It's been a strange and wonderful ride watching solid state drive technology finally start to come into its own and threaten traditional hard disk drives. Frustrating too, as the handful of SSDs that manage to blaze a performance trail cost an exorbitant amount per gigabyte, while some of the lower cost drives based on the JMicron controller suffer from stuttering problems. That's why we're thrilled to see JMicron take a mulligan.

According to news site DailyTech, JMicron plans to unveil a new NAND flash controller at Computex. Designed to fix the aforementioned stuttering problem, the JMF612 chip will use an ARM9 core in a 289-ball TFBGA package and support the use of up to 256MB of DDR or DDR2 RAM for external cache duties.

The other part of the equation involves a new generation of NAND flash chips that are smaller, faster, and cheaper to manufacturer. At least one company -- IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron -- is said to already be building 34nm NAND, and SSDs based on the new chip(s) will support NCQ. Moreover, JMicron's refreshed controller has been specifically designed to take advantage of these new NAND chips.

We can hardly wait.

The formation of the consolidated Taiwan Memory Company (TMC) faces a major setback today, as both Micron Technology and Nanya Technology, along with their joint venture Inotera memories, have pulled out of discussions to be part of the new group, DigiTimes reports.

For Micron's part, the company wasn't comfortable with the risk of its tecnology IP potentially leaking out if multiple patent holders began working under TMC. Micron stressed that its IP portfolio for specialty DRAM is more advanced than Elpida's, who is one of the participants.

Facing the worst DRAM market in 15 years, the Taiwanese government earlier this year announced the formation of the new DRAM company, TMC. The point of the new company was to consolidate memory companies and rescue its ailing DRAM makers. The government-led project is still in talks with various memory makers, including Winbond, who just yesterday confirmed it met with decision makers for TMC.

Micron, Nanya, and Inotera said they will continue to develop and improve their own partnership in preparation for competition from the new memory company.