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SSDs, DOMs & HDDs - 1.0" approx and under

27 oems who make SSD chips and very small form factor SSDs listed and profiled on this page

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Overview of the Notebook SSD Market

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Introducing the Miniature Storage Drive Market

The market for small form factor SSDs and HDDs (1.0" and smaller) has seen a lot of changes in suppliers, technology and applications in the past decade. Once the exclusive preserve of the military, spooks and space scientists this market is now dominated by the needs of shoppers for consumer lifestyle and entertainment gadgets.

Influential pioneers in this market shift were 3 companies:- M-Systems, Toshiba and Cornice.
  • M-Systems - developed the market concept of the DiskOnChip.

    In 2001 M-Systems' DiskOnChip flash SSD offered 16MB capacity in a single 48-pin TSOP (Thin Small Outline Package). By 2006, when the company was acquired by SanDisk, the DiskOnChip capacity had grown to gigabytes. The primary application at the time was mobile phone handsets.
  • Toshiba - showed a prototype 0.85" hard drive in January 2004.

    With 4GB capacity it was the world's physically smallest hard drive at the time. When launching the new form factor Toshiba said "the 0.85" HDD is expected to boost the functionality of a new generation of products, including mobile phones, digital audio players, PDAs, digital still cameras, camcorders and external storage devices."
  • Unlike the other 2 companies above which drifted in from the military or notebook markets - Cornice was a startup whose sole reason for existence for the small form factor consumer storage market.

    Cornice aspired to become the leading supplier of hard disks to the phone market, and various other markets like mobile music players and video cameras.

    Cornice's 2GB Storage Element appeared in some products shown at CES in 2004.

    In 2004 I said "Cornice's Storage Element does for disk drives what the original RISC concept did for CISC CPUs. It's like a Reduced Instruction Set hard drive which cuts out the unneeded Complexity."

    The product turned out to be risky in the conventional sense for the investors who had put $81 million into the company. A combination of patent lawsuits and market developments in flash SSDs put paid to their ambitions within a few years of launching their first product.
Since those early pioneering days in the miniature storage drive market the competition has got much tougher.

This is a market where potential unit shipments read like telephone numbers. One good reason (as you already know by now) is the potential to put small storage drives into cell phones to store music, pictures and video. Then you can add in the markets for PDAs, music players and digital cameras. Plus satellite navigators in cars, games, toys. When you've got a potential market size measured in billions of units - it seems needless to overburden the calculations by adding in more specialized embedded industrial products, or medical instrumentation, security systems etc.

In 2007 - Joe Koyanagi (who was at that time US Sales Manager at Hagiwara Sys-Com) impressed on me the future importance of what he called the "1 inch" SSD form factor (a convenient phrase for very small form factor SSD chips and modules - none of which are actually 1 inch in size). He said - "1 inch is the next 2.5 inch!" - And he predicted that a directory of 1 inch SSDs would soon be needed on StorageSearch.com. How right he was. That's what led to the setting up of this page.
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Small Form Factor SSDs etc Extracts from SSD History
Samsung Samples Netbook SSD

Editor:- June 23, 2009 - Samsung is sampling a SATA mini-card SSD for use in the expanding netbook marketplace with these key parameters:-
  • footprint:- 30mm by 51mm by 3.75mm
  • weight:- 8.5g
  • capacity options:- 16GB, 32GB and 64GB
  • R/W speeds:- 200MB/s and 100MB/s respectively
  • power:- 0.3W
"The market is beginning to embrace a smaller SSD for the nascent netbook sector," said Jim Elliott, vp, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor.


SanDisk Ships New DOM for Netbooks

Editor:- June 2, 2009 - SanDisk started shipping its 2nd generation of PATA compatible SSD modules for the netbook market.

Storage clairvoyants, IDC, project consumer purchases of netbooks to rise from 11.5 million sold in 2008 to 50 million in 2013.

Performance of SanDisk's new pSSD 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.

Editor's comments:- 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 that of a typical 1.8" HDD.


WEDC Launches Rugged Miniature SSD

Editor:- May 26, 2009 - today White Electronic Designs introduced a surface mount miniature PATA SLC SSD (22mm x 27mm PBGA) with 1, 2 and 4GB densities for use in high reliability embedded applications such as aircraft, communications and missiles. Military & Rugged Storage


New Guide for SSD Wannabies

Editor:- April 28, 2009 - StorageSearch.com published a new article today called - "3 Easy Ways to Enter the SSD Market."


new home page for - SSD SoCs

Editor:- April 7, 2009 - StorageSearch.com today launched a new directory of merchant market SSD SoC vendors.


Intel EOLs PATA SSD DOM

Editor:- April 6, 2009 - a report on TGDaily.com says that Intel is EOLing its Z-P230 SSD module which was aimed at the netbook market.

If you look at the 1.0" SSDs directory here on StorageSearch.com you'll see that 25 companies now make SSD chips, DOMs or modules designed to fit into very small footprints.


Hagiwara Unveils CFast Storage Card

Editor:- March 26, 2009 - Hagiwara Sys-Com has extended its range of 1" SSDs - with the launch of the CFast Storage Card which will ship in Q2.

These industrial grade SSDs are form factor compatible with CF cards, but have a SATA interface. Capacities range from 2GB to 16GB. See also:- CFast - Evolution of the CompactFlash Interface (pdf)

Viking Launches SATA Cube SSD.............................................
Editor:- March 10, 2009 - Viking Modular Solutions has launched the SATA Cube - a miniature flash SSD which provides upto 256GB capacity in a small 30x32mm footprint.
Sustained R/W speeds are 110MB/s and 79MB/s respectively. It's available as a BGA device or with a MicroSATA connector.

