Toshiba, SanDisk NAND plant site fight could affect supply, prices
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While the two are unlikely to break off ties, failing to agree could have big implications for supply and prices of flash memory a few years from now and could even alter alignments in the $12 billion NAND microchip market.
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In the latest squabble over patents between Japanese and South Korean electronics giants, Toshiba has sued Hynix Semiconductor's Japan and U.S. units, alleging patent infringement in flash-memory chips, key components in digital cameras and cell phones.
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Watch your portfolio: Company expects a sharp loss as flash memory prices fall.
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Toshiba is seeking to land a knock-out blow against the Sony-led Blu-ray camp, but adding high-definition drives to PCs would mean higher prices and could hurt sales.
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Dell, HP and Lenovo may get burned A fire at Lite-On's main flat-panel monitor factory in China could disrupt LCD display supplies across the PC industry.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - If you'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's Computex trade show. Solid-state disks and machines containing them are plentiful at the show, which brings together the world's most important PC manufacturers and component makers with buyers from around the world, and is a good gauge of the direction of the industry. That solid-state disks are replacing hard-disk drives shouldn't come as a total surprise: they're lighter, quieter, use less power and are sturdier than hard drives. The transition is being accelerated by fast price drops in the flash market. For example, an 8GB chip that cost $11.36 at the end of 2006 currently costs $8.47 on the spot market. That's a drop of 25 percent in six months. For example,Â SanDisk debuted its first SSD, a 32GB model, at January's CES but a mere six months on at Computex it's showing a 64GB model. The company says much higher-capacity drives are possible today but will be too expensive for most enterprise users, so it's increasing the capacity of its drives while keeping them at what it considers the sweet-spot of price and storage space. Like SSDs from competitors, the SanDisk drives are offered as drop-in replacements for 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch hard-disk drives and so can be offered by system makers without the need for any modifications. As SSDs become more common the company believes smaller form-factor drives will be used in machines specifically produced for solid-state storage. "The old technology of the hard disk is going to go away from the mobile PC market and be replaced by [solid state] media," said Doreet Oren, director of product marketing at SanDisk's computing solutions division in Israel. Some analysts agree. In a report issued in May, iSuppli said it expects 24 million laptops sold in the fourth quarter of 2009 -- about 60 percent of the anticipated market -- will have flash storage, versus less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2006. Also on show at Computex is a wide range of solid-state disks intended for the industrial sector. Such drives are targeted at military and aviation applications and began replacing other storage methods several years before their entry into the PC market, thanks to the willingness of such customers to pay higher prices. Apacer TechnologyÂ is demonstrating a 128GB industrial SSD that can replace a 2.5-inch hard drive and operate at temperatures between -40 degrees Celsius and 85 degrees Celsius. It will be available in the fourth quarter, and a second version with double the data read speed of 200MbpsÂ will be available in early 2008. Alongside it was a flash-based RAID (redundant array of independent, or inexpensive, disks) drive which has two Compact Flash card slots. The capacity depends on the cards used. It's not only in the SSD arena that storage advances are on show at Computex. Toshiba has the latest in its line of 1.8-inch hard-disk drives, a model that can store 100GB, on show. The drive can be fitted into portable media devices, like the iPod, or ultra portable PCs. Toshiba is also using Computex toÂ unveil its first HD DVD rewriter driveÂ for laptop computers. A single-layer HD DVD-RW disc can store up to 20GB of information, which is just overÂ four times the capacity of an equivalent DVD. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has its 1TB drive that was unveiled at CES and new at the show is a 250GB 2.5-inch drive for laptop computers. The 5K250 includes drive-level encryption and has 56 percent more storage space than its predecessor, the 160GB 5K160. Â
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Japan's Toshiba Corp. will more than double its monthly production of NAND flash memory chips to increase market share and recoup losses from falling prices.
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(InfoWorld) - IntelÂ  threw down a gantlet today by entering the solid-state drive market with its first NAND flash memory product. The Intel Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive represents a challenge to Samsung Corp., which is the world's largest producer of NAND flash memory for hardware and gadgets such as USB flash drives. The Z-U130 comes in capacities ranging from 1GB to 8GB and uses industry-standard USB interfaces, the company stated in a press release. The flash drive comes with reads rates of 28MB/sec. and write speeds of 20MB/sec. Intel expectsÂ its solid-state disk to be used in everything from servers and PCs toÂ gaming consoles. Intel's first entry into the solid-state disk market is still four times smaller in capacity compared withÂ otherÂ industry-leadingÂ products from companies such as SanDisk Corp. SanDiskÂ announced aÂ 32GB solid-state disk product in January (see "SanDisk shows solid-state drive "). But Intel also touts extreme reliability numbers, saying theÂ Z-U130 has an average mean time between failure of 5 million hours compared with SanDisk, which toutsÂ an MTBF of 2 million hours. Intel touted solid-state disk as a faster storage alternative that speeds through common PC or embedded application operations such as locating boot code, operating systems and commonly accessed libraries. It said its productÂ offers "cost-effective," high-performance storage with advantages over hard disk drives or removable Universal Serial Bus storage devices. Samsung recently announced its first hybrid drive, which uses NAND flash memory with spinning disk. That drive offers capacities of 80GB, 120GB and 160GB, along with 4GB of flash memory for caching data (see "Samsung ships its first hybrid disk drive"). Solid-state drives deliver faster boot times, embedded code storage, rapid data access and low-power storage alternatives for value PCs, routers, servers, and gaming and industrial applications. "Solid-state drive technology offers many benefits over traditional hard disk drives, including improved performance and reliability," said Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager of Intel's NAND products group. The Z-U130 solid-state drive is the company's first product in what Intel said will be a family ofÂ  value solid-state drives. The Z-U130 comes in 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB densities. Intel said it has already made deals with server, notebook and PC manufacturers to include the Z-U130. The company's solid-state disk will also be used in Intel-embedded products for routers and point of sale terminals, it noted.
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November 10, 2004 ã¡ In the latest in a series of attempts by Japanese companies to defend their technological territory, electronics giant Toshiba sued Hynix Semiconductor yesterday for alleged violations of flash memory chip patents, which are key
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Toshiba Corp. will exchange 340,000 notebook computer batteries, which the company said do not pose a fire hazard. but could could cut power to the notebooks, causing users to lose unsaved work
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TOKYO (CBS.MW) -- Japan&#39;s Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday it has field suit against South Korea&#39;s Hynix Semiconductor Inc. in Japan and the United States, alleging infringement of Toshiba&#39;s semiconductor flash memory patents.
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TOKYO - A full-scale war over DVD formats is only a matter of time - the electronics industry can smell it in the air. As the two opposing camps continue to recruit allies, negotiations are no longer about averting a confrontation.
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Prices of 1Gbit NAND flash chips may drop about 50% to US$3-4 per chip by the end of the second quarter of 2005, as supply increases and players continue to push higher-density products into the market, according to sources with IC distributors in Taiwan.
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By Bloomberg News  Micron Technology Inc., the largest U.S. maker of computer memory chips, said prices for the products may have stabilized after an inventory glut sent them plummeting earlier this year.
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Toshiba and SanDisk will build a state-of-the-art NAND flash memory factory and share the chips.
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Flash memory supplier SanDisk Corp is to cut 10% of its workforce, 250 jobs. It said NAND component pricing has dropped by 50% in the past two months due to excess supply coupled with first quarter seasonally weak demand.
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One Laptop Per Child and Intel take competing approaches to manufacturing, pricing PCs--and it's not yet clear which will prevail.