.com today published a major new article
on the SSD market called - "RAM versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?"
We've been writing for years about the subject of
hard disks vs
flash SSDs.
There's a lot of consensus now about which technology will prevail in the
disputed application slots for a single drive.
The next multibillion
dollar war in the SSD market will be for domination in the high performance
rackmount server acceleration space.
Hard disks will retain no
finger holds in this war -
even if the
price of a hard disk drops to zero. Sorry guys. Hanging onto the hard disks
in your hot server core will kill your company - because they will make your
business applications too slow, too expensive and too unreliable. Outside the
core... as bulk content storage or
disk to disk backup is
another matter, for another article.
The SSD server core war will be
internecine - one type of solid state storage versus another. The title of this
article " "RAM versus Flash SSDs" is misleading because there
are many distinctly different products fighting under each similar looking
flag. With specially written features from the world's leading SSD companies
- this article will change the way that you think about SSDs in enterprise
server applications. 2007 will be seen as the Year of SSD Revolution. ...read the article,
...75 more articles
about Solid State Disks | |
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Megabyte
found that RAM gave him the
fastest access to what he was seeking. | |
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the
Fastest Solid State Disks
Speed isn't everything, and it
comes at a price. |
But if you do
need the speediest SSD
then wading through the web sites of over 55 current
SSD oems to find a suitable
candidate slows you down.
And the SSD search problem will get even
worse. |
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I predict
there will be over 100 SSD oems in 2008.
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. |
| |
| 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 | | | |
