Items tagged with MLC
Crucial recently launched a new series of solid state drives that somewhat defy convention. While a number of other recent releases feature various flavors of TLC NAND, the Crucial BX300 series we’ll be showing you here actually features 3D MLC NAND flash memory. In the current SSD landscape, MLC NAND isn’t typically used for consumer-class SSDs any longer, especially in lower-priced offerings, but Crucial is bucking the trend this time around.The Crucial BX300 series also tops out at a relatively small 480GB capacity. For an affordable boot drive, that’s still plenty of storage for most people, but it’s a far cry from the 1TB – 2TB of other series of SATA SSDs.The full specs for the initial...
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Earlier this year, Samsung made major waves with the introduction of its 850 Pro SSD and the first commercial iteration of 3D stacked flash memory. Now, Micron is striking back with lower-geometry conventional NAND -- and new drive technology it claims will accelerate performance more effectively than other competing solutions. The new M600 drive family will launch at capacities from 128GB to 1TB across multiple form factors. mSATA, 2.5-inch conventional mobile drives, and the PCIe-capable M.2 platform are all supported with multiple drive sizes and form factors, as shown below. The M600 uses Micron's 16nm NAND, which will allow the drive to hit a better cost-per-GB than previous products. One...
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Despite being limited by the capabilities of the SATA interface, many solid state drive manufacturers continue to innovate and introduce new products that improve on their elder siblings. For example, Micron recently released its M550 series of drives, which was an evolution of the previously released M500 series, but built around newer, 20nm NAND flash memory and featuring enhanced/updated firmware. The M550 proved to be an excellent all around performer, outpacing many competing products in a number of tests, but again, operating within the limitations of its SATA interface. Today, Micron is at it again, though the drives we’ll be showing you here are targeted at a different audience....
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Despite being limited by the capabilities of the SATA interface, many solid state drive manufacturers continue to innovate and introduce new products that improve on previous generation products. For example, Micron recently released its M550 series of drives, which was an evolution of the previously released M500 series, but built around newer, 20nm NAND flash memory and featuring enhanced/updated firmware. The M550 proved to be an excellent all around performer, outpacing many competing products in a number of tests, but again, operating within the limitations of its SATA interface. Today, Micron is at it again, though the drives we’ll be showing you here are targeted at a different...
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The solid state storage market continues to be one of the hottest in the PC industry. Over the last few weeks alone, we’ve seen the release of the Intel SSD 730 and the OCZ Vertex 460 series of drives and there are still plenty more on the horizon, as many companies ready products with different capacities, form factors and connectivity options. Today is Crucial’s turn to make some noise. The long-time memory maker is launching a new line of solid state drives, dubbed the M550 series, targeted at performance-minded, but budget-conscious enthusiasts. The M550 family of drives will be offered in array of form factors, including mSATA and M.2 flavors, but we’ve got a couple of...
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The solid state storage market continues to be one of the hottest in the PC industry. Over the last few weeks alone, we’ve seen the release of the Intel SSD 730 and the OCZ Vertex 460 series of drives and there are still plenty more on the horizon, as many companies ready products with different capacities, form factors and connectivity options. Today is Crucial’s turn to make some noise. The long-time memory maker is launching a new line of solid state drives, dubbed the M550 series, targeted at performance-minded, but budget-conscious enthusiasts. The M550 family of drives will be offered in array of form factors, including mSATA and M.2 flavors, but we’ve got a...
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A leaked Intel roadmap for solid state technology suggests the company is pushing ahead with its plans to introduce new high-end drives based on cutting-edge NAND flash. It's significant for Intel to be adopting 20nm NAND in its highest-end data center products, because of the challenges smaller NAND nodes present in terms of data retention and reliability. Intel introduced 20nm NAND lower in the product stack over a year ago, but apparently has waited till now to bring 20nm to the highest end. Next year, Intel will debut three new drive families -- the SSD Pro 2500 Series (codenamed Temple Star), the DC P3500 Series (Pleasantdale) and the DC P3700 Series (Fultondale). The Temple Star family...
