New Accolades for the RealSSD C300

Our RealSSD C300 has garnered some impressive industry accolades since its introduction back in December. Recently, the RealSSD C300 was awarded the Most Innovative Solid-State Storage Technology from UBM TechInsights, beating out both Intel and Toshiba’s drives. This award is great validation for Micron’s C300 design since TechInsights’ selection process includes a rigorous product tear-down and in-depth technical analysis. (Side note, in the coming weeks we’ll be featuring a post from an analyst at TechInsights that provides more information on the benchmarks that went into review of the drives they tested. Stay tuned!)

We also continue to see great feedback from reviewers  and press—we’re excited about some recent reviews and rankings from Tom’s Hardware and PC World.

The analysts at Tom’s Hardware noted that the C300 “remains the very best choice these days.” While Melissa Perenson at PC World states that the C300 offers “top-flight overall performance, and the best write performance we’ve seen.”

So my question is, do you have a C300? If not, you should. I have one in my MacBook Pro and the difference is night and day. Visit Crucial.com to order yours.

Updates from the Flash Memory Summit

The 2010 Flash Memory Summit has been a great show—lots of attendees and new innovations in flash (remember our post from yesterday?). For those of you who couldn’t make it, we pulled together a quick video summary of what’s going on in the Micron booth.

The Scoop on 25nm TLC NAND

We put Kevin Kilbuck, our director of strategic NAND marketing, in front of a whiteboard so we could get some high-level perspective on today’s Micron/Intel 25nm Triple Level Cell (TLC) NAND technology announcement.  Is this brief video he reviews MLC, SLC, and TLC technology and demonstrates what a 25nm TLC NAND offers for consumer storage.
Watch to learn more.

Setting A New Benchmark for Enterprise SSDs

Today we announced our RealSSD™ P300 drive for enterprise applications. Like the C300 before it, the P300 is an incredibly fast drive built to take advantage of the bandwidth available via the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. In fact, it outstrips the bandwidth of a typical SATA 3 Gb/s connection in both reads and writes.

But comparing against a drive designed for client applications doesn’t really make sense. After all, the P300 is built with our high-performance, high-endurance, ONFI 2.1 SLC NAND and was designed with features tailored for enterprise applications (ultra-high endurance, high write-cache-disabled performance, and industry leading steady-state performance, to name a few).

To give you a good idea of where this drive comes in against other enterprise SSDs, we enlisted the help of a third-party testing firm, Calypso Systems, an experienced testing company that’s working with standards bodies to define consistent testing and reporting methodology for all SSD manufacturers (something we’re eager to see happen).

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Is PCM the Next Big Memory Technology?

Future Memory: What Will Replace DRAM? That’s the title for the panel I was asked to sit on at last week’s MemCon 2010 event. It may seem premature to think about replacing DRAM now (we still see several generations of DRAM development ahead with a long-term home in computing systems), until you think about HW and SW design cycles. Hardware platforms for 2015, 2016, and even 2017 are being developed right now. So we need to pick the best option that’s working today and start thinking about how we’ll use it, especially if it’s not drop-in compatible.

You can watch my arguments for why PCM will be that next-generation technology in this video. It was a great discussion, one that I’m happy to continue online—please post your comments and questions below.

What’s the future for PCM?

With the recent Numonyx acquisition, we’ve heard lots of questions about Micron’s commitment to phase change memory (PCM). Ed Doller, Vice President and Chief Memory Systems Architect, addressed some of these questions in a recent keynote at the MemCon conference in San Jose. His talk focused on PCM’s future as a viable, next-generation, nonvolatile memory and its position in the memory hierarchy. We’ll provide a video of his full presentation later this week on our blog.

In the meantime, we wanted to share some in-depth insight on PCM and the reasons why Micron is supporting this technology. Greg Atwood, Micron senior fellow and resident PCM expert, has authored a paper on “The Evolution of Phase Change Memory,” which offers some interesting technical perspective on the product, its benefits, and future potential.

For a high-level description of PCM history and features, download the white paper.

You can also request PCM samples and read more about our current PCM product line at micron.com/pcm (PCM product details are listed under our “Navigate Numonyx” flyout as we work to integrate the two web sites). As always, feel free to comment if you have any questions.

25nm NAND Scores Award for Most Innovative Process Technology

In the battle for process technology leadership, Micron and Intel’s NAND Flash joint venture, IM Flash Technologies (IMFT), wins. Micron and Intel’s 25nm NAND was awarded Most Innovative Process Technology by UBM TechInsights, beating out Samsung’s 48nm 1Gb DDR3 and Hynix’ 32nm 2Gb MLC Flash, among other leading memory processes.

Here’s an excerpt from TechInsight’s press release announcing IMFT’s receipt of this award (the full press release can be viewed here.)

“The technical and manufacturing prowess of IMFT has been proven once again by the introduction of their 25nm 8GB 2-bit/cell MLC Flash. While most pundits have speculated that NAND has hit the wall, IMFT has continued to be successful with their aggressive path of NAND scaling.”

New DDR2 Designs to Support Next-Gen Tablet PCs

The tablet market is booming as evidenced by a slew of recent market reports. ABI Research forecasted that 11 million tablets will be sold by the end of 2010. And according to the Consumer Electronics Association, the number of tablet shipments in the U.S. is expected to double in 2011. Those are some pretty remarkable statistics given that tablets (in their current form, anyway) weren’t really available twelve months ago.

The tremendous growth in the tablet space can be attributed, in part, to the popularity of the tablet’s balance between portability and performance (as measured by the ability to browse the Internet and access rich multi-media content and applications). That balance hinges on a handful of key features—long battery life, compact size, and solid performance—that really depend on the components inside.

Today we announced a new 50nm 2Gb DDR2 component that helps enable these popular tablet design features and functionality. Its small form factor, high-density, and low power demands make it an ideal memory choice for this market. In fact, we’re already working with Intel to support their new Atom platform—codenamed Oak Trail—which was specifically designed for tablet and netbook PCs. This combination provides a strong solution for our joint OEM customers to design next-generation tablets to keep pace with growing market demand. And because we’re manufacturing on our advanced 50nm process, customers can be comfortable that we’re in a great position to support this component for years to come.

2Gb components save space, and use up to 22% less power than 1Gb

TechTalk: Embedded Strategy

Last week I was down in Micron’s Folsom office and interviewed Glen Hawk, Vice President of the Embedded Solutions Group to learn more about the recent acquisition of Numonyx and how it has helped shape a new era of growth for Micron in the Embedded market. Take a look at the video below.

Building an Ecosystem of RLDRAM® 3 Memory Partners, A Discussion with Xilinx

Micron recently announced its new RLDRAM 3 memory designed specifically for high bandwidth, networking applications. Micron is working with a broad ecosystem of partners including Xilinx, a leading FPGA provider, who is designing RLDRAM 3 memory into their next generation, Virtex 7 line of products.

We had an opportunity to sit down with Rina Raman, Xilinx’s senior director of applications and technical marketing, to talk about their products, collaboration with Micron, and the broader trends affecting the networking market. Here are some highlights from that discussion.

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