Micron marks entry into solid state drive market with 3 form factors
By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- EDN, November 29, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO – At an event here Wednesday morning, Micron Technology Inc. made it clear it wants a bigger piece of the NAND market with its entry into the solid-state drive (SSD) market.
Commenting on the company’s direction overall, Brian Shirley, VP of memory at Micron said the company is basically a machine for taking developing technologies, spends between $600 to $800 million a year on R&D to develop these technologies and transform them into solutions and applications that customers require.
Three or four years ago, Micron observed that NAND flash memory could be applied very easily to its target segments of servers, networking, consumer electronics and mobile and by virtue of its R&D work, along with the right fit with customer applications that line up well, allowed it to transform the Micron machine to offer NAND as well as DRAM. Ultimately, this realization led Micron to team with Intel on the $2.4 billion NAND flash venture, IM Flash Technologies in 2005.
The Boise, Idaho-based memory giant’s VP of memory system development Dean Klein detailed the company’s RealSSD family of SSD products that will be available in a range of form factors and densities and aimed at computing, enterprise server and networking applications.
Micron’s initial SSDs will vary in density from 1 gigabyte to 64 gigabytes and tout lower power, faster boot-up time, increased reliability, improved performance and reduced noise compared to hard disk drives (HDDs).
“If you think about the hierarchy of memory and storage in a computing environment, there is an inverse relationship between cost per bit and the growth of latency of that bit,” Klein said, and asserted that a 3 gigahertz processor today spends approximately 25 million clock cycles waiting for a piece of data to come back from the hard drive. “That’s 25 million clock cycles that it can’t process that data. This has happened because semiconductor technology has advanced dramatically. Back when the original hard drive came out, there wasn’t that big of a gap because processors where running at just a couple of megahertz. Now, the gap has grown significantly so that between semiconductor technology and mechanical technology, there is a huge gulf that exists. This is the gulf that NAND flash memory fills.”
Micron’s RealSSD solid-state drives will be offered in a 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factor for notebook and desktop computing applications in 32-gigabyte and 64-gigabyte densities.
Micron said it is now sampling both devices with mass production expected in Q1 2008.
The drives also contain a native-serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) II interface, to allow for improved performance. The products use a single-chip controller specifically targeted at the SSD application, and do not require a SATA bridge chip like most current solutions. The controller is optimized for four channel control of the NAND and supports advanced SATA features such as native command queuing allowing the drive to reorganize read and write commands. It also features a SATA hot plug allowing for the drive to be removed from the system without eliminating power.
These form factors demand less than 2 watts of power while active, with lower power idle and standby modes. The SSD is encased in a rugged, lightweight plastic, allowing for at least a 50-percent reduction in weight when compared to similar density HDDs, which is of particular importance for the ultra mobile PC market, Micron said.
Next, Micron is also offering its RealSSD product in an embedded USB form factor, ranging in density from 1 to 8 gigabytes of storage. This form factor is aimed at integration into a system through an embedded USB 2.0 interface as a cost-effective way to store and boot an entire operating system within an industrial PC or blade server system. It could also be used as a reserve for often accessed files. Micron is now sampling these products with mass production expected by the end of the year.
Third, Micron is also making available the RealSSD module –a customizable form factor that it says goes beyond a legacy HDD enclosure and for footprint reduction, ease of installation and weight savings. Micron’s RealSSD Module is a solid state storage device in a low profile module form factor that uses a SATA interface. These modules are meant to be 25 millimeters high, by 133.5 millimeters long and less than 4 millimeters thick to allow for increased system airflow, an important consideration for enterprise server applications.
While NAND pricing has taken a steep nosedive in Q4, industry analysts at Los Gatos, Calif.-based market research firm Objective Analysis believe solid-state drives could save the NAND flash market next year.
According to the firm, SSDs are capable of driving explosive NAND flash demand, and even a small penetration into notebook PCs could change today’s NAND oversupply into a price-firming shortage in 2008.
Since SSDs are comprised of huge blocks of NAND flash, the requirements resulting from even a modest demand for SSDs could push the 2008 worldwide NAND market past the tipping point to undersupply and profitability, the firm also said.
Finally, Micron’s NAND research partner Intel said earlier this year that it aims to replace hard disk drives with solid state NAND flash drives.
In an interview with EDN, Klein stressed that this announcement will not impact Micron’s relationship with the chip giant.
More solid-state storage resources at EDN.com:
Solid-state storage: feasible plan or flash in the pan?
Solid-state storage: Seemingly no end to capacity and cost improvement trends
Solid-state storage: Portending supply and demand
