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SanDisk Corporation is the global leader in
flash memory cards, from
research, manufacturing and product design to consumer branding and retail
distribution. SanDisk's product portfolio includes flash memory cards for mobile
phones, digital cameras and camcorders; digital audio/video players; USB flash
drives for consumers and the enterprise; embedded memory for mobile devices; and
solid state drives for
computers. SanDisk is a Silicon Valley-based S&P 500 company, with more than
half its sales outside the United States.
See also:-
SanDisk
- editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com
and - SanDisk focused
blogger -
Savo Lainen |
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- editor's comments:- March 2010 -
SanDisk is the leading
company in advancing the use of
MLC technology in
SSDs, a technology which it inherited from it acquisition of SSD pioneer
M-Systems in 2006.
Despite occasional talk about "enterprise SSDs" - SanDisk is
culturally rooted in the consumer electronics market. That's a very
competitive market in which few companies are making profits. In the past year
or so SanDisk has tried to differentiate itself from other SSD makers by hinting
about the future possibilities of scaling MLC SSDs to x4. The difficulties of
producing workable devices are something I discussed in a spoof article (March
2008 ) about XLC technology.
This is a zone where physics, manufacturability and data integrity collide with
different agendas.
SanDisk
has a track record of preannouncing exciting advanced SSDs or technologies upto
more than a year before they turn into real products (and sometimes much longer
than that.) These PR spoilers may be to deter competitors, inspire confidence in
investors or simply due to the company's ambitions exceeding its abilities to
fix technical problems. |
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Recent SanDisk Milestones from
30 Years of
SSD Market History
In July 2008 -
SanDisk proposed a new
way of specifying flash SSD endurance that it hopes will be adopted by the
industry.
In September 2008 -
Samsung published an
open
letter aimed at shareholders offering to buy SanDisk which was
denounced
by SanDisk's management.
Although Samsung has planted forests of flash
memory - it doesn't own all the intellectual property it needs to chisel these
into the fine furniture of desirable SSDs.
Interesting analyses about
this have been written by
Gregory
Wong, Jim
Handy, and
Savo
Lainen.
In October 2008 -
SanDisk announced it
may offload $1 billion worth of fab costs to joint partner
Toshiba - after SanDisk
reported 21% revenue decline for the most recent quarter.
Samsung
didn't much like the taste of that, and on October 22, 2008 - publicly withdrew
its offer to buy SanDisk.
In January 2009 -
SanDisk unveiled a new
family of 1.8" and 2.5"
MLC flash SSDs that
will ship in mid 2009. Capacities (and anticipated MSRPs) are as follows:-
60GB ($149), 120GB ($249) and 240GB ($499). Anticipated sequential performance
is quoted as:- 200MB/s read and 140MB/s write.
In February 2009
SanDisk announced that it will begin mass-production of the world's first
4-bits-per-cell (X4) flash memory. Using 43nm process technology, this
breakthrough enables 64Gb memory in a single die - the highest capacity in the
industry
In
May 2009 - SanDisk
started shipping its 2nd generation of
miniature PATA
compatible
SSD
modules for the netbook market. Performance is 9,000 vRPM and capacities
range from 8 to 64GB. SanDisk says it has improved the non volatile cache to
prevent "stalling" or "shuddering" which was a problem in
1st generation netbook SSDs.
Storage
clairvoyants, IDC,
project consumer purchases of netbooks to rise from 11.5 million sold in 2008 to
50 million in 2013.
27 companies make
miniature SSDs under 1.0"
in size. pSSD is simply a brand name of this SSD family from SanDisk -
and not new SSD jargon
term you need to know about. The traditional term for this type of product
is a DOM (disk on module). A SanDisk document describing the
1st
generation pSSD said the benefits were low cost and low weight - 1/10th
the weight of a typical 1.8"
HDD.
In
November 2009 - SanDisk
announced
that its 64GB
(9,000
vRPM) pSSD module has been selected as a standard SSD option in
Sony's
new VAIO X ultra-thin laptop.
In January 2010 -
SanDisk today
announced
results for the quarter ended January 3, 2010 - revenue of $1.24 billion
increased 44% on a year-over-year basis and increased 33% sequentially.
SanDisk's Chairman and CEO, Eli Harari, said the company had
achieved unit sales growth of 55% and gigabyte growth of 100% compared to the
year prior quarter.
In February 2010 -
SanDisk said it was
shipping
its G3 range of SSDs which had been preannounced in
January 2009 -
and originally expected to ship "in mid 2009." | |
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| Power managed petabyte SSDs
may awaken new market for SLC |
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. | | |
| ..... |
| 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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