Fusion-io, a maker of flash memory modules for fast, energy efficient server storage, has filed for an initial public offering in the hopes to raising up to $150 million. And for those watching the flash storage and SSD markets, it’s a pretty big deal. The Salt Lake City-based startup has been a rising star in […]
Is data security SSD’s new Achilles’ heel?
Companies are steadily alleviating two of the common pain points related to solid-state drive technology: price and longevity. But another has emerged: data security. One of Today’s 10 links is this InformationWeek article on how traditional methods of wiping data from hard drives aren’t as effective on SSDs. University of California at San Diego researchers […]
Flash cache appliance maker Violin Memory bags $35 million
Flash memory companies continue to rake in the investment funds. Among them is Violin Memory, which today announced that it had raised $35 million in Series B funding led by Toshiba and Juniper Networks. Toshiba, like Samsung, has been seeding the market for its own flash memory chips by investing in startups that are dependent […]
Toshiba satisfies the need for speed with new enterprise SSDs
Toshiba took the wraps off new, low-power enterprise class solid-state drives (SSDs) that it plans to bring to market during the first half of next year. Its MKx001GRZB series of 2.5-inch drives — which will be available in 100 GB, 200 GB and 400 GB capacities — will sport the company’s 32nm SLC NAND flash […]
Will the 2011 MacBook Pro be the greenest of them all?
Rumors are swirling that next-gen Apple MacBook Pros will not only mimic the MacBook Air’s svelte proportions, but that it will be among the greenest notebooks around. According to some early buzz surrounding an April 2011 MacBook Pro refresh, the new notebooks will ship with Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPUs, solid-state drives (SSDs) standard with capacities […]
Hitachi, Intel heat up SSD market
Hitachi and Intel are making waves this week, with one company debuting speedy solid state drives and the other making pre-holiday price cuts. And both moves bode well for green computing, in both the enterprise and consumer realms. Hitachi debuted a new line of 2.5-inch, enterprise-grade SSDs called Ultrastar SSD400S, which was developed in conjunction […]
Hybrid hard drives: This time it’s for real
…or so claims market research firm Objective Analysis, a research firm specializing in the semiconductor space. According to Objective Analysis‘ Jim Handy, the hybrid drive market will double every year and reach an impressive 600 million units by 2016. Ultimately, hybrid drives will become the dominant PC storage technology, displacing traditional hard drives. Hybrid drives […]
Green storage: Does the SSD tipping point draw near?
The price per gigabyte ratio keeps swinging in favor of improved solid-state drive (SSD) adoption, but not faster than prices keep tumbling on traditional hard drives. Apart from high-performance servers, storage arrays, a smattering of portables, and of course, PC enthusiasts that spend top dollar for the fastest components, SSDs are still having a tough […]
Intel: No 25nm SSDs until early 2011
Here’s some disappointing news in the green storage world. G3 solid-state drives featuring 25-nanometer (nm) flash chips developed by Intel and Micron under a joint venture called IM Flash Technologies, won’t ship until February 2011, according to this post at Tom’s Hardware. The company originally planned to ship the more energy efficient and cheaper-to-manufacture SSDs […]
Will new SSD standards help fuel wide-spread adoption?
Solid-state drives (SSDs) face two significant barriers to wide-scale adoption. Price and reliability. Prices continue to drop, thankfully, but longevity continues to be a concern. JEDEC to the rescue! You see, the flash memory in SSDs have a limited number of re-writes, and even with wear-leveling technology, eventually, the drive will give out. And while […]
