Apple may use flash memory for notebooks: analyst
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Apple Inc.  may sell zippy notebook computers later this year that use the same type of fast memory as music players and digital cameras, driving down prices of hard-disk drives, an analyst said on Thursday.
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Apple Inc.  may sell  zippy notebook computers later this year that use the same type  of fast memory as music players and digital cameras, driving  down prices of hard-disk drives, an analyst said on Thursday.
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Massive capacity iPods coming... but not for a few years yet Toshiba has developed what it believes will be a key component of Flash chips capable of storing 100Gb of data. Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait four more generations of Flash technology to get it.â¦
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Will it be a new thinner, lighter laptop? An updated iPhone? Movie rentals through iTunes? Computerworld's Ryan Faas is at Macworld today and plans to send back live reports as Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs delivers his keynote address. We'll update our story accordingly, technology permitting.
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With Apple's stronghold on the MP3 player market, Eli Harari is looking to mobile phones, which require more and more of SanDisk's flash memory.
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In three years, PRAM could become the leading storage technology for solid-state MP3 players that now use flash memory. But does Samsung, which announced a working PRAM prototype today, really want to replace its own bread-and-butter?
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U.S. stocks to watch on Tuesday:  SILICON STORAGE TECHNOLOGY SSTI.O: The flash memory company  said its fourth-quarter revenue would fall below expectations.  Its stock closed at $7.01 on the Nasdaq.
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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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Analysis: Low flash memory prices could mean lower cost solid-state devices and bigger storage in gadgets.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Samsung Electronics is sampling a new type of flash memory device that could make it easier for makers of mobile phones and MP3 players to increase the storage capacity of their products. Samsung's moviNAND devices combine a NAND flash memory chip, an MMC (multimedia card) controller, and some firmware into a component that's small enough to be used in the latest portable electronics products, the company said. Samsung has started shipping samples of 1GB and 2GB moviNAND chips to manufacturers and will begin mass producing them later this month. It plans to introduce 512MB and 4GB capacities by the end of this year, it said. MoviNAND solves allows device makers to include a large amount of flash memory in their products while still using a standard serial interface, the company said. "The significance of the MMC interface is that the complexities of the native NAND interface and management are completely abstracted from the [portable device]," Samsung spokesman John Lucas said via e-mail. In addition, the MMC interface performance better than other standard interfaces because it has an 8-bit wide bus, allowing data to be processed at up to 52MB per second, he said. NAND flash has become popular for its ability to store large amounts of data at relatively low cost and to retain that data when devices are switched off. It's used in memory sticks, memory cards and digital music players such as Apple Computer's iPod. Other NAND makers include Toshiba, Hynix Semiconductor, and IM Flash Technologies. It's one of several recent flash memory advancements from Samsung. On Monday the South Korean companyÂ showed off a 32GB NAND flash memory chipÂ built using an advanced, 40-nanometer manufacturing process.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Hewlett-Packard is preparing its first laptop with flash memory chips in another sign of the market's gradual migration away from the use of hard drives to store data and software.
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(InfoWorld) - TheÂ guessing game continuesÂ over which processorsÂ Apple's iPhoneÂ will use, with Arm Holdings' top executive hinting the device will contain his company's intellectual property. Warren East, Arm's president and CEO, was reported as saying the iPhone will have "at least three" Arm processor cores, according to the EE Times on Wednesday. Arm, based in Cambridge, England, licenses a variety of processor designs to other companies and manufacturers. A spokesman with Arm's public relations agency in London said the report wasn't quite accurate but not inaccurate, either. The report was "based on speculation," and Arm was considering issuing a clarifying statement regarding the story, he said. Apple's public relations agency said the fewÂ details about the iPhoneÂ were revealed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his MacWorld keynote speech on Jan. 9. "We don't know anything," the Apple representative said on Friday. When unveiling the phone, Apple's boss Steve Jobs said it will run OS X with special iPhone applications. Apple hopes to sell 10 million devices, which will retail for $499 for a 4GB model or $599 for an 8GB one. Analyst firms including investment bank Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group (FBR) have compiled lists of which manufacturers are likely contributing to the iPhone. A day after Jobs' announcement, FBR said Samsung Electronics would likely provide an applications/video processor. Samsung licenses a range of processor technology from Arm. Didier Scemama, a semiconductor analyst with ABN AMRO BankÂ in London, figures Arm cores going into three processors: the Samsung processor, a Wi-Fi chip from Marvel Technology Group and GPRS/EDGE baseband chip from Infineon Technologies. Scemama wouldn't say how he came to his conclusions. The use of three cores won't mean much for Arm, whose technology already goes in other mobile devices made by companies such as Nokia, Scemama said. Other analysts agreed with Scemama's assessment. "If Arm cores are common in phones and other small devices, why wouldn't they be found in the iPhone?," said Roger Kay president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, an analyst company. So why do people care so much about the slivers of silicon? For enthusiasts, it fuels speculation over the iPhone's performance before it hits U.S. shelves in June. An Arm-based processor would mean OS X would have to be ported to a new platform. The OS already runs on Intel Corp.'s x86 and IBM Corp.'s PowerPC processors. For others, it means the satisfaction of cracking the wall of secrecy Apple builds around it products months before the first device is cracked open with a putty knife. "The only thing that makes it news is that Apple is so tight-lipped about its products, every little snippet of information is thought to be significant," Kay said. Suppliers aren't supposed to reveal that their components are used in Apple products, Kay said. But as Apple has diversified its product line, its number of suppliers has increased, making leaks more prevalent and the monitoring of the suppliers harder, he said.
