Fujitsu-Siemens to offer flash-memory laptops
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MUNICH, Germany  - Fujitsu-Siemens Computers will  start selling laptops with flash memory instead of hard drives  this summer, bringing faster, lighter and more energy-efficient  computers to the European mass market.
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(InfoWorld) - Flash memory and hard-disk drives could face a challenge from a new chip technology, dubbed phase-change memory, being developed by a group of companies led by IBM. The companies on Monday announced the results of their latest research into the technology, which they say will do a better job of storing songs, pictures, and other data on iPods and digital cameras than current flash memory, and could someday replace disk drives. Among the advances, the companies have built a prototype device that runs 500 times faster than today's flash memory while using half as much power to write data to a memory cell, they said. The circuits on the device are much smaller than those on today's flash chips, measuring just 3 by 20 nanometers, and show that, unlike flash, phase-change memory will be suitable for production on the advanced manufacturing techniques targeted for use in 2015, the companies said. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. The progress came partly from the development of a new material to build the memory chips, a germanium alloy to which the researchers added other elements to enhance its properties. The companies have applied for a patent for the material, they said. Besides IBM, the developers include Qimonda, the DRAM spin-off from Infineon Technologies, and Taiwan's Macronix International Co. They plan to discuss their findings at the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineer's 2006 International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco later this week. It's the kind of breakthrough that people look forward to in the IT industry, although end users will have to be patient before it finds its way into products. It could take several more years for the technology to be developed sufficiently for use in finished products. Still, phase-change memory appears promising. The chips would be a new type of non-volatile memory, which is memory that can hold its electrical charge -- and its data -- after devices are turned off. Flash is also non-volatile, but phase-change memory can hold its electrical charge better than flash and use it more efficiently, its backers say. Flash also faces a roadblock in the future. As engineers make chip circuits more tiny, the circuits leak more power and ultimately lose their ability to store data after being turned off. The size limit appears to be around 45nm, although it will still be years before the flash industry starts using such tiny production technologies. Phase-change memory can be scaled down to 22nm, or far smaller than flash memory, the researchers developing it say. It also appears able to be more durable than flash, whose memory cells start to break down after 100,000 rewrites. While its prospects appear bright, the technology faces several hurdles. New chip designs must be relatively easy to manufacture, and they need to be cost-effective enough to attract device makers. RambusÂ faced this issue when its chips failed to overtake DRAM as the main memory type for PCs several years ago, despite having the backing of Intel. The problem, some companies said, is that the chips was were too costly to produce -- although Rambus vehemently disagrees with this. IBM has posted photos of the phase-change devices here, and some animation clips here.
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Flash memory maker next week to announce a product to help businesses manage and control the use of USB drives.
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Spansion, the joint venture memory-chip maker formed by Advanced Micro Devices and Fujitsu, plans a major expansion of its chip-making capacity in Japan as part of its drive to overtake Intel and Samsung Electronics in the competitive flash memory market.
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(InfoWorld) - Fujitsu'sÂ recently launched convertible ultra portable PCÂ is starting to appear outside of Japan as the company widens sales of the pocket-size device. The Lifebook U1010 went on sale in South Korea earlier this week and will be available in Hong Kong and Singapore before the end of this month. It will hit Malaysia in July. It will also appear in the U.S., but Fujitsu has not yet said when. The company has yet to decide if it will launch in Europe. The machine, unveiled in Japan in May as the U8240, is based onÂ Intel's new McCaslin ultramobile PC platform. It runs an 800MHz Stealey microprocessor and comes with a 40GB hard-disk drive. The consumer version of the machine will run Windows Vista Home Premium. It has a 5.6-inch display with 1,260 pixel by 800 pixel resolution that can be flipped around, turning the notebook into a tablet. The PC weighs 580 grams and will fit in a jacket pocket. The distance between the centers of keys on the keyboard is 14 millimeters, compared to around 19 mm on standard keyboards. Â
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InfoWorld - If you&#39;re in any doubt that flash memory-based solid-state disks are on a course to quickly replace hard-disk drives in laptop computers, just take a look along the aisles of this year&#39;s Computex trade show.
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Analysis: Low flash memory prices could mean lower cost solid-state devices and bigger storage in gadgets.
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It's pretty clear which one is wearing the trousers EMC and Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) have expanded and extended their 10 year old strategic alliance. The two will work together on advanced data centre architectures, while FSC will also provide services for the EMC midrange storage that it sells in Europe.â¦
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Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS) today announced that Fujitsu Limited successfully optimized ARM926EJ-S(TM) and ARM946E-S(TM) processors using Cadence(R) Encounter(R) RTL Compiler and the Cadence Optimization Methodology Kit.
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Colorful, lighweight Inspiron consumer notebooks use flash memory instead of hard drives.
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Flarion Technologies&#39; FLASH-OFDM technology has received a vote of confidence from Siemens, thanks to a new licensing deal forged between the two companies that calls for Siemens to begin offering
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The two companies have collaborated on a new NAND flash memory technology which is said to speed up data transfer rates fivefold.
