Tag Archives: NAND

News, Politics, Government

The Flashification of Hard Drive Companies

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By Tom Coughlin, Contributor Micron just announced that it is sampling 16 nm NAND flash—pushing the envelope on possible NAND flash device densities and thus storage capacity.  At the same time, Seagate and Western Digital have made major moves in solid state drive introductions as well as acquisition of flash memory and flash software companies.  Flash memory capacity increases are continuing while HDD areal density increases have been almost non-existent for almost 2 years.  What are the implications for the future of HDDs? …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Computers

Toshiba to sell world's fastest SD cards this year

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Toshiba will soon launch the world’s fastest SD cards, which will offer write speeds of up to 240MB/s.

The Japanese electronics giant said Tuesday that its new Exceria Pro memory card will be aimed at power users such as photographers and have the speed to allow high-resolution photos to be snapped and saved continuously. The cards will have read speeds of up to 260MB/s and will come in 16GB and 32GB sizes.

The company aims to have the cards on the market from October. It didn’t release prices, but Japanese media reports said the 64GB version will cost around ¥25,000 (US$250) domestically, with the smaller-sized card priced at around ¥15,000.

Flash storage makers like Toshiba are eager to differentiate themselves from the competition as NAND flash prices fall steadily over time. SD flash cards with 64GB of memory that support slower standards now sell for as little as ¥3,500 online.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

News, Politics, Government

SanDisk Can Flash To $60 On These Drivers

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By Trefis Team, Contributor

SanDisk has seen its shares jump over 30% this year and is currently hovering near its all-time high, in tandem with other storage companies and the S&P Index. The huge move in the company’s stock can be attributed to continued demand for flash storage products, particularly flash memory cards and solid state drives. Further, the average selling prices per gigabyte for flash memory seem to be stabilizing after seeing a steep decline due to excess NAND supply in the market.

From: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/04/15/sandisk-can-keep-running-to-60-on-these-drivers/

Computers

Adoption of DDR4 memory facing delays

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The memory market is feeling the effects of a fall in PC shipments with the subsequent stabilization of DRAM prices, which industry observers say will delay the wide adoption of the upcoming DRAM called DDR4.

The latest PCs and servers come with DDR3 SDRAM and mobile devices have just started getting a type of low-power memory called LPDDR3 (low-power DDR3). DDR4 is the successor to DDR3, and consumes 20 percent to 40 percent less power while offering double the throughput of its predecessor.

But with memory prices stabilizing after years of double-digit drops, analysts said that DDR3 DRAM will likely have a longer-than-expected life, which could delay the wide adoption of DDR4 in computers. DRAM prices have stabilized as demand for DDR3 has exceeded supply, and the number of memory makers has also dwindled. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron dominate the DRAM market, while other memory makers have either been acquired or are focusing on the more profitable NAND flash business.

The volume shipments of PCs and servers are not enough to justify an early switch to DDR4, analysts said. Also, a lot of focus is now on the fast-growing tablet and smartphone markets, so manufacturers are shifting capacity to LPDDR3 and other forms of mobile memory and storage.

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From: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2034175/adoption-of-ddr4-memory-facing-delays.html#tk.rss_all

News, Politics, Government

Lazard Initiates Apple with a Buy Rating and $540 Target

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By Chuck Jones, Contributor Lazard’s analyst Ed Parker initiated coverage of Apple with a Buy rating, $540 price target and a view that it is a “storage” company due to incenting customers to buy NAND flash memory at 80%-90% incremental margins.  Lazard’s thesis is that Apple’s business model has more in common with EMC and NetApp than RIM/BlackBerry and Nokia since there is a better user experience by having content on a mobile device and therefore needing more memory. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Toshiba's Storage Business Strategy

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

Filed under:


Toshiba’s Storage Business Strategy

Total Storage Innovation

TOKYO–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Toshiba (TOKYO:6502):

With the world’s population expected to exceed nine billion by mid-century, the issue of how to make the most of limited energy resources has risen to the top of the global agenda. There is growing recognition that the smart community is an effective way of tackling this pressing issue. Smart communities are environmentally friendly, economic, and achieve stable electricity supply by striking a balance between electricity demand that changes with on the season and the time of day and electricity supply, including power generation using renewables.

At the heart of every smart community will be powerful IT infrastructure and mechatronics that estimates electricity demand, the amount of electricity generated, etc. by analyzing the big data gathered from smart meters, surveillance cameras, medical sensor terminals, social networking services (SNS), and so on. IT infrastructure consisting of servers and storage systems connected over the Internet sustains cloud computing and will continue to grow as an element of large-scale, efficient and advanced social infrastructure.

