Samsung and Sun to Improve Server-grade SSDs
	Samsung Electronics and Sun Microsystems announced yesterday that they had managed to develop a single-level-cell (SLC) NAND flash memory device that was to be used in Solid State Drives. The drives that will feature the new SLC memory are expected to offer much higher endurance levels, compared with any other flash memory device currently available on the market. According to the two manufactures, the new 8GB SLC device provi ... [read more >>]
	18 July 2008, 07:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Solid State Drive Manufacturers Promise Better SSDs
	Two days ago, we brought some news according to which Solid State Drives are not as power efficient as everybody thought they were. Even more, these flash-based drives consume more power than regular magnetic drives reducing laptop battery life. The news came from a ... [read more >>]
	04 July 2008, 05:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Seagate to Release SSD and 2-TB HDD in 2009
	Seagate, one of the leading manufacturers of storage solutions, is seriously considering getting more involved in the SSD market. The company plans to introduce its first SSD storage next year, but the products will not be meant for the consumer market. Along with the release of its first SSD drives, Seagate also plans to introduce a 2T-byte hard drive. SSD is becoming an industry standard, but the consumer market will still r ... [read more >>]
	30 May 2008, 07:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Intel and Micron Release 34-nm NAND device
	According to a recent press release, Intel Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. have released the world's first 34-nm, 32-gigabit multi-level cell chip. In doing so, they have succeeded in claiming the technical lead in the NAND flash memory market. Reportedly surpassing rivals Toshiba, Samsung and others, the Intel-Micron duo have introduced the first sub-40nm NAND flash device, with the release of the industry's first ... [read more >>]
	29 May 2008, 11:18GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Refurb iPhone Memory Recovered, Identity Exposed
	An Oregon State police detective was able to "recover email, photos, and other user data" from an "out-of-the-box refurbished iPhone," tuaw.com is reporting. While the procedure indeed requires forensic tools to carry out, there's no telling who has access to them and who hasn't. Therefore, it is being suggested that, with the new iPhone model on the way, it is better to be on the safe side. Jonat ... [read more >>]
	21 May 2008, 10:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

50% Price Drop in Order for iPods and iPhone
	Last year, the price for NAND flash memory dropped by as much as 60 percent, automatically plummeting the prices for devices that used them. As technology evolves adding price for different aspects, the same process is likely to be repeated this ... [read more >>]
	22 February 2008, 08:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Samsung's Massive Discounts May Make RAM Industry Collapse
	Samsung have been reported to sell their 256 Mbit (16 Mb x 16) DDR2 graphics memory chip stock at a dangerously low price of $0.50 per unit. This situation occurs as the company is willing to unload its graphics memory stock, but it has set a price that is lower even than the competitors' manufacturing costs. According to other competitors on the DRAM market, the production cost per chip varies around $1.40, and sells fo ... [read more >>]
	18 December 2007, 11:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Toshiba, to Join the 128 GB Solid-State Drive Startup
	Toshiba has just announced that they will start manufacturing solid-state drives for their notebook PCs based on flash memory cells. The company unveiled their 32GB, 64GB and 128GB versions to be produced in three different form factors (embedded module, 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch sizes). Solid-state drives are the alternative to nowadays' hard drives. They are the ideal storage solution especially in the mobile world, due t ... [read more >>]
	10 December 2007, 04:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

