Category Archives: Storage

IBM gets patent for hi-temp PCM (phase-change memory) cell structure

Posted on September 10, 2012 by

Tom’s Hardware is reporting that IBM recently obtained a patent on specially formulated phase-change memory (PCM) that will operate above 150°C. This is a significant achievement because PCM has a problem with ambient thermal annealing. If the chip temperature goes … Continue reading →

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Using SSD controller technology as a differentiator: Kingston adds another data point with SSDNow Enterprise-class drives

Posted on September 5, 2012 by

Memory and SSD vendor Kingston Technology has just announced enterprise-class SSDs called the SSDNow E100 in capacities of 100, 200, and 400 Gbytes. What I find interesting about this announcement are the emphasis on endurance and reliability (“10x improvements … … Continue reading →

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The top 21 things you probably didn’t know about Flash memory, from the Flash Memory Summit

Posted on August 30, 2012 by

Last week’s Flash Memory Summit ended with a session titled “The top 10 things you need to know about Flash memory today. Richard Goering summarized the panel in his blog titled “Flash Memory Panelists Challenge Conventional Thinking About NAND and … Continue reading →

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Need yet another argument for designing your own SSD controller?

Posted on August 30, 2012 by

A Web site called legitreviews.com recently reviewed the ADATA XPG SX900 128Gbyte SSD and this review contains additional justification for seriously considering developing your own SSD controller for new storage products. The review starts off this way: “ADATA is long … Continue reading →

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Add Hitachi Data Systems to the growing list of companies developing their own SSD controllers

Posted on August 27, 2012 by

According to this Computerworld article, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) announced last week that it is developing its own SSD controller for MLC NAND Flash to be used in its SSD arrays. The objective is a 4x improvement in read/write throughput, … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, MLC, NAND, SSD, Storage | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Tweaktown review of 1.6Tbyte SMART Storage Optimus SSD reveals a few secrets. Wanna see them?

Posted on August 27, 2012 by

Tweaktown.com attended last week’s Flash Memory Summit and has published some great photos of the internals of the 2.5-inch SMART Storage 1.6Tbyte Optimus SSD. The drive has dual SAS ports with accompanying specs of 1Gbps sequential read and 500MGbps sequential … Continue reading →

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Want to know Rado Danilak’s and Skyera’s plan for total enterprise-class SSD world domination?

Posted on August 23, 2012 by

This week, I reported on a new high-end, high-performance 44Tbyte SSD for data centers and server farms from Skyera. (See “44Tbyte Skyera Skyhawk SSD employs Everspin MRAM as write cache” and “How Skyera developed the 44Tbyte, enterprise-class Skyhawk SSD from … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, HDD, MLC, NAND, SSD, Storage | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

How Wired’s Mat Mohan got his personal data back from his SSD after his MacBook Air was hacked. Hint: $1690 in recovery fees.

Posted on August 23, 2012 by

Mat Mohan knows how to transform adversity into opportunity. He’s a senior writer for Wired’s Gadget Lab and his Apple account was ingeniously hacked through a scam perpetrated on Amazon to get the necessary information to hack into Apple’s system. … Continue reading →

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Marvell’s DragonFly NVRAM and NVCACHE provide high SSD IOPS for large storage apps

Posted on August 21, 2012 by

Marvell has just announced two new versions of its DragonFly PCIe board series: the DragonFly NVRAM and the DragonFly NVCACHE. Both boards contain a mixture of PCIe controller, SDRAM, SLC NAND Flash, supercapacitors, and software to create plug-in boards for … Continue reading →

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44Tbyte Skyera Skyhawk SSD employs Everspin MRAM as write cache

Posted on August 20, 2012 by

NAND Flash memory would be perfect for nonvolatile storage because except that Flash write speeds are slow enough to create a window of time when write transactions could be lost during a power failure. This problem is especially acute for … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, MRAM, NAND, SSD, Storage | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Are Enterprise SSDs a “bad” idea? Four tips and counter-tips for your consideration.

Posted on August 8, 2012 by

I ran across a commentary on the Kaminerio Web site, “Is SSD Really a Bad Idea? BE CAREFUL WHOSE ADVICE YOU TAKE” by Eyal Markovich, which is a reaction to a blog posting by Phil Goodwin on the SearchSolidStateStorage.com Web … Continue reading →

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How many SSDs does it take to saturate PCIe Gen 3? Would you believe 16 drives?

