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27 oems who make SSD chips and very small form factor
SSDs listed and profiled on this page |
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the
Fastest SSDs
the SSD Buyers Guide
Can you trust flash SSD
specs?
Overview
of the Notebook SSD Market |
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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) |
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| Viking
Launches SATA Cube SSD............................................. |
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| 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. |
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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. | | |
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