Why Copper is Critical to the Best DRAM Technology

Yesterday we announced our 42nm DRAM technology with a 2Gb DDR3 device. If you just skimmed the headlines, you could have missed an important point—our DRAM is built with copper for critical metallization layers (not aluminum, like some others are). Now, that might be something you’re tempted to shrug off, “Isn’t DRAM just built to standardized specs? Does the metallization type really matter?” It absolutely does as we move below 50nm process technology and DRAM product specifications become more demanding and complex.
Read more

RealSSD C300—The Mac Experience

I haven’t used a Macintosh that didn’t have an internal hard drive since I played around with a Macintosh Plus in 1986.  Now the 13″ MacBook Pro that I use here at the office is missing one … and I couldn’t be happier.
Read more

Just How Small is 25nm?

Technology moves fast. It was only 14 months ago that we went into production with our world-leading 34nm process NAND, and we’ve already moved on to 25nm NAND. In this brief whiteboard video, I explain just how small 25nm is (3,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair) and why our ongoing quest to shrink process technology is vital to the future of storage.

World’s Most Advanced Semi Process

Today, Micron and Intel announced 25nm NAND, the smallest, most advanced semiconductor process technology in the world. This achievement allows us to double the capacity of our highest-density MLC device, enabling up to 64GB in a single package and paving the way for big developments in storage, computing, and consumer electronics.

The video below features highlights from a presentation given by Intel and Micron executives at our 25nm announcement. Learn what our aggressive scaling strategy means for the future of storage and the next generations of NAND.

RealSSD Wins at Storage Visions

RealSSD C300 just took home the award for best Home Consumer Electronics Storage Product at the Storage Visions conference in Las Vegas—beating out some heavy competition.

The judges noted several features of the RealSSD C300 including its SATA 6Gb/s interface, an industry-first, that doubles the bandwidth available to the SDD (when compared to the standard SATA 3Gb/s interface).

And of course, it was recognized for its unmatched speed and performance. As the benchmarking videos below demonstrate, the RealSSD C300 read speeds make it the fastest client SSD out there.

The C300 RealSSD™ Drive—Available Soon at Crucial.com

We created quite a buzz when we announced the C300 RealSSD drive last month—the world’s fastest client SSD. Following the announcement, many of you were eager to know: Where can I buy it? How soon will they be shipping?

Today, we have answers to those questions.

I’m happy to announce that Lexar Media will be carrying the C300 at www.crucial.com. Many of you already know Crucial as a reliable retailer of top-quality performance memory upgrades, so the RealSSD drive is a perfect addition to their high-caliber line of products. The details:
Where: www.crucial.com
Models: 2.5”, 128GB and 256GB
Availability: February

If you missed our benchmark videos, scroll through the blog history to see what all the buzz was about. Or just wait a few weeks for the first set of independent reviews—we’re confident that the C300 RealSSD drive will solidly establish itself as the SSD all others are compared to.

Top 10 Product Innovations of 2009

Let’s commemorate the close of the year with … a list!

OK, to be honest, ending the year with a Top 10 List is not very, um, well, innovative. But it’s what’s on our list that’s innovative. And the year 2009 for Micron and Lexar Media can be summarized like this: Bigger. Faster. Better.

So, that’s our Top 10 list for 2009, innovatively reduced to three memorable points.

Still not ready to let go of tradition? Then, on with the Micron and Lexar Top 10 Innovations of 2009 countdown:

Read more

AS Benchmarks for RealSSD C300

We received a couple requests to show the AS benchmark results for the new drive. So we asked Todd to provide a couple screen shots of the results–and here they are.

AS SSD Benchmark: 3G Empty

AS SSD Benchmark: 6G Empty

You asked for it: RealSSD C300 random IOPs

A lot of people are excited about the C300 demos we posted last week, and a number of you asked to see the random read/write IOPs numbers for the new drives. So I’ve asked one of our Apps guys, Todd, to shoot a video of the C300 running through the Iometer test. These are 4K transfers on 100% random read/write tests  with a queue depth of 32.

We’re using the same Intel Core2Duo system, equipped with our 256GB RealSSD C300 drive and a 6 Gb/s SATA host bus adapter. We also test it at SATA 3 Gb/s to show how it will perform in those systems. I think you’re going to like the results.

RealSSD C300 goes head-to-head with a hard drive in everyday tasks

By now you’ve seen our SSD vs SSD benchmarks, but to show you how that speed translates to the real world, we pitted our 256GB C300 SSD against a standard issue 7200rpm HDD in identical systems. We then tackled a handful of everyday tasks—boot up, file copy, and opening large files in Adobe® Photoshop®.

System Details
MoBo: Intel® X48 chipset based
Processor: Intel Core2Duo E8500
Memory: Micron® 2GB DDR3 1066 (PC3-8500)
OS: Windows® 7 Pro 64-b