Micron announces its fastest notebook, desktop SSD: The RealSSD C300 doubles Micron's flash chip density


Micron Technology Inc. announced today a new solid-state drive (SSD) that it described as the industry's fastest for notebook and desktop PCs with about 50% better data transfer speeds compared with today's best consumer-grade flash drives.

Micron's RealSSD C300 drive is the first to leverage the SATA 3.0 specification, which offers 6Gbit/sec. throughput and the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) 2.1 specification providing sequential read speeds of up to 355MB/sec. and sequential write speeds of up to 215MB/sec., Micron said. All current SSD and most hard disk drives use the SATA 2.0, 3Gbit/sec. interface.

"Hard drives gain little performance advantage when using SATA 6Gbit/sec. because of mechanical limitations," Klein said. "As a developer of leading-edge NAND technology, along with our sophisticated controller and firmware innovations, Micron is well positioned to tune our drives to take full advantage of the faster speeds achieved using the SATA 6Gbit/sec. interface. The combination of these technology advancements has enabled the RealSSD C300 drive to far outshine the competition."


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The C300 drive outperforms every client SSD currently available on the market, which means were absolutely burying typical hard drive scores. To show you how that speed translates to the real world, we pitted our 256GB C300 SSD against a 7200rpm HDD in identical systems. We then tackled a handful of everyday tasks—boot up, file copy, and opening large files in Adobe® Photoshop®.

System Details
MoBo: Intel® X48 chipset based
Processor: Intel Core2Duo E8500
Memory: Micron® 2GB DDR3 1066 (PC3-8500)
OS: Windows® 7 Pro 64-bit

Seagate enters solid-state drive market


Seagate is making a belated but potentially market-changing entry into the solid-state drive market.

Pulsar drives achieve a peak performance of up to 30,000 read IOPS and 25,000 write IOPS, Seagate says, many times the performance of even the fastest hard disk drives. Seagate began shipping Pulsar units to select customers in September.

"With the entry of the world's largest [hard-disk drive] manufacturer, this further validates the viability of SSDs in the computing environment," said Gregory Wong, president of Forward Insights, which tracks the solid-state drive market.


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Join Alan and Bryce as they roadtrip to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada to put Intel's newest Solid-State Drives to some crazy tests. In episode 1, it's time to fry an egg. Maybe.

Please note: This video is for marketing purposes only. Not intended as an engineering, performance, or validation test.

Flash memory is not new, but it is moving up to a new tier in the storage echelon. Flash memory is a semiconductor memory device, familiar from its use in USB memory sticks and digital camera cards. It is much faster than rotating disk, but considerably more expensive, however this differential is shrinking.

At the rate of price declines, the technology will enjoy more than a 100 percent compound annual growth rate during the new few years and become strategic in many IT areas including consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the storage hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key advantages including space, heat, performance and ruggedness.


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When storing large amounts of data, its about effectively protecting against misuse and attacks on one hand, while on the other hand, the data should always be quickly and readily accessible. Jamon Bowen is convinced that Solid State hard drives are the most suitable for these purposes. These drives no longer contain magnetic rotating discs. Instead, the information is stored directly on chips.

OCZ shows off their USB 3.0 SSD for Legit Reviews in a private Demo at CES 2010. This SSD is super fast and is one of the coolest new products that we have seen.

Kingston Technology shows off their new 30GB Boot Drive SSD at CES and we recorded them showing it off for you to see. This is the drive that is replacing the 40GB Boot Drive and is coming out soon with a great price point.

Seagate Momentus XT (250GB )


The Seagate Momentus XT is the ideal choice for those who have been searching for a hard drive that offers the performance of a solid state drive without the premium price. With a street price of around at $135 for the 500GB version, the Momentus XT is just a fraction of the cost of an SSD, and delivers more capacity for your dollar.

Compared with conventional hard drives, the Momentus offers a significant boost in performance by incorporating 4GB of flash memory. The new hybrid hard drive has a built-in algorithm that automatically relocates frequently accessed data on the flash memory area, therefore boosting the device's overall performance over time.

Though about 50 percent more expensive than traditional high-speed 2.5-inch hard drives of the same standard and capacity, we found that the Seagate Momentus XT is worth the investment for its added performance.




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Samsung, Toshiba to Support New Standardized NAND Specification for High-Performance Applications


Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Toshiba Corporation today announced their commitment to development of the most advanced high-performance NAND flash memory technology available today -- a double data rate (DDR) NAND flash memory with a 400 megabit-per-second (Mbps) interface, toggle DDR 2.0 specification.

Now, continual upgrades in high-speed performance will create new applications and broader market opportunities for NAND flash memory. The rapid adoption of fourth generation (4G) smartphones, tablet PCs and solid state drives is expected to drive demand for a broader range of high-performance NAND solutions.


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I must be missing something here .... isn't the current spec for USB 2.0 (never mind the new Super Speed 3.0 USB ) a maximum data transfer rate of 480 Mbps ???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#USB_2.0_data_rates

So 400 Mbps doesn't sound like anything impressive to me.

This memory won't be seen for USB Flash Drives, at least not until USB 3.0 becomes more common.

I wasn't referring DIRECTLY to USB devices -- I was attempting a comparison. The article you copied states this new memory interface could be used in SSD's. What I was suggesting was that an SSD operating with transfer rates LESS than CURRENTLY available USB devices is NOT impressive.

Checking the data transfer rates of USB flash drives, 34MB/s read, 28MB/s write is about as good as it gets.

From the same Wiki article I linked to a few posts back (which you obviously didn't bother to read) ....

And let's not forget that we are discussing USB transfer rates in comparison to the article you originally copied which was discussing memory interfaces suitable for SSDs .... I'm pretty sure that CURRENT hard drive technology is multiple times faster than USB transfer rates. How about if you did a comparison for transfer rates between those two technologies?


