Micron, New Actor in Flash Drives

Charting new directions and opportunities for NAND-based storage,
Micron Technology, Inc., entered the growing solid state drive
(SSD) market by announcing its RealSSD family of products. Offered in a
range of form factors and densities, Micron’s solid state drives are
designed for computing, enterprise server and networking applications.

Moving the NAND-based storage architecture forward, the first of
Micron’s solid state drives vary in density from 1 gigabyte (GB) to 64
GBs. Aside from the obvious benefits of SSDs over hard disk drives
(HDDs) – lower power, faster boot-up time, increased reliability,
improved performance and reduced noise – the products that Micron is
announcing today usher in a new set of application-specific features
and capabilities. The devices in this new family include:

• RealSSD Solid State Drives – Micron’s 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch
  RealSSD solid state drives for notebook and desktop computing
  applications will be offered in 32-gigabyte (GB) and 64-gigabyte
  densities. Micron is now sampling both devices with mass production
  expected in the first quarter of 2008. Micron’s RealSSD solid state
  drives feature: 
  • A native-SATA (Serial Advanced
    Technology Attachment) II interface, allowing 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.
  • Less than 2 watts of
    power while active, with dramatically lower power idle and standby
    modes. In addition, without platters to spin up, worst-case power
    consumption is greatly reduced.
  • A rugged, lightweight
    plastic casing, 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.
• RealSSD
  Embedded USB – Micron’s RealSSD Embedded USB products range in density
  from 1 to 8 GBs of storage and are designed to be integrated into a
  system through an embedded USB 2.0 interface. This provides a
  cost-effective solution to store and boot an entire operating system
  within an industrial PC or blade server system or it could be used as a
  reserve for often accessed files. Micron is now sampling these products
  with mass production expected by the end of 2007.
• RealSSD
  Module – Micron is changing storage perceptions, providing customers
  with a customizable form factor that goes beyond a legacy HDD enclosure
  and provides significant footprint reduction, ease of installation and
  weight savings. Micron’s RealSSD Module is essentially a solid state
  storage device in a low profile module form factor. Using a commonly
  available SATA interface, these modules are designed to be 25
  millimeters high, by 133.5 mm long and less than 4 mm thick, allowing
  for increased system airflow, a key value proposition for enterprise
  server applications.

“SSDs are becoming the new storage medium, fundamentally altering the
way data is stored,” said Dean Klein, Micron vice president of memory
system development. “The storage market is ripe for innovation, and
it’s an opportunity Micron is embracing given our expertise in NAND. We
know how to manage NAND flash to work best with controllers, allowing
us to develop an optimized SSD solution for every application.” 

Micron Technology, Inc.