The SATA Cube3 is an ideal solution for OEMs that require the benefits of non-volatile solid state storage and SATA performance in an ultra small form factor, said Adrian Proctor, VP of Marketing for Viking Modular Solutions.

Viking says that designers of card based SSDs on form factors such as AMC, XMC, PMC and PCIe will find the low volumetric density and high storage capacity of the SATA Cube a strong candidate for their space constrained application.
... SATA Cube SSD

Seagate Still Waiting for Legal Costs Related to Cornice Litigation

Editor:- February 18, 2009 - a report today on Law.com says Seagate is suing its legal insurer for not paying in full the costs incurred in suing Cornice.

Cornice would have failed in the small form factor disk market anyway - even if it had won the case (which it didn't) - because of the price advantages of flash memory compared to low capacity HDDs.

A year ago Seagate's legal team fired a seemingly random warning shot at the SSD market - when it started proceedings against STEC.

Seagate today is in a desperate market situation. It dominates segments of the hard disk market which are rapidly going out of fashion. And it will most likely fail the SSD Challenge too.

Other companies which might be in Seagate's firing line shouldn't take comfort from today's reported setback. When markets decline companies often switch the focus of business development activities from their marketers to their lawyers. But they still need to retain engineers to mine the gold (real or imagined) in their patent portfolios - because the grey suits can't do that on their own.


SiliconDrive Blade Gets Editor Award in Electronic Design Magazine

Editor:- January 13, 2009 - SiliconSystems announced that its SiliconDrive Blade has been selected as a "2008 Best Electronic Design" technology of the year winner in the embedded small form factor category.

The awards are chosen by the editorial staff of Electronic Design magazine from announcements they have received during the year. Editor Bill Wong cited SiliconDrive Blade's innovative design as a necessary development in accelerating wide-spread adoption of SSDs in embedded systems.


Apacer Launches Miniature SSD

Editor:- January 3, 2009 - Apacer launched a miniature SLC flash SSD - the Mini SAFD 25M - which fits into 1/2 the footprint of a 2.5" SSD.

Capacity ranges from 256MB to 16GB and R/W speed is 35MB/s and 25MB/s respectively. A shell is available for users who want to mount this in a 2.5" hard disk slot.


Petite SSD Chip Seeks Reliable Rugged Assignments

Austin, Texas - November 5 , 2008 - Austin Semiconductor, Inc. announces a smaller, more compact 7.5 cm3 (31mm sq x 7.8mm max height) ruggedized SSD.

The SLC flash SSD offers upto 16GB capacity, has an IDE, PIO/4 interface, and MTBF of more than 2 million hours. and is designed for harsh environment operation.

"Our unique SSD is designed for use in low power, ruggedized environments. The device is intended for direct board mounting and has redundant board interconnects to increase the overall product reliability, which makes it ideal for handheld applications," says Frank Muscolino, President of Austin Semiconductor. ...Austin Semiconductor profile


InnoDisk Announces Smallest SATA SSD

Taiwan - June 2, 2008 - InnoDisk announced the world's physically smallest SATA SSD - the SATADOM - measuring 39mm by 20.5mm by 8mm.

Capacity ranges from 128MB to 8GB. The SLC flash SSD has a sustainable read speed of 24MB/sec and write speed of 14MB/sec. ...InnoDisk profile, Record Breaking Storage, Miniaiture SSDs


STEC Announces Fast 1" SSD

SANTA ANA, Calif - April 21, 2008 - STEC, Inc. announced the MACH4 - a 1" SATA / PATA SSD.

For a small drive - the MACH4 is fast:- with sustained sequential reads upto 90MB/s and writes upto 55MB/s. It's expected to be in mass production at the end of April in capacities up to 32GB. Projected OEM pricing for the 8GB capacity point is $45.

"For the numerous applications which were historically challenged by the severe limitations of 1 inch HDDs, STEC is now offering a much more cost-effective, higher capacity and higher reliability alternative..." said STEC's Patrick Wilkison. ...STEC profile


March 2008

Trident Space & Defense launched the BGADrive - an IDE compatible 32GB flash SSD in a 29mm x 29mm form factor module for embedded applications.
. 1" and smaller storage drives
""He's probably just as scared of us"
said Megabyte, not very convincingly.
"Shut up! And keep peddling" said his niece.

Trident SSDs
advanced rugged solid state drives
from Trident Space & Defense

CFast SSDs click for more info
1 inch industrial CFast SSDs
from Hagiwara Sys-Com

SiliconDrive USB Blade
Miniature SSDs
SiliconDrive USB Blade
from Western Digital

rugged SSDoC  SSD on a chip from Austin Semiconductor - click for more info
Solid State Disk on Chip
from Austin Semiconductor
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storage drives 1.0" and smaller modules / chips oems
AboUnion

Afaya

Aitech Defense Systems

Apacer

Austin Semiconductor

Cactus Technologies

CoreSolidStorage

EDGE Tech

Foremay

Hagiwara Sys-Com

InnoDisk

Intel

MemoCom

Phison Electronics

Pretec Electronics

SanDisk

Seagate

Silicon Storage Technology

SiliconSystems

SMART Modular Technologies

Spansion

STEC

Toshiba

Transcend Information

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Viking Modular Solutions

White Electronic Designs
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