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EMC plans to introduce a line of solid-state drives using flash memory as an option to replace some disk drives in the company&#39;s high-end Symmetrix storage arrays, a company spokesman said Monday.EMC will offer solid-state drives with capacities of 73GB and 146GB, said Abhrajit Bhattacharjee, an EMC spokesman in Singapore. The drives, which will ship this quarter, will only be available as an option with Symmetrix storage arrays, and will not be available with other products, he said.Pricing for the solid-state drives&#160;was not immediately available, but using four 73GB solid-state drives to replace four of the 146GB hard disk drives in a Symmetrix 100-disk array would increase the cost by less than 10 percent compared to a comparable system using only hard disk drives, Bhattacharjee said.Solid-state drives use memory chips instead of magnetic platters to store information. These types of drives are generally faster and consume less power than traditional disk drives, but they are also significantly more expensive.The solid-state drives are aimed at customers willing to pay a premium for the significantly faster response times these drives offer, Bhattacharjee said.EMC plans to use single-cell flash memory in its solid-state drives, which will allow for higher performance but costs more than multicell flash memory.Single-cell flash memory stores one bit of information in each memory cell, while multicell flash memory stores two. The greater density of multicell flash makes it perfect for music players and digital cameras. But multicell flash is significantly slower, making single-cell flash more suitable for high-performance applications such as solid-state drives. Single-cell flash memory is also more durable that multicell flash. Each cell on a multicell flash chip is generally good for 10,000 write/erase cycles, while the cells on single-cell chips can last for 100,000 write/erase cycles. The durability of a flash memory chip can be increased with the use of wear leveling, a technique that writes data equally to all of the memory cells on a chip instead of using the same cells repeatedly.Drives based on magnetic platters are capable of enduring unlimited write/erase cycles, but they have moving parts which can break down. Solid-state drives do not have moving parts.STEC -- the maker of the solid-state drives that EMC plans to offer -- said its solid-state drives, which use wear leveling, last more than 2 million write/erase cycles. There was no indication of how many write/erase cycles the EMC solid-state drives will be capable of sustaining.
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Cisco Systems and Fujitsu will partner to develop high-end routers and switches for use in advanced IP networks. Initally, Fujitsu will offer co-branded products running Cisco&#39;s IOS-XR operating
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InfoWorld - For midsize businesses seeking a relatively easy, inexpensive way to keep their servers running around the clock, Fujitsu Siemens Computers has launched a fully automated backup recovery system.
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Toshiba and SanDisk will build a new state-of-the-art flash memory chip factory together starting in 2009, and will share the output from it, the companies announced Tuesday.Separately, Toshiba announced it will begin construction of two more chip factories of its own at the same time. One of the plants will be for NAND flash memory, while the second will be for other semiconductor products.The three factories will make 300-millimeter (12-inch) wafers, which can cost up to $3.6 billion each to build and equip with the latest technology. The companies did not announce the size of their investments.All three will be built in Japan. No site in Japan has yet been determined for the joint Toshiba/SanDisk factory, while the two Toshiba-only factories will be built in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, and in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture.Toshiba and SanDisk are just two players in a competitive NAND flash memory market. Other manufacturers include South Korea&#39;s Samsung Electronics; Japan&#39;s Elpida Memories; Taiwan&#39;s Powerchip Semiconductor, and a company jointly created by Micron and Intel of the U.S., IM Flash Technologies.The new factories will help Toshiba cement its number one ranking among NAND flash memory makers, said Wayne Chen, NAND flash analyst at DRAMeXchange Technology, which runs an online clearing house for the chips. Samsung is Toshiba&#39;s fiercest rival in NAND.The global memory chip industry is currently suffering from a production glut that has sent the prices of some memory chips down below their production costs. The glut seems set to continue, as a number of manufacturers either have new factories under construction or have announced plans for new production lines over the past several months.Toshiba&#39;s factory announcement could further depress the NAND flash market psychologically because traders may believe the glut will continue due to more factory construction, said Chen. But output from the factories won&#39;t hit the market for years, he pointed out.By targeting construction for 2009, Toshiba is signalling confidence that demand for flash memory, and NAND flash in particular, will rise to end the current glut. Production at the Toshiba-SanDisk plant will not start until 2010, according to their memorandum of understanding. The two Toshiba factories are also targeting production for 2010.The good news for users is that the massive investments will keep the price of NAND flash memory down, which should lead to larger storage capacities in digital cameras, digital music players and other consumer devices.NAND flash memory has grown in popularity over the past several years due to its ability to store songs, pictures and other data when power is shut off, as well as for its reliability in consumer devices such as Apple iPods and the iPhone. NAND manufacturers are targeting SSDs (solid-state disks) as another major product area of the future, to replace HDDs (hard disk drives). SSDs use less power than HDDs, an important difference in small devices, and are more reliable because they contain no moving parts.
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IBM plans to offer solid state drive technology from SanDisk Corp. as a data storage option for its Intel-based high-end blade server.