Toshiba Corporation today announced its entry into the emerging market for NAND-flash-based solid state drive (SSD) with a series of products featuring multilevel-cell NAND flash memories. Offered in a range of form factors and densities, Toshiba's solid state drives are designed primarily for notebook PCs. They will be showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, from January 7th to 10th. Samples and mass production will follow from the first quarter (January to March) of next year.

Super Talent Technology today launched a pair of 256GB Serial ATA (SATA) solid state drives (SSDs). Super Talent's new FSD56GC35M is 100% interchangeable with standard 3.5-inch SATA hard disk drives, but offers all the advantages of an SSD including greater resistance to shock and vibration, significantly lower power consumption and faster performance. FSD56GC35M supports a 0'C to 70'C operating temperature range. The firm also offers an industrial temperature (I-Temp) version of this drive, SS56GA6C35I, which supports an extended -40'C to 85'C operating temperature range. All I-Temp rated SSDs are tested at their rated temperature extremes to ensure functionality. Backed with a three year warranty, these 256GB SSDs are designed and manufactured in Super Talent's San Jose, California headquarters. Super Talent sells its SSDs directly to OEM customers worldwide. Both products are sampling now.

Charting new directions and opportunities for NAND-based storage, Micron Technology, today entered the growing solid state drive (SSD) market by announcing its RealSSD family of products. Offered in a range of form factors and densities, Micron's solid state drives are designed for computing, enterprise server and networking applications.

Super Talent Technology today announced a new line of Solid State Drives (SSDs) that are rated to operate over a -40C to 85C industrial temperature (I-Temp) range. Super Talent SSDs are interchangeable with conventional hard drives but are significantly more resistant to shock and vibration. Moreover, these new I-Temp SSDs have considerably better tolerance of extreme temperatures than hard drives. Super Talent's range of nineteen new I-Temp SSDs spans industry standard 1.8-inch, 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch form factor SATA SSDs, and 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch IDE (PATA) SSDs. These SSDs are designed and manufactured in Super Talent's San Jose, California headquarters, and are backed with a three year warranty. Super Talent sells its SSDs directly to OEM customers worldwide. OEM pricing on SS28A5C25I, 128GB 2.5-inch I-temp SATA SSD, is under $4000.

SanDisk Corporation today unveiled a solid-state storage solution that works in conjunction with a PC's hard drive to store and launch the computer's operating system and software applications when needed. The new SanDisk Vaulter Disk, which is a flash-based PCI Express module, tag-teams with your laptop or desktop computers' hard drive to provide enhanced performance and lower load times. Both Vaulter and the hard drive are integrated into the PC and operate simultaneously, while maintaining a low cost per gigabyte. The SanDisk Vaulter Disk will be offered to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) early next year in capacities from 8GB to 16GB.

At the Oracle OpenWorld 2007 event in San Francisco, California storage manufacturer BiTMICRO has announced its plan to introduce the E-Disk Altima 4Gbit Fibre Channel flash SSD. Aimed at the enterprise market, the E-Disk Altima E3F4FL flash SSD is designed to deliver high-bandwidth storage performance and offer transfer speeds of up to 230MB/s. The Altima drives use single level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory chips and can be equipped with up to 1.6TB worth of flash storage space. The sampling of Altima 4Gbit SSDs will start in Q1 2008 with volume shipment being planned for the second quarter of 2008. The drives are set to arrive in capacities ranging from 16GB to 1.6TB. Prices of the new drives have not been announced.

Samsung Electronics has become the first in the industry to sample 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch 64GB solid state drives (SSD) with a super-fast native SATA II interface. With a sequential write speed of 100MB/s and sequential read speed of 120MB/s, the SATA II SSD is poised to expand the market for solid state drives from notebook PCs to corporate servers and other high-performance storage applications. Samsung's SATA II SSD combines a 50 nm-class, single-level-cell (SLC) 8Gb flash chip with a Samsung proprietary, high-speed SATA controller and supporting software.

The 64GB SATA II SSD is based on Samsung's cutting-edge NAND technology with dramatically improved performance specs that are taking system performance to a whole new level of efficiency

said Jim Elliott, director, NAND flash marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.

Fusion-io has presented a massively fast and big solid-state flash hard drive (SSD) on a PCI-Express x4 card at the Demofall 07 conference in San Diego. Fusion is promising sustained data rates of 800Mb/sec for reading and 600Mb/sec for writing. The company plans to start releasing the cards at 80GB and will scale to 320 and 640GB. Supported operating systems include Linux Red Hat AS4.0, Windows Vista and Windows XP. All this performance comes with a certain price, the 640GB ioDrive will cost $19,000 USD when releasein in Q1 2008.

Alienware, the leading manufacturer of high-performance desktop, notebook and professional systems, is now selling 64GB solid state drives in its AMD-based Aurora ALX and Intel-based Area-51 ALX desktops. Alienware is only offering the drives in dual RAID 0 configurations, giving you total space of 128GB and an extra. Unfortunately two of these drives will bump the price of the Alienware desktop with $1700.

