solid-state drive

Intel flash dicey, Netbooks solid

Comments by CEO Paul Otellini and CFO Stacy Smith during Intel's 2008 first-quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday cast a pall over the chipmaker's flash business while boosting the outlook of Netbook chips.

First, a quick inventory of the comments made by Otellini and Smith about Intel's NAND flash memory business. Overall Intel gross margins were affected by collapsing prices in the NAND market. Intel is currently in a joint NAND chip manufacturing partnership with Micron Technology. NAND flash is used in large-capacity storage devices which are, in most cases, interchangeable with hard disk drives. Intel said earlier this year … Read more

STEC responds to Seagate patent lawsuit

STEC issued a formal response Tuesday to a patent infringement lawsuit filed by rival storage maker Seagate Technology and its subsidiaries.

STEC, which responded to the lawsuit Seagate filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, says it will "aggressively" defend itself against Seagate's four patent infringement claims and contends it was one of the first companies to develop, manufacture, and ship high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs), predating the patents cited in Seagate's complaint.

Seagate is alleging STEC violated four of its patents relating to its SSDs, memory-backup systems, and self-testing … Read more

Toshiba delays 128GB solid-state notebook

Toshiba has postponed the launch of the Dynabook SS RX1 notebook slated to ship with a 128GB solid-state drive, according to an announcement on Toshiba's Japanese Web site.

The Japanese-market Dynabook has been billed as the first notebook with a 128GB solid-state drive, or SSD.

The notebook was originally scheduled for general availability in April but will be delayed until June, according to Toshiba.

Toshiba cited parts delays. It's not clear whether the delays are SSD-related, but Toshiba postponed the launch of a notebook last year with a 64GB SSD due to flash memory chip "procurement" … Read more

Thin Intel Netbook to vie with MacBook Air?

During a keynote speech at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, an Intel executive brandished a Netbook that looked Air-thin. Will inexpensive Linux Netbooks be a poor man's MacBook Air?

Most of the photos to date of upcoming Netbooks are ho-hum designs, engineered to be inexpensive yet practical for users such as young schoolchildren. But some upcoming designs look intriguing--and extremely thin. (See close-up photo here--PC Watch.)

"This Netbook is running Linux...As you see, this doesn't mean an ugly design. It's a really nice-looking, stylish design," said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and … Read more

MacBook Air verdict: Seminal computer, five reasons

The Apple MacBook Air is a seminal computer. There I said it. I'm not going to pretend that my opinion is the final word (or anything close to it) but I will weigh in by saying it's a ground-breaking product. After using it for about two months, here's why.

(Note: I am not a Mac enthusiast. This is the first Apple I've ever owned.)

This is not a CNET review. The CNET review is here.

1. Very thin, very light but comparatively fast. That's no mean feat. Subnotebooks I've had in the past (e.… Read more

Intel tempts with preproduction solid-state drives

An Intel executive demonstrated upcoming solid-state drives at this week's Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, noting that the chipmaker is on track to deliver the drives later this year.

Meanwhile, an Intel fellow describes his "addiction" to solid-state drives in a blog posted Wednesday.

SSDs, if you don't already know, are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts. Hard-disk drives, in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, SSDs avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of … Read more

Thinnest SSD? Sort of

A solid-state drive maker is claiming its new 256GB drive is the world's thinnest.

While that may be true, it won't fit into the world's thinnest notebooks, which makes the claim less impressive. The SSD from Super Talent measures 12.5 millimeters thick. Sure that sounds teeny tiny, but that's more like pregnant-Nicole-Richie-thin compared to the 9.5-millimeter drives on the market, which are more like Nicole-Richie-after-Thanksgiving-dinner-thin: seems like a negligible difference in size, but has major implications. If you haven't noticed, some PC makers are battling over who can create the skinniest notebook. So … Read more

Dell refutes solid state drive failure claims

Dell is refuting a report by Avian Securities claiming return rates for solid state drives (SSDs) are high due to performance issues and failures.

"The recently published analyst report estimating a high return rate for Solid State Drive technology (SSD) in Dell products is unfounded and wholly inaccurate," Dell said Tuesday. The Avian Securities report had stated that "failure rates for SSDs are running a full order of magnitude higher than that of disk drives."

Dell disagrees. "Our global data on SSDs (to date) shows reliability rates that are equal to or better than HDD … Read more

Intel, Samsung comment on flash, SSD reliability

In a recent interview, an Intel manager in the NAND products group discussed the "physical limitations" of flash data recording and the challenges of making solid state drives (SSDs) more reliable. Samsung also addressed SSD durability.

The comments from Troy Winslow, marketing manager for the NAND Products Group at Intel, are particularly pertinent after a report was released Monday by Avi Cohen, head of research at Avian Securities, stating that the "return rates of current SLC based SSDs at Dell are running 20 percent to 30 percent due to a combination of performance issues and failures." … Read more