One Terabyte Drive, Small Enough to Fit Into Your Pocket
	A group of scientists at Arizona State University have managed to obtain a new and efficient type of solid-state storage memory that is alleged to be not only cheaper but also much more efficient than the current NAND pieces. This memory storage is powered by an undisclosed type of nanotechnology, which allows the creation of extremely vast storage spaces that are cheap and very small-sized. The new type of memory has been named programmab ... [read more >>]
	06 December 2007, 08:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Micron to Even DRAM Scores
	Micron Technology is somewhat misleading, at least in terms of name; their technology may be "micro", but the company is one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers worldwide. Among the four largest memory chip makers in the industry, the company provides customers with all the memory and storage areas, such as imaging, telecommunications or networking. Most of their products are sold on the Asia/Pacific market, whil ... [read more >>]
	30 November 2007, 03:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Computer Memory Price Declines Further
	This summer was a very bad time for the manufacturing companies that are active in the production of both computer memory chips and NAND flash based non-volatile memory solutions, as price tags fluctuated widely, with a general tendency of pointing downward. One of the most important computer and NAND memory chip making company, Micron Technology, announced a quarterly loss as the company was hit by a massive price decline for pr ... [read more >>]
	03 October 2007, 09:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Electronic Chips Selling in Droves
	Just like most industries, the computer and general electronics consumer ones are expected to post lower sales during the summer and high figures in the winter period when the Christmas shopping spree acts as a global catalyst increasing sales across the chart. This time, something went a little different as various computer and general electronics manufacturing companies posted record sales in August while stating that they have even high ... [read more >>]
	02 October 2007, 11:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Hynix and Ovonyx Joining Forces
	Hynix Semiconductor just announced that it has signed an agreement with a number of rival companies, including Ovonyx, in order to develop a new breed of non-volatile flash memory modules that are supposed to bring greater data storage densities as well as faster access to information. The new breed of flash memory is called phase change memory and it may be the next big thing for NAND storage solutions manufacturing companies. In a joi ... [read more >>]
	02 October 2007, 09:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Toshiba and SanDisk Arguing About Simple Matters
	Toshiba and SanDisk formed a partnership over eight years ago in an attempt to stay competitive on the fast growing and very volatile flash memory market. As the global demand for flash based memory solutions is increasing it put strains over the supply chain and flash manufacturers are trying to meet the demand by increasing the production. As a given production plant can only make some flash chips, most manufacturers are looking at the p ... [read more >>]
	08 September 2007, 07:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Hynix Storms The NAND Industry
	Nowadays NAND based memory chips are found in almost every electronic device from music players to data storage solutions and computers, so the entire NAND memory manufacturing industry is experiencing another booming expansion after a few months of shipments decline and uncertainty. The currently adopted NAND fabrication process calls for a single memory chip to be only 1.4mm thick so manufacturing companies are investing a lot into the r ... [read more >>]
	07 September 2007, 05:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Keeping Memory Prices Stable
	After months and months of oscillating up and down, computer memory markets are finally getting more stable. Currently, DRAM memory transactions are rising in very small increments in China where computer system manufacturers and vendors are trying to capitalize of the soon to come Olympic Games. After a period of price rising, DRAM's price tag remained mostly flat for the bigger part of the month according to the new sit ... [read more >>]
	24 August 2007, 06:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Intel Announces 65nm NOR Flash
	As embedded systems are gaining more and more popularity, a certain degree of performance increase is expected from them. As the main quality of this systems over desktop and mobile computer solution is their lower overall costs and low power consumption, there are only a few things that can be done in order to increase their global performance. One of these things is to create a better memory standard, better both in terms of speed and st ... [read more >>]
	22 August 2007, 08:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

NAND Shortages Coming
	After the power outage that left six of the NAND chip production lines from Samsung in shambles, financial and market analysts predicted that the entire flash memory market will suffer from a shortage of spare chips during this time period. As the Korean hardware manufacturing company quickly restored production and announced that some of the chips from the affected production lines can be salvaged, NAND users began to gain confidence in t ... [read more >>]
	17 August 2007, 08:15GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Samsung Benefits from The NAND Market Conditions
	After a long decline and recovery period, the NAND flash memory is finally beginning to get better and offer strong opportunities for memory manufacturers and vendors like Samsung Electronics. The Korean company used the favorable market conditions to increase its lead over its competitors on the NAND chips market, especially Toshiba. With a NAND market share fat approaching 50 percent, the electronics giant is by far the most important ma ... [read more >>]
	16 August 2007, 08:29GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Intel - STMicro Partnership
	Intel and STMicroelectronics decided sometime ago to enter a partnership with the stated intention of developing, manufacturing and selling flash memory chips. As Intel already faced monopoly charges in Europe, the two companies waited for the European Commission's approval before merging their flash memory units. "The Commission found that strong competitors are present for each of these products and customers would ... [read more >>]
	14 August 2007, 08:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Flash Memory Replacement
	As the flash memory chips are very popular these days, hardware manufacturers seek new ways to increase their data transferring performance and capacity. The problem is that while traditional NAND based flash memory chips are pretty good in terms of both performance and storage capacity, current manufacturing technologies can't push them much further. While a number of possible alternative technologies already exist, few ... [read more >>]
	10 August 2007, 02:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Beware of Memory Prices
	For a while now computer memory prices are going up, one little step at a time, after a long period of free falling that created numerous financial problems among most manufacturers. Now, DRAM and NAND prices are expected to rise through the rest of August, even more so after the power outage that hit the Korean production facility of Samsung Electronics last week. Since the event that caused the power outage, both NAND and DR ... [read more >>]
	09 August 2007, 08:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Flash Memory Can't Go Any Further
	Flash memory chips are very popular nowadays as they can be found in almost all electronic devices that are making our lives easier. From the portable music and media players, flash based data sticks, to the solid state drives, NAND chips are expanding their reach. They become very popular due to low overall costs and because they provide users with advantages like resistance, good read and write performance and small form factor. NAND ... [read more >>]
	09 August 2007, 06:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Samsung Speeds Up Production
	Samsung Electronics announced that it will speed up production in order to meet its monthly targets, after the last week’s incident led to the complete halt of the NAND memory chip production. The power outage forced Samsung to shut down six of its NAND production lines and discard most of the flash memory chips that were in different stages of production on those lines. This causes a massive ripple effect on the entire NAND market, causin ... [read more >>]
	07 August 2007, 07:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Samsung Restored NAND Production
	After a power outage at a NAND chip production plant in South Korea that left Samsung with almost no flash production capabilities and the entire industry that depends on NAND chips in the air, the memory manufacturer reports that all lines are now fully operational. The incident at the Kiheung production plant, near Seoul, had drastic repercussions in all the NAND chip using industry as several of Samsung's competitors found themselv ... [read more >>]
	06 August 2007, 05:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