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OCZ is at the ready with a brand new line of solid state drives in its popular Vector family of products, targeted at performance-conscious PC enthusiasts. The new Vector 150 builds upon the success of the original Vector, which debuted last year at about this time, but offers better sustained performance and longer endurance, despite its use of 19nm NAND flash memory. We’ve got a couple of Vector 150 drives in-house, in 120GB and 240GB capacities, and have the full scoop laid out for you on the pages ahead. First up, take a look at the specification and projected performance of the new Vector 150 family of products and then we’ll dig in and get to some of the juicier details... OCZ...
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OCZ is at the ready with a brand new line of solid state drives in its popular Vector family of products, targeted at performance-conscious PC enthusiasts. The new Vector 150 builds upon the success of the original Vector, which debuted last year at about this time, but offers better sustained performance and longer endurance, despite its use of 19nm NAND flash memory. We’ve got a couple of Vector 150 drives in-house, in 120GB and 240GB capacities, and have the full scoop laid out for you on the pages ahead... OCZ Vector 150 Series Solid State Drives Tested...
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OCZ is at the ready with a brand new line of solid state drives in its popular Vector family of products, targeted at performance-conscious PC enthusiasts. The new Vector 150 builds upon the success of the original Vector, which debuted last year at about this time, but offers better sustained performance and longer endurance, despite its use of 19nm NAND flash memory. We’ve got a couple of Vector 150 drives in-house, in 120GB and 240GB capacities, and have the full scoop laid out for you on the pages ahead. First up, take a look at the specification and projected performance of the new Vector 150 family of products and then we’ll dig in and get to some of the juicier details... OCZ...
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A few years back we attended an Intel IDF event in San Francisco and among other disclosures, behind closed doors, the company was showing off a PCI Express-based SSD with current generation Intel NAND Flash and based on an array of SandForce controllers. As it turns out, that product never saw the light of day and was more of a demonstration and proof of concept vehicle for Intel than anything else. We've heard rumblings of Intel PCI Express SSD devices since then but nothing materialized much until very recently when Intel stepped out with a full-fledged product announcement of their SSD 910 family of Solid State Drives. To be honest, it was out of the blue, though we like...
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A couple of years back we attended an IDF event in San Francisco, and among other disclosures, behind closed doors the company was showing off a PCI Express-based SSD with current generation Intel NAND Flash and based on an array of SandForce controllers. As it turns out, that product never saw the light of day and was more of a demonstration and proof of concept vehicle for Intel than anything else. We've heard rumblings of Intel PCI Express SSD devices since then but nothing materialized until very recently when Intel stepped out with a full-fledged product announcement of their SSD 910 family of Solid State Drives. Of course, with the significant traction PCI Express SSDs...
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Intel has historically stuck with SATA-based solid state storage solutions, but today the company is taking a difference approach with its first PCI-Express solid state storage device. Like the SSD 710 family of products, the newly announced Intel SSD 910 is based on 25nm MLC NAND Flash. The two product families share a number of other low level features as well, but should offer very different performance levels. With the 710 Series, Intel focused on reliability and enterprise-level endurance and less on speed; the 910 PCI-Express SSD promises to deliver on both fronts... Intel Announces PCI Express SSD 910 Product Family...
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Intel has historically stuck with SATA-based solid state storage solutions, but today the company is taking a different approach with its first PCI-Express solid state storage device. Like the SSD 710 family of products, the newly announced Intel SSD 910 is based on 25nm MLC NAND Flash. The two product families share a number of other low level features as well, but should offer very different performance levels. With the 710 Series, Intel focused on reliability and enterprise-level endurance and less on speed; the 910 PCI-Express SSD promises to deliver on both fronts. The Intel SSD 910 is a triple-layer stack of NAND chips that fits into a single PCI-Express slot. The drive will be...
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GridIron Systems announced that it has hit a performance milestone with MLC flash technology: 1 million IOPS (inputs/outputs per second). The company is touting the breakthrough as a way for data centers to dramatically reduce hardware footprints and improve performance, as MLC flash is relatively inexpensive but increasingly has decent capacity and now, sizzling-fast performance. GridIron achieved 1 million IOPS with its Set-Ranking silicon, data analytics, and optimized handling of flash media. The company believes MLC flash to be the superior technology over the likes of SLC flash, and it’s planning on releasing a Big Data acceleration product based on the aforementioned technologies...
