Samsung begins producing 1.8-inch SSDs
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(InfoWorld) - Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has begun producing a flash memory-based solid-state disk drive for mobile computing applications. The drive is the latest in a growing line of products from Samsung and competitors that make use of flash memory chips instead of magnetic disc recording technology. Compared to today's hard-disk drives, SSDs are lighter, use less power and can read and write data faster. They are also more expensive but the price difference has been narrowing as flash chips have become cheaper so SSDs are now starting to appear in some laptops. The new Samsung drive has a capacity of 64G bytes and is the same size as a conventional 1.8-inch hard-disk drive. It's designed to be used in sub-notebook class computers, ultra-mobile PCs and other devices like portable media players. Samsung said it is seeing demand increase for such products, particularly from companies making ultra portable PCs. At the Computex show in Taipei earlier this month two major contract PC makers, First International Computer Inc. and Asustek Computer Inc., both showed prototype ultra portables and several other companies have already put such machines on sale. Samsung is one of the world's largest manufacturers of flash memory chips so the company has a lot to gain from SSDs becoming more popular. It estimated that the market for SSDs will increase 270 percent between now and 2010 to become the largest growth segment in the NAND flash memory market. The price of the drive, which will be sold to PC makers and not end-users, was not disclosed. Â
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All three models to be released use a 1.8-inch hard drive that can hold up to 2,500, 5,000 and 15,000 pieces of music, respectively.
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Seagate is a launching a pair of 1TB capacity disks with advanced power-saving technology.
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South Korea's Samsung Electronics said it has developed the world's highest-capacity SRAM (static random access memory) chip for high-performance networking systems.
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Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory  technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing the industry's  first 1Gigabit (Gb) DDR2 DRAM (dynamic random access memory) using 60  nanometer (nm)--class process technology.
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One-inch Microdrive capacity will jump to up to 10GB.
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A massive decline in the price of NAND flash memory, the chips that store photos in digital cameras and music in iPods, is prompting innovation among companies trying to increase sales.A few of the items users are likely to see more widespread in gadgets this year include greatly expanded storage capacity in SD (secure digital) cards, USB (universal serial bus) flash sticks and internal storage, as well as new, lower-cost SSDs (solid-state discs) in notebook computers.The price of mainstream 4Gb SLC (single-level cell) NAND flash memory chips has fallen 73 percent since mid-August to $4.96 late Thursday, according to DRAMeXchange Technology, which runs an online clearinghouse for the chips. The chips hit a high of $18.50 on Aug. 14. The price of 4Gb MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash chips have taken a slightly worse dive, 75 percent down to $2.23 on Thursday, compared to its summer high of $8.85 per chip.The difference between SLC and MLC is cost and life span. SLC normally costs about three times more than MLC, and has a lifetime of 100,000 write cycles. MLC has a lifetime of only 10,000 write cycles.Toshiba and Samsung have both developed new 128GB SSDs based in MLC NAND to expand their use in notebook PCs. The new SSDs are less expensive, giving notebook PC designers more choices in storage.&quot;At 128G bytes, you&#39;re giving consumers the kind of storage space they expect in a notebook,&quot; said Jim Elliott, director of flash marketing at Samsung, in an interview.To work around the lifespan issue, Toshiba and Samsung use controller chips to spread writes across the drive to avoid wearing out any one portion too quickly.The new MLC-based drives are an important step forward for SSDs in the battle against hard disk drives (HDD). At 128GB, an SSD stands are far better chance of replacing an HDD in laptop computers because it removes some of the high-capacity advantage HDDs hold.SSDs have several advantages over HDDs; they&#39;re lighter, more rugged, consume less power, make no noise and enable a computer to start up and load software faster than HDDs. But SSDs are a lot more expensive than HDDs, which is why they&#39;re mainly used in the business laptop market, where users are willing to pay more for performance and reliability.Elliott believes SSDs for PCs will account for 27 percent of NAND consumption by 2011, particularly in business laptops and mobile devices.SanDisk has taken a slightly different route in SSDs than Toshiba and Samsung. The company made a 72GB SSD in a thinner form factor aimed at mobile devices. The drive takes up less space, so it could be used in a range of mobile devices, said Iri Trashanski, director of strategic business development at SanDisk.He doesn&#39;t believe there will be a market for 128GB SSDs for a while.Brian Kumagi, senior business development manager NAND flash memory business at Toshiba, believes the lower cost of MLC NAND chips will play a major role in seeing 128GB SSDs gain market share.Toshiba is also offering MLC NAND SSDs in 32GB and 64GB capacities to entice laptop PC makers and makers of digital music players and other devices requiring more storage.There are several other products where companies are adding NAND flash to increase storage capacity and improve devices. One, thanks to the iPhone, is handsets, said Elliott.Multimedia handsets will likely see 8GB of embedded flash memory become the standard this year, and card