More than just a noteworthy achievement, being first to market with the 64GB SSD means Alienware's desktop users can enjoy invaluable benefits not available anywhere else,

said Marc Diana, Product Marketing Manager for Alienware.

Advanced Media, manufacturer of the popular Ridata brand is making news today with the announcement of its 32GB 2.5" solid state disk (SSD). The new 32GB SSD is an ideal option for mobile computers and has a MTBF of four million hours. Read speeds for the new drive are up to 60MB/sec while the write speeds are up to 48MB/sec. The new Ridata lightweight SSD will be offered in both ATA and Serial ATA interfaces. The 32GB model will be available in the coming weeks, while a 64GB variant will come to market in late November. Pricing has not been announced for either part, but expect pricing of around $400 USD and $1,000 USD respectively.

Hewlett-Packard plans to offer solid-state drives (SSDs) as an option in all professional series laptop PCs starting from next month because the drives operate faster, conserve battery life, have less weight, and are more durable than conventional hard disk drives. HP will first offer the option of 64GB NAND flash memory drives in products it announced earlier this month, the HP Compaq 2710p, 2510p, 6910p, and 8000 series, and will continue to offer it in future models. Choosing the SSD option will add around $1,000 to the cost of a laptop, but HP expects the cost to come down as SSDs gain acceptance in the marketplace and volumes increase, said Dan Forlenza, vice president of business notebooks at HP, during a news conference in Taipei.

California-based BiTMICRO has unveiled its latest line-up of solid state drive (SSDs), the E-Disk Altima. The Altima drives feature the EDSA flash I/O controller and the LUNETA memory flash interface and although they are based on the old PATA 133 technology, they promise to deliver high transfer speeds. Set to bring high-capacity and high-performance yet cost-effective solid state storage to servers and storage networks, the 2.5-inch E-Disk Altima drives use single level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory chips and will offer read speeds of up to 133MB/s and write speeds up to 100MB/s. The new drive series will include models with capacities ranging from 4GB up to an impressive 416GB. The first E-Disk Altima samples will be ready in early 2008 while the drives' shipping date is planned for March 2008.

SanDisk is looking to drop the price of SSDs for the entry-level market with its new uSSD 5000 SSD series. The USB-based drives will be used in sub-$250 PCs and will be embedded directly onto motherboards.

SSD (Solid State Disk) technology is one of the most powerful advances in storage technology in some time. Unfortunately, at this point, it's hideously expensive, and only available to the major OEM companies. Fortunately, Seagate aims to change all that. Starting next year, Seagate will be releasing cost-effective desktop and laptop SSDs. By 2010, Seagate aims to eliminate current problems with SSD technology, such as high cost, low storage yields, and low availability.

Back in April, Dell started the "Plant A Tree For Me" fund, which is basically a gigantic charity based around planting trees to offset the carbon dioxide surplus in our world. Now, Dell is taking further steps to actively protect and help the environment. Two of Dell's latest notebooks, the D430 and Precision M4300, have been certified with the stringent Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star 4.0. Ten of Dell's desktop models have already been certified compliant with Energy Star 4.0, which Dell claims makes it "the greenest technology company". Dell also launched cooler-running servers that are more efficient and require less energy to run. Dell is also working hard to make SSD storage available in as many of it's computers as possible.

If competitors decide that they want to steal the crown of "the greenest technology company" from Dell, we may finally see companies striving to make computers more powerful while reducing their impact on the environment.

Samsung Electronics, announced that it has begun mass producing 1.8-inch solid state drives (SSD) at 64GB - the highest density SSD available today for mobile computing applications. SSDs feature far greater reliability, faster boot times and faster application start-up times than hard disk drives. SSD can also improve battery life by up to 20 percent in notebooks.

MILPITAS, CALIF., June 4, 2007 - Reaching for the "sweet spot" of memory storage for laptop computers, SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today expanded its line of solid state drive (SSD) products with the introduction of a 64-gigabyte (GB)1 SSD aimed at both enterprise users and early adopter consumers such as gamers. SanDisk 1.8-inch UATA 5000 and 2.5-inch SATA 5000 SSD products, which already are available in a 32GB capacity, are compatible as drop-in replacements for hard disk drives in most mainstream notebook computers.

The last version of the Gigabyte RAM-disk was a clever invention that allowed it's user to treat up to 4GB of RAM as a hard disk. When people installed Windows XP to this RAM-disk, the result was an extraordinarily fast boot/shutdown time, very nice system response, and speedy file access. Gigabyte has taken to heart the motto of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The GO-RAMDISK by Gigabyte takes the old RAM-disk, which could hold 4GB of RAM and interfaced with a local SATA port, and put it in a 5.25" drive bay. Gigabyte also added status LED's and a battery check button.

There's no word as to when we can start seeing this, but here's a picture of it at Computex 2007.