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NAND Flash and SSDs have become the darling of enthusiasts in recent years, thanks to a potent combination of improved read/write performance, virtually no latency, and lower power consumption compared to hard drives. A new report from the University of California San Diego, however, casts doubt on the long-term scalability of the format. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS)' most recent report backs up such statements. Flash's fundamental problem is that the same technological innovations that are improving performance, power consumption, and cutting costs are also biting into its durability. The problem is illustrated in the graph below. Note that the best results,...
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SandForce's SF-1200 and SF-2200 controllers have popularized SSD's in recent years by offering excellent performance even in lower cost drives. The company is building on that success now with a new, enterprise-oriented chip designed for cloud computing environments. The SF-2481 is designed to offer SLC levels of reliability while using cheaper MLC NAND flash. "As the SSD market matures, architectures are being developed to satisfy the specific needs of various market segments," said Jim Handy, SSD analyst for Objective Analysis. "SandForce is wisely targeting one of the most important SSD markets by tuning a variant of its high-performance SSD Processor to the needs of the Internet data center....
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Although they haven’t been breakout-hits with enthusiasts, Samsung’s solid state drives have been quite successful due to strong relationships with a number of OEMs, including Apple. With the upcoming release of their new SSD 830 Series solid state drives, however, Samsung seems poised to make some inroads with enthusiasts as well. We’ve had a Samsung SSD 830 Series drive humming along in the lab for a little while now and have been impressed by the drive’s behavior and performance. They won’t be available for a few more weeks and pricing isn’t finalized just yet, but we’ve got the rest of the story on tap for you in the pages ahead. As you’ll see,...
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It was back in December of last year that we took a look at the Samsung SSD 470 Series solid state drive. Unlike the vast majority of other SSDs on the market at the time that used third-party controllers from SandForce or Indilinx (among others), the Samsung SSD 470 featured nothing but Samsung-built components. The Samsung SSD 470 series was / is a SATA II drive with a Samsung controller, Samsung DRAM cache, and Samsung MLC NAND flash memory. When we tested the drive, we found it to be a fairly good performer, but it wasn’t quite on the level of the higher-end drives available at the time, like the SandForce-based OCZ Vertex 2, for example. Although they haven’t been breakout-hits...
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Texas Memory Systems, a high-end storage and memory provider, has just announced that they're moving into the enterprise MLC market with the first of a new series of eMLC products. The RamSan-810 is the new guy, and it leverages 33 years of design expertise in record-setting performance and reliability for the eMLC Flash storage market. It packs 10 Terabytes into a 1U enclosure with 4-GB/s bandwidth and 320K random IOPS. For read-heavy enterprise applications, the RamSan-810 offers Tier-0 performance and reliability at a Tier-1 price. The 810 also brings Tier-0 performance and reliability to Tier-1 read-heavy workloads, and is rated for a 10-year life with a 50-TB/day Write workload....
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Just a few short weeks after the release of its high-end WildFire-branded solid state drives, Patriot is at the ready with a new family of drives, dubbed Pyro. Like the WildFire, the similarly fire lovin’ Pyro is built around SandForce’s sought after SF-2200 series solid state storage processor. But with this newer series of drives, Patriot has paired the controller to less expensive asynchronous NAND flash memory. This pairing results in a much more affordable solid state drive that offers very similar performance to higher-end models with synchronous NAND flash memory in the vast majority of scenarios. There are exceptions, however... Patriot Pyro SATA III Solid State Drive Review...
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Just a few short weeks after the release of its high-end WildFire-branded solid state drives, Patriot is at the ready with a new family of drives, dubbed Pyro. Like the WildFire, the similarly fire lovin’ Pyro is built around SandForce’s sought after SF-2200 series solid state storage processor. But with this newer series of drives, Patriot has paired the controller to less expensive asynchronous NAND flash memory. This pairing results in a much more affordable solid state drive that offers very similar performance to higher-end models with synchronous NAND flash memory in the vast majority of scenarios. There are exceptions, however, which we’ll show you on the pages ahead....
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