Building on the success of the industry leading Bullet Proof line of mSATA SSDs, we at MyDigitalSSD are proud to announce two highly anticipated SATA III (6G) mSATA drives that reach up to 256GB capacity at a price that's right for any budget.

Like their predecessors, Bullet Proof 3 SSDs offer the performance and reliability you've come to expect from MyDigitalSSD while boasting improved Read/Write speeds of over 500/300MB/sec with Random 4K speeds of over 20/40MB/sec. Featuring Asynchronous NAND Flash and the new Phison S8 Controller, BP3 drives are the perfect upgrade solution for anyone looking for the best price to performance ratio on the market. For those who like to push their devices to the max, MyDigitalSSD will be releasing an IOPS minded Firmware in mid to late July.

EtronTech, which started out as a DRAM IC manufacturer, expanded into PC connectivity solutions, such as USB 3.0 host and webcam controllers, is now shipping its first USB 3.0 flash drive controllers. The EV268-series dual-core controllers come in 2-channel and 4-channel variants, with the ability to offer transfer-rates in excess of 230 MB/s. These controllers are designed to support 30 nm-class and 20 nm-class SLC/MLC/TLC NAND flash memory chips.

With the EV268, Etron entered a small but budding group of companies with USB 3.0 flash-drive controllers: VIA Technology/VIA Labs Inc. (VLI), Phison Electronics, and InnoStor Technology. By Q4 2012, it is estimated that USB 3.0 flash drives will make up 20% of all flash-drives shipped.

Currently, Patriot Memory's SATA 6.0 Gbps SSD offering is all-SandForce but things will change in Q2 when the company will release a new drive family based on a controller designed by Taiwan-based Phison Electronics.

Found on display at Patriot's CeBIT booth, the Phison-powered solid state drive is called Magma and it features a 2.5-inch form factor, a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface, a MTBF of over 1.5 million hours, and a three-year warranty. Unfortunately Patriot didn't provide any performance numbers but it did say Magma will be a value-minded solution. Capacity wise, Magma will arrive in 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB versions.

Japanese company Green House launched two lines of SSDs for use in compact devices and embedded applications. These include the GH-SSD*S-H in the "half-slim" SATA form factor (where * stands for number of GB in capacity), and GH-SSD*S-M in mSATA form factor. The half-slim form factor is basically a half length SSD PCB with its case stripped out, which makes it a lot more compact. The two are further available in two variants based on NAND flash type used, SLC and MLC. The SLC variants come in capacities starting from 1 GB to 16 GB, including 2, 4, and 8 GB models along the way; while the MLC variant includes capacities starting from 4 GB to 128 GB, with 8, 16, 32, and 64 GB models along the way.

Transfer rates are different between each specific model. The the SLC variant, it's 29 MB/s (read) / 17 MB/s (write) for the 1 GB, 55 MB/s (read) / 34 MB/s (write) for 2 GB, 100 MB/s (read) / 65 MB/s (write) for 4 GB, and 120 MB/s (read) / 100 MB/s for the 8 and 16 GB models. Moving on to MLC, it's 34 MB/s (read) / 12 MB/s (write) for the 4 GB, 66 MB/s (read) / 24 MB/s (write) for 8 GB, 120 MB/s (read) / 45 MB/s (write) for 16 GB, 135 MB/s (read) / 90 MB/s (write) for 32 GB, 200 MB/s (read) / 170 MB/s (write) for 64 GB, and 200 MB/s (read) / 200 MB/s (write) for the 128 GB model. All drives make use of a Phison-made controller, with 64 MB DRAM cache. The drives are rated to have 1,000,000 hours of MTBF, and pack standard features such as TRIM command support and NCQ. They are backed by 1 year warranty.

The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) Working Group, the organization dedicated to simplifying integration of NAND Flash memory into consumer electronic devices, computing platforms, and industrial systems, today published the new ONFI 3.0 standard. By using the non-volatile DDR2 (NV-DDR2) interface, the newly ratified standard reaches speeds of up to 400 megabytes (MB)/sec, doubling the current NAND interface transfer rates.

The ONFI 3.0 standard details the interface and infrastructure that ONFI's more than 100 members can employ to develop products that deliver the industry's fastest NAND interface. Improvements in ONFI 3.0's NAND interface speeds will also enable future NAND controllers to achieve similar performance with half the number of channels, providing both a cost and space savings, which are key requirements for solid-state drive (SSD) design. The ONFI 3.0 incorporates a sophisticated die selection feature that reduces the number of chip enable (CE) pins, which in turn lowers the number of controller pins making PCB routing more efficient. Reducing the number of CE pins is especially important for SSDs, providing a significant cost reduction and allowing the extra pins to be assigned to other applications within the system.

Hynix Semiconductor Inc, Numonyx B.V. and Phison Electronics Corp. today announced that they have signed a collaboration agreement to jointly develop controllers for the next generation of managed-NAND solutions based on the newly released JEDEC eMMC 4.4 industry specification. The collaboration is expected to speed the delivery of the industry's most advanced eMMC specification available, helping to manage and simplify high-capacity storage requirements and improve the overall system-level performance of wireless and embedded applications.
Under this agreement, Phison, Hynix and Numonyx will leverage their respective competencies to develop controllers used in combination with a variety of NAND flash products. Phison will exclusively supply the jointly developed controllers to Hynix and Numonyx, which will enhance their respective NAND flash memory solutions portfolio.