Let me try to put it another way ..... the following article discusses data transfer rates between L2 Cache memory and a CPU

http://e-articles.info/e/a/title/The-Processor-Bus-%28Front-Side-Bus%29/

For example, if you are using a Pentium 4 3.6GHz processor that runs on an 800MHz processor bus, you have a maximum instantaneous transfer rate of roughly 6400MBps. You get this result by using the following formula:

800MHz x 8 bytes (64 bits) = 6400MBps

With slower versions of the Pentium 4, you get either

533.33MHz x 8 bytes (64 bits) = 4266MBps

or

400MHz x 8 bytes (64 bits) = 3200MBps

With Socket A (Athlon XP), you get

333.33MHz x 8 bytes (64 bits) = 2667MBps

or

266.66MHz x 8 bytes (64 bits) = 2133MBps

or

200MHz x 8 bytes (64 bits) = 1600MBps

With Socket 370 (Pentium III), you get

133.33MHz x 8 bytes (64 bits) = 1066MBps

or

100MHz x 8 bytes (64 bits) = 800MBps

This transfer rate, often called the bandwidth of the processor bus, represents the maximum speed at which data can move.


When you find an article discussing a memory interface suggested for SSDs that can move data at rates equal to or greater than that listed above, then post THAT article and I will be impressed

P3's, P4's and HDD's?

. . . all technologies past their prime.

EMC Iomega Unveils High-Speed SSD Desktop Storage Drives


The new SSD-based machines, about the size of an iPhone, will be available in early November in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities.

The new SSD-based machines, about the size of an iPhone, will be available in early November in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities, Iomega President Jonathan Huberman told eWEEK. Larger capacities will become available next year, he said.

Thanks to its SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface, the new SSD flash drive is up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0 drives and is about twice as fast as a 7200 RPM SATA hard drive utilizing the same USB 3.0 interface, Huberman said.

The new SSD drives are not inexpensive. The 64GB unit is priced at $229, the 128GB for $399, and the 256GB for $749. That's why it will take some time for these to replace the much cheaper spinning disk drives on the desktop.
[url=http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-Storage/EMC-Iomega-Unveils-HighSpeed-SSD-Desktop-Storage-Drives-111156/]

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A simple demo showing the stark differences Micron's new C400 RealSSD drive can make in an ordinary laptop installation.

Storage Visions allowed us to take an early look at the second generation SATA 6G SSD from Micron/Crucial. It seems Micron has plans to split the naming scheme and Micron, the parent company is keeping the RealSSD name while Crucial is taking another path. The Crucial M4 is the same physical drive as the Micron RealSSD C400.

Most of our readers know the RealSSD C300 is the fastest SSD available on the planet. The new C400/M4 will soon take that title as long as Micron/Crucial gets their drive to market before SandForce challenges for king of the hill status. 2011 is going to be another great year for all storage enthusiasts since both drives will be faster than present drives and both are claiming superiority.

Seagate: Solid-State Disks Are Doomed (At Least For Now)


In 2010, Seagate reports, the total market requirement for notebook hard disk storage was 69 exabytes--69 billion gigabytes. This year it's set to rise to 95 exabytes, according to forecasts by Gartner.

However, in 2010, the total NAND memory manufactured was just 11 exabytes, and most of that went into the likes of mobile phones, tablet computers, MP3 players, and memory cards. Just seven percent found its way into SSDs.

Even if new factories were built, it would still be hard to meet demand. Not only that, but creating the plants would be prohibitively expensive. Assuming that solid-state disks grabbed all the NAND flash manufactured, it would take a $250 billion investment in creating new fabrication plants to meet demand in 2011.

So, in short, you won't be seeing SSDs outside of high-end notebooks any time soon. The fact you even see them there is something of a miracle. For SSDs to become widespread, manufacturing capacity will have to equal or better demand, and that's unlikely for decades.



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Can You Get More Space Or Speed From Your SSD?


With the market for solid-state drives continually expanding, we wanted to explore some of the most popular tweaks enthusiasts use to purportedly improve performance and free up capacity. We break out the benchmarks and put them to the test.

Solid-state storage is generally faster than mechanical disks. Sure, once you get down into the 40 GB boot drives, write performance really suffers. But for the most part, SSDs rule. However, they're also much more expensive. Every gigabyte of capacity on your SSD is precious space. And while SSDs are very fast inherently, there are plenty of folks online who'll try to convince you that they can be made even faster with simple adjustments.


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Two key factors are driving the increase in enterprise use of solid state disk (SSD) storage. Texas Memory Systems (http://www.ramsan.com) solid state drives can help you reduce performance bottlenecks.

Transcend is working with the Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute, to break through current flash drive capacity boundaries.

Known as the Transcend Thin Card, the USB 3.0 flash drive is said to be thinner than a standard USB connector, and offer capacities ranging from 16GB up to 2TB.


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SSDs Have Bleak Future, Says Researchers


SSDs are seemingly doomed. Why? Because as circuitry of NAND flash-based SSDs shrinks, densities increase. But that also means issues relating to read and write latency and data errors will increase as well.

This makes the future of SSDs cloudy, states Laura Grupp, a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego. While the growing capacity of SSDs and high IOP rates will make them attractive for many applications, the reduction in performance that is necessary to increase capacity while keeping costs in check may make it difficult for SSDs to scale as a viable technology for some applications.

The group discovered that write speed for pages in a flash block suffered dramatic and predictable variations in latency. Even more, the tests showed that as the NAND flash wore out, error rates varied widely between devices. Single-level cell NAND produced the best test results whereas multi-level cell and triple-level cell NAND produced less than spectacular results.


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