SanDisk and Micron Ride the Wave
	SanDisk Corp and Micron Technology received an unexpected boost of their combined market share of flash memory chips after the main NAND memory chips producer Samsung Electronics had to stop some of its production of flash memory chips after the facility near Seoul was hit by a power outage, according to ... [read more >>]
	04 August 2007, 04:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Replacement for Flash Memory?
	Flash memory is found nowadays in a lot of electronic consumer devices like cell phones and memory sticks, but the flash memory could advance even further according to a company called Nanochip. This small company recently received VC funds from Intel, according to the news site News.com ... [read more >>]
	02 August 2007, 05:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Silicon Motion Technology's Record Shipments
	Silicon Motion Technology is an integrated circuits design and engineering company that just announced that its sales for the second quarter of the year 2007 reached the mark of $44.1 million which represents an increase of 111 percent from the same period during the last year and a 23 percent increase over the first quarter of 2007. Silicon Motion's shipments increased too, totaling a number of 78.5 million units, the highest number ... [read more >>]
	31 July 2007, 09:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

NAND Memories Are Here to Stay
	Flash based memory chips are becoming more and more popular as their price drops and their storage capacity and relative performance climbs. Nowadays, flash memories can be found in many computer hardware parts (flash memory sticks, solid state drives – SSDs) and in cell phones and just any kind of mobile gadget that needs some sort of storage capacity. As NAND flash memory chips are still pretty expensive and their storage capacity does n ... [read more >>]
	31 July 2007, 03:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

One More Player on a Crowded Field
	Powertech Technology Inc is a company that focused mostly on integrated circuits for memory packaging and while its business shows signs of steady growth, the company announced that it will start investments in order to expand to logic IC packaging. Mass production is expected to start the following year, according to an investors conference held on the 26th of July cited by the news site Digitimes. The consequences of the vo ... [read more >>]
	27 July 2007, 09:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

DRAM And NAND Memories Getting Expensive
	After a long descent that left most memory manufacturers wondering if they should adopt a new line of work, the price for both DRAM computer memory and NAND flash chips rises slowly but steady. According to figures posted by DRAMeXchange and cited by the Web based news site Digitimes, after seeing the price of a 512MB of DRAM module jumping suddenly with 20 percent in the first half of July, memory producers generally expect an u ... [read more >>]
	26 July 2007, 11:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Brightly Colored USB Flash Drives
	USB flash drives are becoming a more popular short term storage solution by the day, mainly because they are versatile, ultra portable and shock, water and dust resistant. As their popularity grows, so does the offering from several hardware manufacturers, and the product offering is very diverse, both in terms of storage capacity, read and write speeds, shape and size, price, and in this particular case, scent. The USB flash dis ... [read more >>]
	26 July 2007, 10:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