Posted on August 6, 2012 by

It’s now possible to conduct some interesting performance tests on real PCIe Gen 3 products and the video below shows you a PCIe Gen 3 RAID card talking to 16 SSDs, which is the number of drives needed to saturate … Continue reading →

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Flash Memory Summit: Great Program on Non-Volatile memory.

Posted on August 3, 2012 by

The Flash Memory Summit rolls into Silicon Valley – August 21-23. Here’s a summary of topics covered in the program: Flash Memory-Based Architectures Next-Generation Flash and SSD Controllers Solid-State Drive (SSD) Technology Enterprise SSDs Testing/Performance/Endurance NVMe LDPC Coding Enterprise Storage … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, mSATA, NAND, NOR, NVM Express, NVMe, SSD, Storage, Toggle | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

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

Posted on July 27, 2012 by

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

Posted on July 23, 2012 by

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 →

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

Posted on July 19, 2012 by

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

Samsung memory video “movie trailer” plays it cool

Posted on June 26, 2012 by

There are few things as geeky as deep-tech memory discussions so it’s a joy when you find something that raises the bar. Samsung did that last month with this video:

Posted in Storage | Tagged | 1 Comment

Whoa, Momma! Flash memory maker SK Hynix enters the SSD market. Take a look at these performance charts!

Posted on June 25, 2012 by

Jim Handy, the “SSD Guy” and the “Memory Guy,” just published a short blog post alerting us to the fact that Flash memory maker SK Hynix has entered the SSD market just four days after announcing the purchase of Link_A_Media, … Continue reading →

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SSD prices: More affordable? Steady, substantial decline? In free fall? Just what is going on here?

Posted on June 25, 2012 by

Senior Writer Vincent Chang over at CNET writes that “SSDs are more affordable than ever” and has the charted data to prove it. Clayton Vallabhan at ITPnet.com goes even further, writing “SSD prices in freefall.” For an even more extensive … Continue reading →

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SK Hynix to acquire SSD controller vendor Link_A_Media for $248 million. That makes four.

Posted on June 20, 2012 by

Memory Industry Analyst Jim Handy took the unusual step of sending out an alert yesterday. The topic of the alert was the announced acquisition of Link_A_Media Devices (LAMD) by SK Hynix for a reported US $248 million. LAMD is a … Continue reading →

Posted in SSD, Storage | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Will cache SSDs rule the world in notebook storage? IHS iSuppli’s Magic 8 Ball says “Signs point to Yes”

Posted on June 18, 2012 by

An excellent article by Hot Hardware’s Joel Hruska (see “Analysts Predict Skyrocketing SSD, Cache Drive Sales, But What Happened To Hybrid Hard Drives?”) contains several tasty bits of data and a quote from Ryan Chien, analyst for memory and storage … Continue reading →

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Violin Memory’s Narayan Venkat writes about why Flash-based storage is doing well in data centers: time and money

Posted on June 18, 2012 by

Narayan Venkat, VP of product management at Violin Memory, recently published a guest blog post titled “6 Reasons Solid State Memory Is The Biggest Story In Computing” over at Forbes.com. The rhetoric in the article should be familiar stuff to … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, SSD, Storage | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Flash Memory Summit 2012, Santa Clara, CA. Registration now open

Posted on June 12, 2012 by

Every year, the Flash Memory Summit rolls into Silicon Valley to discuss the latest in Flash memory, SSDs, and possibly up-and-coming alternative non-volatile memory technologies. This year, the event takes place on August 21-23 at the Santa Clara Convention Center … Continue reading →

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Will SSDs be the first big market for 3D NAND Flash memories?