slots are being added to a host of mobile phones to increase storage and for added content delivery, including movies, games, software and more.Plus, low prices are encouraging new innovation, just as low NAND prices helped put the chips into more iPods earlier this decade. One area is in video cameras, namely, Flip video and similar devices.For $119.99, users can buy a Flip video camcorder that uses NAND flash memory to store 30 minutes of recordings.In addition, devices such as GPS (global positioning system) for cars will need more flash when 3D (three dimensional) digital maps start replacing 2D maps.The good news for users is that there are so many NAND flash memory makers in the world today that prices will remain low or at least reasonable for a long time.In a report titled &quot;Flash to crash,&quot; Macquarie Securities chip analyst Warren Lau wrote that NAND flash memory prices will likely remain low throughout the first half of this year, with little room for upside until the third quarter.&quot;We continue to warn that NAND flash will see excess supply in the first half of 2008 owing to aggressive production ramp (at IM Flash and Toshiba) and the seasonally weaker period for consumer products (digital still cameras, handsets and MP3),&quot; he wrote.Much of the possible price movements in NAND flash actually depend on Apple because of the widespread popularity of the iPod and iPhone.The company announced it has already shipped over 4 million iPhones and continues to ramp shipments. iPod shipment growth has dropped a bit, according to market researcher Gartner, but higher capacity iPod products such as the Touch have done well in the market.&quot;Apple is a critical driver of NAND flash consumption and will continue to yield great influence on NAND flash vendors,&quot; Gartner said in a report on Monday.
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Toshiba unveiled 60GB, 80GB and 120GB 1.8-in. external drives at the Consumer Electronics Show today.
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South Korea's Samsung Electronics has said it has developed a chip with enough capacity to store 36,000 high-resolution photographs or 40 movie files.
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One year after Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. introduced its first Q1 ultra-mobile PC, the company has revamped the device, making it lighter and more powerful.
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swight1701 writes &quot;It is being reported that Samsung has shown what it claims is the world&#39;s first mobile phone that incorporates a hard drive.
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Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., the world's third-largest handset maker, said on Tuesday it was launching the first mobile phone with a stamp-sized hard disc drive this month that would expand the memory capacity by 15 times.
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(InfoWorld) - South Korea's Mtron Co. Ltd. is adding to its line-up of already speedy solid-state disk drives with new models that offer faster reading and writing of data. The new drives offer a maximum sustained read speed of 120M Bps (bytes per second) and a maximum write speed of 90M Bps compared to 100M Bps and 80M Bps respectively on current models, said Ahn Ji-young, a spokesman for the company. Mtron is unveiling the new models at the IFA trade show in Berlin this week. The speed jumps are important because they should directly translate to an increase in performance in the system in which they are used. When a computer needs to store or retrieve data there is often a slight delay while the information is transferred to or from the disk. By increasing the speeds the delay is shortened. SSDs are already fast compared to standard hard-disk drives. The drives use flash memory chips in place of a rotating magnetic disk to store data and that brings a significant performance increase. In previous demonstrations PCs running SSDs have been able to boot Windows in about 20 seconds compared to more than 30 seconds for hard-disk drive-based computers. Mtron is planning to begin production of the drives in late September or early October. They will be available in 16G byte, 32G byte and 64G byte capacities and in 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch form factors with Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces. The drives are plug-in replacements for existing hard-disk drives. The company offers three families of product: a basic model for consumer applications, a professional model for server applications and an industrial model for harsh environments and military applications. Mtron is planning to introduce a higher capacity 128G byte model in the fourth quarter of this year and at about the same time will introduce a 1.8-inch drive, said Ahn. The smaller drive will debut at 32G bytes and a 64G-byte version should be available in early 2008, he said. Â
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And pushes PRAM into the limelight Samsung has developed a 40-nanometer memory device, which it today claimed is the first of its kind.â¦
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Samsung is showing off a new 128G-byte flash-based SSD (solid-state drive), one of the largest such drives shown to date, at C.E.S.
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Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has announced the world's first mobile phone to sport a tiny hard drive. With the built-in 1-inch, 1.5-gigabyte hard disk, the SPH-V5400 could store about 15 times more data than conventional handsets &#151; everything from digital music files and photos to video, Samsung said.
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Solid state drives (SSDs) have moved another step closer to being a useful option for the enterprise, with Dell&#39;s announcement late last week of two new portable systems that will feature SSD as a storage option. The two new models are the ultramobile Latitude D430 notebook and the Precision M4300 mobile workstation.