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An innovative new memory technology that promises to replace flash in a wide range of products has been unveiled by IBM and two partners who claim their phase-change technology is 500 times faster than flash and draws roughly half the power.
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The chipmaker's warning raises concerns about the flash memory business, one financial analyst says in a report.
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A new flash media reader that fits into the ExpressCard slot on MacBook Pros will ship this month.
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Banners hanging at&#160;Macworld Expo&#160;on Monday read, &quot;2008: There&#39;s something in the air,&quot; suggesting wireless news to come in CEO Steve Jobs&#39; keynote Tuesday morning.Faster cellular service for the iPhone is already on its way later this year, AT&amp;T&#39;s top executive reportedly said in November, but Apple could go beyond that plan and extend high-speed wireless WAN (wide-area network) capability to its MacBook notebooks and even a rumored &quot;ultramobile&quot; computer.Many consumers have been clamoring for more speed on the iPhone since it was announced a year ago with support only for Wi-Fi and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), a version of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) that generally runs below 200Mbps. U.S. iPhone carrier AT&amp;T Wireless and other operators around the world already have a set of faster systems called HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) that can deliver more than 1Mbps.At the same time, wide-area wireless has been moving into PC notebooks and smaller PC-like devices. The big notebook vendors, including Dell, Lenovo, and Hewlett-Packard, have rolled out products with built-in 3G. And the Asustek Computer Eee PC and some other small UMPC (ultramobile PC) devices are slated to ship with WiMax.Apple hasn&#39;t made the leap. Mobile Mac owners can hook up to Wi-Fi hotspots but have to buy dongles or other add-on devices from third parties to get fast wireless elsewhere. Offering a built-in 3G card would give MacBook users access to broadband in far more locations.However, that leap would take Apple into a market that hasn&#39;t attracted a large percentage of notebook buyers, analysts said.At least in the U.S., 3G radios are associated with a particular carrier and usually sold along with two-year data contracts. Users keep notebooks longer than they do phones and don&#39;t want to lock them down to a particular carrier, said Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin. In addition, many notebooks are purchased by enterprise IT departments, which demand more flexibility, Golvin said. He doesn&#39;t expect to see another iPhone phenomenon.&quot;I don&#39;t think that laptop users would be as interested in aligning themselves formally with one particular carrier,&quot; Golvin said. One alternative would be to build in a chip that could handle more than one carrier and 3G technology, he added.Avi Greengart of Current Analysis believes Apple&#39;s proven ability to streamline could change the picture.&quot;They have not been in the forefront of 3G on notebooks. However, it wouldn&#39;t surprise me at all if they came out with a simplified offering that just made a lot of sense and became the catalyst, as the iPhone is,&quot; Greengart said. Apple simplified the iPhone experience for customers by sticking with one carrier and letting subscribers sign up with AT&amp;T through iTunes.Apple could also jump-start the market by offering an alternative to the expensive monthly service model that carriers typically use, said Gartner&#39;s Ken Dulaney. Most consumers don&#39;t travel frequently enough to justify spending US$30 or more per month for cellular service on their notebooks, but they might be willing to buy a system with built-in 3G and pay for service as they need it, he said. Verizon has a little-known offering like this, in which users can pay $15 for 24 hours of service, according to spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.Because of its greater mobility, a rumored Mac that&#39;s smaller than a notebook but bigger than the iPhone would be an ideal candidate for 3G. If the company unveils it on Tuesday, that product could lead Apple&#39;s new wireless charge.But that &quot;something in the air&quot; could be a number of other things, too, analysts said. Apple is expected to make its SDK (software development kit) for third-party applications on the iPhone available next month, Greengart said. And the iPhone could gain GPS (Global Positioning System) capability, or some iPods could get Wi-Fi, he said. As always, it&#39;s all speculation until Jobs speaks.&#160;