Posted on June 7, 2012 by

I’ve been meaning to write about a comment regarding NAND Flash memory and SSDs written by Thomas McCormick in LinkedIn’s Solid State Storage Group and this seems like the perfect time. McCormick is an Integrated Hardware/Software Product Development Leader at … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, DDR, DRAM, Flash, Memristor, MRAM, NAND, SSD, Storage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Semiconductor memory plays a large role in smartphone design says Matti Floman of Nokia

Posted on May 16, 2012 by

“There’s no real difference between PCs and mobile phones today,” said Matti Floman from Nokia who gave the first keynote speech at last week’s JEDEC Mobile Forum. There is no difference in the types of applications run; there’s no difference … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, DDR, LPDDR2, Memristor, MRAM, SDRAM, Storage, UFS | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

SSD Review: Intel 910 PCIe SSD a “game changer”

Posted on May 9, 2012 by

It’s always great fun to see a company hit one out of the ballpark with a new product and that’s exactly what Intel has done with its new 910 PCIe SSD, if you believe this recent article by Paul Alcorn … Continue reading →

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Second Speedy SAS SSD Shows at STA (SCSI Trade Association). Tomorrow

Posted on May 8, 2012 by

Seagate has become the second company to announce that it will be showing its Pulsar.2 12Gbps SATA SSD at tomorrow’s SCSI Trade Association meeting in Santa Clara, California. The first was Western Digital. (See “WD’s HGST to demo 12Gbps SAS … Continue reading →

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Tiny RunCore single-chip SSDs cram 8 to 64Gbytes onto small SATA cards that fit anywhere

Posted on May 3, 2012 by

RunCore has announced a line of small single-chip SSDs in a format that the company calls “Mini DOM” (miniature disk on module). The high-speed SATA SSDs are available with capacities from 8 to 64Gbytes in three form factors: a 7-pin … Continue reading →

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WD’s HGST to demo 12Gbps SAS SSD at SCSI Trade Association Technology Showcase next week in California

Posted on May 2, 2012 by

HGST, the Western Digital subsidiary formerly known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, has announced a new 12Gbps SAS SSD and will be demonstrating it at the SCSI Trade Association Technology Showcase next week on May 9 at the Hyatt Hotel … Continue reading →

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25 Years of Removable Storage in One Photograph

Posted on May 1, 2012 by

Thomas Morffew published this amazing photo showing 25 years of removable storage artifacts. At the top are 5.25- and 3.5-inch floppy disks. Towards the bottom, in the center are some CDs and then comes the solid-state storage—memory sticks, SD cards, … Continue reading →

Posted in Storage | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Low-cost Intel 330 series SSDs sport SandForce SF-2281 SSD Controller

Posted on April 17, 2012 by

According to this extremely informative article on the Anandtech.com site, Intel’s just-released 330 series SSDs push Intel into the low-cost SSD zone using the SandForce SF-2281 SSD controller. Apparently, Intel’s 520 SSD series also employs this controller, but the use … Continue reading →

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4th International Memory Workshop in Milan tackles all things non-volatile with respect to semiconductor memory. May 20-23

Posted on April 9, 2012 by

You will need to travel to Milan, Italy to attend the 4-day intensive event devoted to non-volatile memory, which seems to be the exclusive topic for the 4th International Memory Workshop Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits covers latest STT-MRAM … Continue reading →

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Free 2-day SSD Summit already started. Today’s the last day. Click here now, quick.

Posted on April 4, 2012 by

Yesterday, Avnet Embedded opened an online SSD Summit with a ton of free info. The trouble is, I just found out about it and it ends today. I count eight technical Webinars to watch and seven live chat sessions on … Continue reading →

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Agilent: Memory technology has hit a wall due to physics limitations and that has implications for your designs

Posted on March 12, 2012 by

Last week, Agilent ran a seminar in Milpitas, California. The first of three subseminars was about memory technology with an excellent overview of the state of memory technology today. It was presented by Gordon Getty, an Agilent Application Engineer based … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, DDR3, DDR4, DRAM, eMMC, Flash, LPDDR2, LPDDR3, NAND, NOR, QDR, SD, SDRAM, Storage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Micron introduces Enterprise-class, 2.5-inch SSD with PCIe interface

Posted on March 7, 2012 by

This week, Micron announced a hot-swappable, 2.5-inch SSD that employs a PCIe interface instead of the more widely used SATA or SAS disk interfaces. Dell announced that it has selected this drive for its 12th generation PowerEdge server line. Both … Continue reading →

Posted in NAND, SLC, SSD, Storage | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Is Flash memory nearing end of life and if so what solid-state storage is waiting in the wings? Will that be the salmon or the rosemary chicken?

Posted on March 7, 2012 by

On Thursday, May 17, the inaugural Storage Valley Supper Club sits down for its first dinner in Milpitas, California to discuss the state of the storage industry (“Because it’s all about storage!”). Anyone with present or past affiliations in the … Continue reading →

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