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Super Talent Technology Corporation based in San Jose,
California, designs and manufactures a full range of DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 memory
modules and flash based SSD and USB storage devices for computers and consumer
electronics. An ISO 9001 certified company, Super Talent utilizes its
state-of-the-art factories and leading-edge components to produce award winning
products with outstanding reliability. Super Talent is an active member of the
JEDEC and ONFI. With over 250 patents, the company was ranked in the top 50 of
the Wall Street Journal's Patent ScorecardTM for the IT industry three
consecutive times.
see also:-
Super
Talent - editor mentions on StorageSearch.com and
Super Talent's SSD page
- Whos who in SSD? - by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - March 2012
Super Talent makes a range of
flash SSDs in
1.8",
2.5",
3.5" and
PCIe form factors.
I used to think of them as a consumer SSD company with aspirations
in the enterprise market.
But recently Super Talent has invested more
resources into expanding their PCIe SSD product line.
Their
RAIDDrive
models use 4 SandForce
controllers inside and are available in various widths, lengths and RAID
cache sizes - delivering R/W speeds upto 2.4/2.8 GB/s and MLC capacity from
about 220GB to 2TB. |
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Super Talent - recent milestones from
SSD market
history
In December 2008 -
Super Talent
Technology said it will sample a new range of 2.5" SATA flash SSDs in
January 2009. The SLC unit has 128GB capacity and R/W speeds upto 230/170
MB/sec. The MLC unit has 256GB capacity and R/W speeds upto 200/160 MB/sec.
In April 2009 -
Super Talent
Technology pre-announced its RAIDDrives SSD product line. This connects
via PCIe and supports
up to 2TB of RAID5 protected MLC flash storage. R/W performance is upto
1.2GB/s and 1.3GB/s respectively. More details are promised in June 2009.
In May 2009 -
Super Talent
announced new
firmware
for its
UltraDrive
ME series 2.5"
SSDs. This includes what the company calls a "Performance Refresh Tool"
to fix performance degradation problems in its earlier generation of SSDs.
Although some commentators on the web have attributed such problems to
fragmentation - that's completely incorrect!
Since the access time
for random reads in a well designed SSD is nearly identical for all locations
- the real problem in Super Talent's SSDs (and some models from
Intel) was due to badly
designed products which were rushed to market too soon without adequate
testing.
For a deeper look at these issues see
Can you trust flash
SSD specs & benchmarks? - published nearly a year ago - which first
alerted buyers to these problems. See also:-
SSD controllers and IP.
In
March 2010 -
Super Talent
Technology
announced
imminent availability of a new
encrypted
USB 3
flash SSD - with
upto 256GB capacity. The USB 3.0 SuperCrypt is a true SSD (with
wear-leveling).
Internally the module (95 x 34 x 15.4 mm) is a
SATA SSD with a USB
bridge chip.
In
June 2010 - Super
Talent Technology
announced
availability of a new range of
2.5"
SATA MLC SSDs which
use SandForce
controllers. Capacities and street prices are as follows:- 60GB $199 , 120GB
$349, 240GB $669, 480GB (contact vendor). And the company entered the
2.5"
SAS SSD market by
announcing
imminent shipments of its ShuttleCraft brand - which includes SLC and MLC
models with capacities upto 240GB.
In September 2010 -
Super Talent
launched
a range of 1.8" and 2.5" PATA SSDs for industrial temperature
operation - and with secure erase.
In January 2011 -
Super Talent
speeded up its
DuraDrive
range of 2.5" industrial SSDs with a new SATA model which has
sequential R/W speeds of 125MB/s, 110MB/s respectively. As you might guess
from the performance figures - Super Talent's "DuraDrives" don't use
SandForce's DuraClass
technology. But SandForce
processors are used in Super Talent's
TeraDrive
SSDs.
In August 2011 -
Super Talent
launched the USB 3.0 Express ST2 - with 67MB/s read, 24MB/s write speeds.
MSRP for the 8GB ST2 is $20 USD. Measuring 70 x 18 x 8 mm, the ST2 is as small
as many USB 2.0 flash drives and won't block adjacent ports.
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| Surviving SSD
sudden power loss |
Why should you care
what happens in an SSD when the power goes down?
This important design
feature - which barely rates a mention in most SSD datasheets and press releases
- has a strong impact on
SSD data integrity
and operational
reliability.
This article will help you understand why some
SSDs which (work perfectly well in one type of application) might fail in
others... even when the changes in the operational environment appear to be
negligible. |
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| SSD Pricing -
where does all the money go? |
SSDs are among the most
expensive computer hardware products you will ever buy.
Understanding
the factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating
process... |
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...not made any easier when
market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more than 100x to 1!
Why is that? ...read
the article | | | | |
