solidstate
Latest
Seagate warns it might sue SSD makers for patent infringement
It may already be dipping its own toes into the wild new world of solid state hard drives, but Seagate apparently isn't so keen on others ditching traditional hard drives, and it's now indicating that it might even sue 'em if SSD really starts to catch on. That word comes from none other than Seagate CEO Bill Watkins, who told Fortune recently that he's "convinced" that SSD makers like Samsung and Intel are violating some of Seagate's patents (as well as Western Digital's) that deal with the way a "storage device communicates with a computer." Somewhat curiously though, especially given Seagate's own plans, Watkins doesn't see SSD catching on in a big way anytime soon, saying that, "realistically, I just don't see the flash notebook sell." As Fortune points out, however, if prices keep dropping at the rate they have been, that "sell" could soon be a whole lot easier to make, which would also make that lawsuit quite a bit more likely.[Via Slashdot]
Solid-state, microchip-sized fan promises to cool laptops
While solid-state hard drives are still only just beginning to catch on, if a group of researchers from Thorrn Micro Technologies have their way, there could soon be another solid-state laptop component headed your way. That component in question is a microchip-sized fan, which boasts no moving parts but is apparently capable of keeping a laptop or other electronic devices cool. To do that, the fan reportedly makes use of the same technology found in household air purifiers, which results in a flow rate three times greater than typical small mechanical fan, not to mention lower power consumption and completely silent operation. Of course, the fan is still in the early testing stages, but the researchers see virtually no end to its potential, with them boasting that it's "one of the most significant advancements in electronics cooling since heat pipes," and adding that it could "change the cooling paradigm for mobile electronics."
Super Talent announces SSDs from 4GB to 128GB
The always confident in itself Super Talent has announced new batch of solid state SATA drives, coming in the usual 1.8-inch, 2.5-inch, and 3.5-inch form factors, and ranging in size from 4GB to 128GB. Broken down, the petite 1.8-inch drives will give you between 4GB and 32GB of storage, while going up to the 2.5-inch model will give you a bit of extra breathing room, ranging in size from 8GB to 64GB. The real expansiveness, however, comes when you step things up to the 3.5-inch drives, which start at 64GB and go all the way to 128GB, although that's slightly less impressive than A-DATA's SSD drives, which manage to cram those same 128 gigabytes into a 2.5-inch form factor. Unfortunately, there's no word on pricing just yet, but it looks like we should know soon enough, with the drives set to roll out sometime next month.[Via PC Launches]
Intel prepping line of NAND flash drives
Intel has already made its NAND affection pretty clear, but the company's now officially made things official, announcing that it's hopping into the crowded storage market with its own line of solid state offerings. Catchily-dubbed the Z-U130, the drives will come in 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB varieties to start with, boasting read and write speeds of 28MB per second and 20MB per second, respectively, with a standard USB 2.0/1.1 interface hooking things up. While you won't be able to buy one to do as you please with, Intel certainly doesn't seem to think the drives will be lacking for homes, foreseeing them being used in everything from laptops, desktops, and embedded applications to handheld systems and video game consoles, in each case promising to boost start-up times and reduce power consumption. According to Intel, the 1GB and 2GB drives are already in production, with the 4GB model set to follow in April and the 8GB not expected until December. While it's not getting specific on pricing just yet, Intel says the 4GB drive should be priced below comparable 1.8-inch drives by the second half of this year once production ramps up, with the price expected to come in line with 2.5-inch drives by 2008. Not so clear, unfortunately, is when we might see some drives larger than 8GB.
Texas Memory Systems' builds freakin' fast RamSan storage
Do you want a high-end disk to go with your ultra-fast InfiniBand setup? (We do.) Texas Memory Systems has just built some super-speedy solid state storage that can operate in pure InfiniBand (that's an extremely fast serial data connection) and mixed-InfiniBand environments, and due to its low latency and high speed, the company claims that its disk is the fastest storage in the world. The RamSan drive has seriously ludicrous access times -- usually in the neighborhood of 15 microseconds, 250 times faster than your garden-variety hard drive for mere mortals. Further, it's got up to 50,000 random I/Os per second per single-ported controller, which is more than 100 times quicker than regular off-the-shelf drives. We're not sure how much this will cost, but you can bet that it'll be a lot more than the under-a-dollar per gigabyte trend that we've been seeing lately, and will be used only by very particular businesses for very particular needs. Like ours, for, um, whatever the heck we want.[Via TechWorld; thanks, Evan]
