It was three years ago when Adata chairman Simon Chen declared the DRAM market the 
Hitachi and Intel are fast becoming best buddies in the storage space, and why not, the two apparently play very well together. The latest effort from these two tech heavyweights is Hitachi's new Ultrastar SSD400M multi-level cell (MLC) solid state drive family. Pitched as a cost-effective alternative to those pricey single-level cell (SLC) SSDs, these new drives are built using Intel's 25nm enterprise-grade MLC NAND flash memory, Hitachi says.
SandForce has built quite a name for itself by building high-end solid state drive controllers employed in a number of enthusiast level SSDs, and the company doesn't show any signs of slowing down. After launching its second generation SF-2200 (SATA 6Gbps) and SF-2100 (SATA 3Gbps) chipsets earlier this year, SandForce says it's now prepared to demonstrate a prototype SSD built with Toshiba's 24nm multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory.
Toshiba announced it has enhanced its NAND flash portfolio with new embedded NAND flash memory devices that feature toggle-mode DDR NAND for improved performance. These higher performing 24nm e-MMC devices wedge open the bottlenecks typically associated with single data rate NAND, enabling faster random access and sequential performance. The icing on the cake is that they're cheaper to boot, a combination we'll take 8 days a week.
Like Jennifer's Lopez's marriage, DRAM manufacturers are going through a bit of a rough patch. DRAM insiders were popping Cristal when the industry saw a 77 percent surge in revenues between 2009 and 2010, but thanks to a dramatic death-spiral in DRAM prices, those same executives could soon be snuggling up to Wall Street bankers and MD 20/20 in the gutter. Today, a report surfaced that indicates that things could get worse before they get better for DRAM manufacturers; some experts theorize that PC owners may shift away from DRAM into the open arms of NAND flash memory.
Toshiba and its manufacturing partner SanDisk officially cut the ribbon on their third 300mm wafer NAND fabrication facility at Toshiba's Yokkaichi Operations in Mie Prefecture, Japan. They're calling it Fab 5, which has nothing to do with the 1991 University of Michigan men's 
DRAM makers haven't had much to celebrate in a long time, and as profits took a nose dive, some wondered if they'd be better off bailing on the PC RAM industry, as 
Patriot is upfront in the fact that its new Torqx 2 solid state drive line isn't the fastest on the market, nor is it intended to be. Built to take advantage of the SATA II (3Gbps) interface, Patriot says it's looking to deliver "the perfect balance of price and performance." Don't misunderstand that to think the Torqx 2 is slow. On paper, this new series is rated at up to 270MB/s read and up to 230MB/s write speeds.
The flash memory used in everything from smartphones to SSDs is about to get a lot more efficient in the wake of the latest advance from Intel and Micron. The companies announced today that they have successfully shrunk NAND flash memory so it can be manufactured using a 20-nanometer process. The practical upshot of all this is that future devices are likely to be packing more memory for less money.
Chip makers Intel and Micron are in the process of seeing how low each company can go, and it has nothing to do with the Limbo. Instead, it has everything to do with shrinking NAND technology even further with the goal of doubling down the density of their flash chips by the time summer rolls around. Aside from being impressive from a technological point of view, lower density chips ultimately lead to lower cost solid state drives (SSDs).
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