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Samsung starts mass-producing 4x faster mobile flash memory, kickstarts our phones and tablets
Samsung isn't content to leave fast NAND flash memory to traditional solid-state drives. Its Pro Class 1500 promises a big jolt to the performance of frequently pokey smartphone and tablet storage. By how much? That name is a clue -- it reaches 1,500 IOPS (inputs/outputs per second) when writing data, which along with 3,500 IOPS data reads is about four times faster than any previous embedded flash chip Samsung has tested. In the real world, that leads to as much as 140MB/s when reading data and 50MB/s for writes. The speed comes after Samsung has thrown virtually every trick in the book at its new chips, including a dense 20-nanometer manufacturing process, quick toggle DDR 2.0 memory with its own controller and a new JEDEC memory standard with 200MB/s of bandwidth to spare. Samsung hasn't named customers for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB parts that are rolling out of the factories, although we'd do well to remember that a flourishing phone business doesn't guarantee that the only major customer is Samsung itself: even in the face of legal challenges, Samsung still has at least one noteworthy client that tends to snap up much of its flash supply.
SanDisk outs faster U100 and i100 SSDs for ultra-portables and tablets, we go hands-on
SanDisk has been pumping out press releases all day thanks to Computex-mania, so we shuffled past its stall to see what all the fuss is about. The biggest news is the U100 range of tiny SSDs for ultraportables, which crank data in and out at twice the speed of SanDisk's previous generation P4 drives. We're talking 450MB/s reads and 340MB/s writes thanks to the latest SATA III interface, plus a max capacity of 256GB -- specs which have already enticed ASUS to use the U100 in its lightweight UX-series notebooks. Mass production is expected in Q3 of this year. Specs table and triple-shot of PR coming up after the break, plus a gallery showing size comparisons of the U100 SSD in its glorious mSATA and Mini mSATA varieties, stacked up against some common objects like a 2.5-inch SSD drive, an HP Veer, and a vaguely goth bracelet. Meanwhile, SanDisk hasn't forgotten about our desperate need for faster tablets. The company has doubled the speed of its existing iNAND embedded flash modules, and is also releasing a brand new SATA III drive, the i100, specifically for this form factor. The i100 maxes out at 128GB and achieves a significantly slower write speed (160MB/s) than the U100, but it has same impressive read speed (450MB/s) -- which should mean nippier tablets in the not-too-distant future. %Gallery-124851%
Toshiba cooks up 128GB NAND flash for next-gen phones and PMPs
Leave it to Toshiba to make even the latest smartphones feel somewhat undernourished. Quadrupling the current high-end standard of 32GB of embedded memory, the Japanese company has announced an all-new 128GB slab of storage, built on a 32nm production process. It's somehow managed to fit sixteen 8GB NAND chips, plus their controller, inside a 1.4mm tall structure, and samples are about to exit the factory doors this September. A 64GB variant will also be making an appearance, with both scheduled to enter mass production sometime during the fourth quarter. Should go pretty nicely with that 2GHz beastphone Moto is planning, don't you think?
SanDisk's 64GB iNAND embedded flash adds memory girth to handhelds
Isn't it amazing how flash memory has grown over the years? Not too dissimilar from your ego, right? Just two years ago SanDisk was only offering 16GB modules in the high end of its iNAND embedded flash range, and today the same company presented a new MLC NAND chip with four times the capacity. The trick in this 64GB 32nm silicon gem is the same-old X3 flash technology (along with undisclosed, but evidently significant, "innovations in flash management"), which allows each cell to store three bits. Go on, OEMs -- just shove one of these chips into our next phone and we'll promise to leave you alone until next February. Wait, did we say "promise?" Try... we meant try.