SanDisk Has Some Problems
	SanDisk Corporation is one of the world’s largest supplier and producer of flash storage cards. The company announced today its results for the second year's quarter that ended on the first of July. The end results are not very good as officials from SanDisk declared that, excluding the impact of acquisition related expenses, stock compensation and related taxes, the total income during the second quarter was $72 million which is much ... [read more >>]
	20 July 2007, 09:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Flash Chips Are Getting Scarcer
	Two of the largest Flash manufacturers in the world, Samsung and Hynix, are having trouble producing enough NAND chips to meet demand, says vnunet.com. The Taiwan based Internet news outlet, Digitimes, cited sources from within the two major companies, and the conclusion is that the two Korean manufacturers are having trouble fulfilling already placed ... [read more >>]
	12 July 2007, 09:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A rocket BOOSTER for your computer
	In a world full of Windows-based computers, Vista is the newest hottie. Many hardware manufacturers have produced compatible hardware for Windows Vista’s ReadyBoost, one of them being OCZ Technology which has sprung to outer space with their VBoost line of Flash drives. ReadyBoost “is very practical” with flash memories, the so-called pendrives and uses them to store temporary files. The performance of applications is greatly ... [read more >>]
	01 May 2007, 06:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Samsung Switches to 51nm NAND Flash Chips
	Semiconductor manufacturer Samsung Electronics has begun mass production for 16 gigabit (Gb) NAND flash. These modules are fabricated using the 51 nanometers (nm) process node and are expected to be produced with 60 percent more efficiency than the former 60nm manufacturing process. These 16 gigabit memory modules are going to come in quite handy as they have multi-level cells (MLC) and are the building material for 16GB memor ... [read more >>]
	01 May 2007, 03:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Samsung to Roll Out 16Gb NAND Flash
	Samsung Electronics has announced that it has become the first company to begin the mass production of 16Gb NAND flash, which is the highest capacity to be available on the market. According to the company, it will be manufacturing the devices in 51 nanometers, the finest process technology to be used in memory mass production up to date. The 51nm NAND flash chips can be produced with up to 60 percent more efficiency than ... [read more >>]
	30 April 2007, 02:45GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The IDE Connector Is Not Dead, Yet
	In a strange twist of events, apparently old-school hardware geeks aren't the only ones who still have a thing for IDE drives. As much as the industry is trying to wipe them out completely, by limiting the number of IDE channels that are available on the new hype, cool, trendy motherboards, the little buggers still have some kick left in them and are fighting back. The same thing happened with the floppy disk drive, it was the first s ... [read more >>]
	05 April 2007, 06:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

ProMOS Expands Manufacturing Facilities
	One of the well-known semiconductor chips manufacturers in Taiwan, ProMOS Technologies has had a long experience with memory modules and has sold memory chips to more than a dozen manufacturers. Now it has gone through a rough spot in the second quarter of 2007, but still has announced that it will continue its five year expansion plan which includes building six 12-inch fabs. According to ML Chen, the chairman of ProMOS, DRAM ... [read more >>]
	29 March 2007, 10:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The 64GB Solid State Disk
	Even though the SSD market is just at the beginning of the road, some of the manufacturing companies have already taken a great deal of interest into this technology, and assume that in the near future all of the desktop and mobile computers will feature an SSD. Who am I to argue on how the market is going to evolve, and how each individual manufacturer will deal with this technology? After all, much was said when Serial ATA came ... [read more >>]
	27 March 2007, 09:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sandisk Has a New 32GB, 2.5-inch Flash Drive
	As one of the biggest flash memory manufacturers in the world, Sandisk Corporation has announced the introduction of a new product next to the many other flash products they produced. This would be a new 32GB SSD with a Serial ATA interface especially designed for usage on notebooks. It features a 2.5-inch form factor, so that it would fit nicely in existing notebooks, being a very suitable replacement for a hard drive. Sandis ... [read more >>]
	14 March 2007, 05:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Intel Takes a Byte Out of Memory
	Intel announced its presence on yet another side of the computer industry through the introduction of a new line of products based on NAND flash memory. The first of this new species is the Z-U130 Value Solid State Drive. As part of ongoing trend in the industry, Intel's Solid State Drive (SSD) follows companies like A-DATA and Sandisk onto this growing market with its product. SSDs have become a major attraction for the ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2007, 05:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Samsung Ships Hybrid HDDs to OEM Customers
	Samsung is already shipping their first hybrid hard drives. The MH80 series is now making its way to Samsung's "select OEM customers" and will be available at retailers near you shortly. The hybrid HDDs were announced a couple of months ago, now arriving about one month later than originally planned. It was supposed to be launched at the same time with Windows Vista, but Samsung managed to keep its general promises to ma ... [read more >>]
	08 March 2007, 10:24GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

NANDs for Everybody!
	According to a report from American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu, Apple is looking to expand the use of NAND flash memories to their iPod and Mac lines. He also said in this report on Wednesday that Apple is launching a new subnotebook that will also use the much appreciated NAND flash memory, instead of the regular hard disk drive. This is somewhat on the border of Rumorsville. We've all heard sources speaking of ... [read more >>]
	08 March 2007, 10:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

iPhone Camera Sensors Will Be Produced by Micron
	Last week, I spoke about the manufacturers that will put together the iPhone, hopefully be June, as announced. I was saying then the names that are likely to win the manufacturers competition are Hon Hai for assembling, Samsung for its NAND memory, Marvell for supplying the iPhone's 802.11 wireless connectivity, Catcher Technology for the iPhone casing, Micron for its camera, CSR for Bluetooth chip-sets, Intel (or Japanese R ... [read more >>]
	05 March 2007, 11:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia