Gizmodo: micron

Micron RealSSD Drives Claim Title of World's Fastest (by a Lot)

Dan Nosowitz — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:30:00 EST

Micron's new C300 2.5-inch SSDs are incredibly fast. We're talking 50% faster than the current market leaders, and fast enough to downright shame any hard drive. Yeah, there's a new SSD speed champ every week, but these are damned impressive.

The C300 SSDs, available in 128GB and 256GB capacities when they're released sometime early next year, whups the current top dogs in read/write speeds. It's also the first to take advantage of the new SATA 3.0, which allows 6Gb/s throughput, twice that of SATA 2.0—but regardless of whether it's using 2.0 or 3.0, it's still blazingly fast. It's rated at 355MB/s read and 215MB/s write—for comparison, the champ, OCZ's Agility EX, gets 255MB/s and 195MB/s read and write speeds, respectively. You can see it compared with "a market leader" (probably either the OCZ or maybe Intel's X25-M) here:

By using the new ONFI 2.1 specification, it's also got nearly five times the data speed per transfer, which is basically means you'll be seeing improved performance while multitasking.

The C300 series is expensive, obviously, at about $350 for the 128GB and $715 for the 256GB (and then only when bought in bulk), but it's a pretty incredible performer—hopefully we'll be seeing it in some equally impressive laptops when it's released next year. [Micron]

Micron Demos Super-Fast Solid-State Drives Running At 1GB Per Second

Kit Eaton — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:40:30 EST

Micron touted its super-fast RealSSD drives with 250MBps speed a few months back, but now its demonstrated a tech that'll blow them out of the water: 1GBps transfer rates. It's a bit cheaty since it uses two SSDs for a total of 16 data channels to access the flash memory, but that does give it a 200,000 input/output operations per second speed. And that's too fast for SATA II's bandwidth cap, so Micron had to use PCI Express. It's a technology demonstrator, but Micron apparently plans to commercialize it "soon". [Electronista]

Micron Starts Production of Super-Fast RealSSD Solid-State Drives

Kit Eaton — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:23:00 EDT

The inexorable march of solid-state drive technology continues forward with news from Micron Technology (one of the worlds leading semiconductor suppliers) that they're going to produce SSD's with a read speed of 250MBps. That's more than twice the speed of the drives Samsung announced last month (90MBps.)

Micron's P200 RealSSD drives will use single-level cell technology for the Enterprise market, and the C200 versions use multi-level cell tech for the home PC market. The P200 will be available in 16GB to 128GB sizes in a 2.5-inch form factor, while the C200 will come in a 2.5-inch format up to 256GB. Clearly aiming at the UMPC market, the C200 will also come in a 1.8-inch drive with up to 128GB capacity. The drives peak read speed is that impressive-sounding 250MBps, with a write speed of 100MBps. They'll operate at around 0.3 to 2.5 W, and be SATA compatible.

Micron claims the usual power consumption benefits, and that the drives are "10 times faster at accessing transactional data" compared to HDDs. The drives will ship in the fourth quarter of this year, price to be decided. [PC Watch]

Ultrafast NAND Memory Reads 200MB per Second

Kit Eaton — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:03:42 EST

Micron and Intel have co-developed a new 8-gigabit SLC NAND chip, which has data-read speeds of 200 MB/second and write speeds of 100 MB/second: five times faster than previous SLC NANDs. The 50nm-process node devices are available as samples to OEMs now, with bulk manufacturing planned for late this year. This means that sometime soon we'll have access to memory cards and SSDs for our cameras and laptops that are way speedier than existing ones, though you might expect insanely high prices for that speed hike—especially since SLC is expensive in the first place. [BusinessWire]

Crucial Announces Line of SSDs...Again

Adrian Covert — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:26:50 EST

Crucial issued a press release today announcing their forthcoming line of Solid State Drives, but it appears to be the same news we covered in November. [Crucial]

Micron unveils RealSSD Solid State Drives in 32GB, 64GB Flavors

Adrian Covert — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:06:40 EST

Micron announced today that they will be releasing the RealSSD line of solid state drives, including a 64GB drive. While the entire line ranges from 1GB to 64GB, the 32 and 64 GB models are geared toward notebook and desktop use. The drives feature a SATA II interface and draw a mere 2 watts of power.

The 32GB drive will come in 1.8" and 2.5" sizes, while the 64GB will only ship in a 2.5" size. Micron, who also owns memory makers Lexar and Crucial, will release an SSD USB enclosement under the Crucial brand, making SSD expansion easier for users. Micron also expressed an interest in making a 128GB SSD, but have no definite plans as of yet. Pricing is still undetermined on the 32GB and 64GB models, but Micron expects the products to ship in Q1 2008. [Micron]

Flash Memory Capacity, Officially Doubled

Mark Wilson — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 14:18:39 EDT

A startup named Nanosys claims they have found a way to double flash memory capacity. Their secret is to create metal nanocrystals to boost memory surface area like skyscrapers. And while the idea is by no means new, Nanosys has figured out how to viably bring this process into mass production—something that has thwarted research institutions in the past.

Nanosys has signed legitimate deals with Intel and Micron Technologies, with products utilizing metal nanocrystals expected sometime in 2009. Now they just need to figure out how to double it again...and again...and... [technologyreview]

Thanks Sam!

2010: Apple's Flash Storage Odyssey

tgrumet — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 10:39:26 EST

Back in September we mentioned that Apple was effectively screwing everyone out of the 4GB and 6GB flash player market because Samsung was offering a huge volume discount to the company (up to 50 percent for the nano). Now it's been announced that Apple reached a long-term agreement with Hynix, Intel, Micron, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba to secure the supply of NAND flash memory through 2010, truly sealing the deal. And just to make sure it's signed, sealed and delivered, Jobs is planning to prepay a total of $1.25 billion for flash memory components over the next three months. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Specs and Pricing for iPod Nano [Shopping.com]