Taipei, Taiwan ~ Power Quotient International Co., Ltd. (PQI) officially announced high speed 226X Industrial CF Turbo+ card, 256GB SSD Turbo+, 32GB PCI-E SSD and 1.8" 32GB ZIF - SSD storage mediums. The high speed 226X Industrial CF card Turbo+ is available with a maximum capacity of 16GB and a transfer rate of 38MB/sec.

PQI's 256GB SSD Turbo+ features transfer rates of up to 60MB/sec, PCI-E SSD is dedicated to notebooks in the form of a removable storage medium and 1.8" 32GB ZIF interface SSD is a rare but effective industrial storage option. As the forefather and a leader in industrial storage solutions, PQI continues to provide technology breakthrough SSDs and a completion industrial storage solution.

Lexar Media, Inc., world wide known for digital media technologies recently announced it's high-capacity, removable solid state drive (SSD) series. It's currently shipping in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities for the ExpressCard, the successor of the CardBus PC card slot. While the CardBus is widely spread it's drawback is it's connection to the rest of the system using a PCI-bound interface controller. The ExpressCard slots nowadays built into modern notebooks because it is connected utilizing a PCIe x1 or USB 2.0 connection and thus makes it far superior in terms of bandwidth, it's roughly 2.5 times faster. Devices like this SSD card then won't get limited by insufficient bandwidth, Lexar say the maximum speed is around 250MB/s. A disadvantage which I don't want to keep quiet about is the incompatibility of ExpressCard to the CardBus standard.

Samsung has launched the latest addition to its wide range of hard drives with the new SpinPoint N2 Series of 1.8" drives, ranging from 30GB to 120GB. Spinning at a rate of 4,200 RPM with 2-8MB caches, these drives are aimed mostly at ultra-portable laptops, ultra-mobile PCs and portable media players where a compact size is more important than overall performance. This means they could soon be finding their way into 120GB iPods and Zunes, a nice boost for hardcore music fans with enormous collections of songs. Samsung also commented on the pricing of Solid State Drives (SSDs) which are being viewed as the replacement for spinning hard drives within the next few years, particularly portable computers. Samsung's market research has suggested that by 2010 1.8" SSD drives could have come down in price to costing just 3x more per gigabyte than their spinning equivalents - still quite a considerable gap, but an improvement nonetheless.

Dell is the next big manufacturer to enter the solid-state disk arena today by offering 1.8" SanDisk UATA 5000 drives on its Latitude D420 ultra-mobile and Latitude D620 ATG semi-rugged notebooks. SanDisk's 1.8" SSD drive was first announced in early January and features patented TrueFFS flash management technology. Also of importance is the drive's MTBF of 2 million hours. The drive offers sustained read speeds of 62MB/sec and had an average access speed of 0.12 milliseconds. The drive also boosts overall system performance by 23 percent and reduced boot times by 34 percent on the D420 and D620. The SanDisk UATA 5000 is currently available as a $450 option on the D420 and a $300 option on the D620 ATG. The drive is also available direct from Dell at a price of $549.

Hybrid HDDs are increasingly starting to take place as a primary hard drives in the latest notebooks. Samsung has now announced its Q30 15.4" wide notebook that will feature the MH80 hybrid hard drive (256MB flash). Samsung announced back in early March that it had begun shipping its new MH80 Series hybrid HDDs which are available in capacities of 80GB, 120GB and 160GB. These drives also come equipped with either 128MB or 256MB of onboard flash memory. Internal testing has shown that when compared to a traditional HDD, the hybrid-equipped Q30 has 26% faster writes, 71% faster reads, 30% lower boot times and a 10% increase in battery life. Besides the 80GB MH80 hybrid HDD, the Q30 also packs a 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 processor, 15.4" WXGA screen, NVIDIA GeForce 7400 mobile GPU with 256MB of RAM and a Super-multi dual-layer DVD writer.

Transcend is very pleased to announce its 32GB 2.5-inch IDE Solid State Drive (SSD), which is compatible with most mainstream PC and notebook computers. The 2.5-inch IDE 44-Pin interface SSD has a tough outer metal case, enormous capacities, high reliability, low power consumption and anti-shock features that make it ideal to replace Hard Disk Drives. Transcend's 2.5-inch IDE SSD series has a distinct advantage over standard 2.5" HDDs in that it is a solid-state memory with no moving parts, and therefore not susceptible to mechanical failure as a result of vibrations. It is now available in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB memory capacities with support for Ultra DMA Mode 4.

Some of you may know that Fujitsu wants in on the small-form-factor market. Fujitsu makes 3.5" hard disks for desktops, 2.5" hard disks for laptops, and is planning on making 1.8" hard drives for ultra-portable computers and music players. Fujitsu has decided to put those plans on hold. Instead, Fujitsu will be focusing on making an entry into the SSD (Solid State Disk) market. We'll have more details as Fujitsu makes them.