Monthly Archives: July 2012

You say “memristor” and I say…something else? Amusing comments from the memristor naming debate.

Posted on July 30, 2012 by sleibson2

You may or may not be aware of a small controversy surrounding the use of the term “memristor” by HP’s Stan Williams (See “Wonks Question HP’s Claim to Computer-Memory Missing Link” at Wired.com) I’m not going to weigh in on … Continue reading →

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Unigen (and others) continue to roll out new mSATA SSDs

Posted on July 27, 2012 by sleibson2

The Mini-SATA or mSATA form factor and interface standard for SSDs has been around since September, 2009 and it now seems to be gaining substantial traction in the form of several new product introductions over the last couple of months. … Continue reading →

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Want the latest scoop on DDR4 DRAM? Here are some technical answers from the Micron team of interest to IC, system, and pcb designers

Posted on July 26, 2012 by sleibson2

DDR4 SDRAM is on the way. Just his month, Samsung announced sampling of its 16Gbyte DDR4 SDRAM RDIMMs (registered DIMMs) based on its 30nm-class DDR4 SDRAM chips. Production is slated for next year. Micron has announced plans for volume DDR4 … Continue reading →

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How many DRAMs does it take to populate a supercomputer? 746,496 plus a lot of hot water for cooling

Posted on July 25, 2012 by sleibson2

Jim Handy, The Memory Guy, posted a short blog about the 3-petaFLOP (peak) SuperMUC supercomputer at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre on the outskirts of Munich, Germany. (The “MUC” in SuperMUC is the 3-letter code for the Munich airport. Now that’s … Continue reading →

Posted in DDR3, DRAM, Samsung, SDRAM | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Who do you want to see at Memcon?

Posted on July 24, 2012 by sleibson2

As the emcee for the Memcon event on September 18, I’ve been given the opportunity to personally invite a few, select exhibitors to the show and to cut them a very sweet deal. To do that, I’d like to know … Continue reading →

Posted in DDR, DRAM, Flash, MRAM, NAND, SSD | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cool case instantly transforms 2.5-inch HDD or SSD into WiFi-connected network storage

Posted on July 23, 2012 by sleibson2

Patriot Memory is now selling the Gauntlet Node, a cool name for a cool disk-drive case that transforms a 2.5-inch HDD or SSD into a WiFi-connected network storage device. The enclosure has an internal SATA port and can accommodate drive … Continue reading →

Posted in HDD, SATA, SSD, Storage | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Want more details about the new Micron 1Gbit Phase-Change Memory / 512Mbit SDRAM device? Here are several

Posted on July 19, 2012 by sleibson2

Yesterday, Micron announced volume production of a new memory device containing one 1Gbit PCM (phase-change memory) die and one 512Mbit LPDDR2 SDRAM die. This morning, I had a conversation about this new device with Philippe Berge—Senior Director of the NOR, … Continue reading →

Posted in DDR, Flash, LPDDR2, Micron, NOR, PCM, Storage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Micron announces volume production of PCM/DRAM multichip packaged memory

Posted on July 17, 2012 by sleibson2

Totally not expecting this. Today Micron announced high-volume availability of a multichip, packaged memory device that incorporates a 1Gbit PCM (Phase-Change Memory) and a 512Mbit LPDDR2 SDRAM. The PCM die is built with 45nm process technology. The multichip-packaged memory is … Continue reading →

Posted in DRAM, LPDDR2, Micron, PCM, SDRAM | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

StorageSearch.com names top 25 SSD companies. Guess who?

Posted on July 17, 2012 by sleibson2

StorageSearch.com has been following SSDs for a long, long time so they’ve got as much right to name their top picks as anyone. Here’s the 2Q 2012 version with a few you might not have heard about, yet: Fusion-io Violin … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, NAND, SSD | 2 Comments

Korg introduces SSD-based music workstation, the Korg Kronos X, with 62Gbyte drive and option for a second SSD

Posted on July 17, 2012 by sleibson2

File this under places you might not expect to find SSDs: Korg USA has announced the Kronos X Music Workstation, a music keyboard and workstation with a 62Gbyte SSD for storing sound samples in sound libraries. That’s a lot of … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, NAND, SSD | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Three Golliaths and a host of Davids meeting up on the storage battlefield. Who wins?

Posted on July 16, 2012 by sleibson2

If you want to read a short, interesting overview of the combined HDD/SSD storage battlefield, look no further than a new article on The Register’s Web site. The article, titled “Will the titans of storage decide to flash their bits?” … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, HDD, Micron, Samsung, SSD | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wired Magazine: HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory “by 2014”

Posted on July 12, 2012 by sleibson2

Caleb Garling at Wired.com just posted an article predicting that memristors will remake the semiconductor memory landscape by 2014, based on the comments made Research Fellow Stan Williams at a recent roundtable discussion on nanotechnology sponsored by the Kavli Foundation. … Continue reading →

Posted in Hynix, Memristor | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Want another opinion about the Hybrid Memory Cube? Michael Feldman of HPCwire.com weighs in

Posted on July 11, 2012 by sleibson2

Michael Feldman over at HPCwire.com has just published his own analysis of the Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC), which I’ve covered extensively in the EDA360 Insider and the Denali Memory Report (see below). Feldman reiterates many of the same points I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in DDR, DRAM, HMC, Hybrid Memory Cube, Micron | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jim Handy, The Memory Guy, answers your questions about Flash memory

Posted on July 10, 2012 by sleibson2

Two weeks ago, Jim Handy (who bills himself and appears on the Internet as “The Memory Guy”) posted a blog discussion about the end of Flash memory scaling. He also posted a notice of the blog as a discussion on … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, Flash, Memcon, ONFI | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

MOSAID and NOVACHIPS announce plans for an HLNAND-based SSD controller chip. Release set for 2013.

Posted on July 9, 2012 by sleibson2

A couple of weeks ago, MOSAID and NOVACHIPS announced plans to jointly develop an SSD controller based on the MOSAID high-speed HLNAND interface specification. If you’re not familiar with the MOSAID HLNAND high-speed serial interface, join the club. Most NAND … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, Flash, Hybrid Memory Cube, NAND | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Samsung starts to sample 16Gbyte DDR4 LRDIMMs using 30nm-class DDR4 memory chips

Posted on July 2, 2012 by sleibson2

Today, Samsung announced that it has started to sample 16Gbyte DDR4 SDRAM RDIMMs (registered DIMMs) based on its 30nm-class DDR4 SDRAM chips. Last month, the company announced sampling of 8 and 16Gbyte DDR4 modules and a 2Gbyte DDR4 module was … Continue reading →

Posted in DDR4, Samsung | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Applied Materials develops Centura Avatar etcher for enabling 3D NAND Flash manufacture

Posted on July 1, 2012 by sleibson2

About a year ago, I wrote an EDA360 Insider blog entry about 3D NAND Flash semiconductor memory. (See “3D Thursday: A look at some genuine 3D NAND cells, courtesy of Micron”) In this post, I discussed a talk by Glen … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, Flash, Micron | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment