Western Digital (WD) announced their first SSD drive for the desktop/laptop market space today.  Their drive offers the typical256, 128, and 64GB capacity points over a SATA interface.  Performance looks ok at 5K random read or write IO/s with sustained transfers at 250 and 140MB/s for read and write respectively.  But what caught my eye [...]

Intel-Micron Flash Technologies just issued another increase in NAND density. This one’s manages to put 8GB on a single chip with MLC(2) technology in a 167mm square package or roughly a half inch per side. You may recall that Intel-Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT) is a joint venture between Intel and Micron to develop NAND technology [...]

Today Toshiba announced a new series of SSD drives based on their 32NM MLC NAND technology. The new technology is interesting but what caught my eye was another part of their website, i.e., their SSD FAQs. We have talked about MLC NAND technology before and have discussed its inherent reliability limitations, but this is the [...]

I haven’t seen much of a specification on STEC’s new enterprise MLC SSD but it should be interesting.  So far everything I have seen seems to indicate that it’s a pure MLC drive with no SLC NAND.  This is difficult for me to believe but could easily be cleared up by STEC or their specifications. [...]

Toshiba has recently announced a new series of SSD’s based on MLC NAND (Yahoo Biz story). This is only the latest in a series of MLC SSDs which Toshiba has released. Historically, MLC (multi-level cell) NAND has supported higher capacity but has been slower and less reliable than SLC (single-level cell) NAND. The capacity points [...]