Total Storage Innovation is Toshiba’s shorthand for the suite of capabilities required to efficiently store big data, output data as necessary, and process it appropriately. We aim to meet diversifying storage requirements by offering high-quality, differentiated solutions employing the cutting edge technologies.

Mr. Hironobu Nishikori, Corporate Senior Vice President of Semiconductor & Storage Company, comments: “HDD and flash memory technologies will continue to coexist, taking advantage of their respective characteristics. Toshiba is the only vendor covering the spectrum of HDD, SSD and NAND flash memory. Inspired by our vision of Total Storage Innovation, we aim to be the leading storage solution provider in the evolving cloud & big data era.
Big data has three essential attributes: volume for over petabytes data, velocity for real time data processing and analytics and variety for mixture of structured and unstructured data. The key to product differentiation lies in real-time analytics of that data to maneuver social infrastructure system in timely manner . Towards that Toshiba will offer storage solutions that address each of the 3Vs.

Mindful of fast-emerging possibilities, not least those associated with cloud computing, in fiscal 2013 Toshiba is focusing on the following storage products.

1. Enterprise …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Can Micron Hold On to Its Momentum?

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By Richard Saintvilus, The Motley Fool

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Shares of memory maker Micron have been on a tear. Upon reaching $10.27 last week, the stock has essentially doubled after bottoming out at $5.16 on Oct. 24. With the stock now only percentage points away from a 52-week high, investors want assurances that Micron has enough ammo to support the recent optimism. I don’t blame them.

Micron is known for its volatility. And it certainly doesn’t help that the commodity memory industry, which has posted weak margins due to low average selling prices, or ASPs, has been shaky at best. But with names like SanDisk , Samsung and Applied Materials, there’s also been a lot of value in this sector. And Micron certainly fits in that category. So, heading into the company’s earnings results, there was a lot to prove. And Micron delivered.

Who and what is Micron today?
Unlike previous reports, Micron’s second-quarter results left very little for investors to complain about. Revenue arrived at $2.1 billion, up 3% year over year. While not exactly a strong number, when compared to the first-quarter results, it represents a 13% sequential jump. Plus it was enough to beat Street estimates of $1.92 billion.

The company’s flash memory business consists of NOR and NAND, non-volatile storage technologies that requires no power to retain data. Both work the same way, but are different in functionality. NAND, which is used in devices like MP3 players, is able to retain more storage, whereas NOR, which is used in mobile phones, is faster. Micron arguably perfected this market. But there have been plenty of struggles.

Not only has Micron lost market share to SanDisk and Samsung, but the declining PC industry and soft ASPs left investors no choice but to bail on the stock. So, the Street rejoiced that the strong performance was largely due to its flagship chips, NAND and DRAM (dynamic random access memory, the type often found in personal computers).

Is this the same management team?
Though I’ve followed this company for several years, I can’t say that I recognize this management team anymore, which is a good thing. The deficits that once aggravated investors are slowly being addressed. For instance, in the quarter, DRAM revenue surged 24% sequentially due to a 38% increase in sales volume. This is despite a 10% drop in ASPs.

Ordinarily, the soft ASP situation, while not new, would be cause for concern. But the Street didn’t expect much price movement. Plus, it seems that Micron focused more this quarter on moving PC-related DRAM, which has much lower margin. In other words, this is where the higher sales volume, while typically good, might have actually hurt.

Impressively, however, NAND revenue shot up 8%, which was offset by continued struggles in the NOR segment, which fell 14% year over year. Management, however, made up for this weakness in profitability. Gross margin arrived at 18%, a 6% improvement sequentially and 5% better year over year. This resulted to a 76% …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Why Micron Technology Is Poised to Keep Poppin'

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By Brian D. Pacampara, The Motley Fool

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Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool’s free investing community, memory chip manufacturer Micron Technology has earned a respected four-star ranking.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at Micron and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.

Micron facts

Headquarters (founded)

Boise, Idaho (1978)

Market Cap

$10.0 billion

Industry

Semiconductors

Trailing-12-Month Revenue

$8.1 billion

Management

CEO Mark Durcan (since 2012)

CFO Ronald Foster (since 2008)

Return on Equity (average, past 3 years)

(0.1%)

Cash/Debt

$2.2 billion / $3.7 billion

Competitors

Samsung Electronics

SanDisk

Sources: S&P Capital IQ and Motley Fool CAPS.

On CAPS, 90% of the 1,266 members who have rated Micron believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward.

Just yesterday, one of those Fools, drewvogel, succinctly summed up the Micron bull case for our community:

Spot prices on DRAM have been increasing, but in the latest conference call [Micron] said their DRAM bit volume increased while their average selling price declined. … This is likely due to their contract prices lagging spot prices. The next quarter should include some of those spot price increases in the DRAM market. In addition to the improving DRAM conditions, the NAND prices are rising due to a shortage of chips combined with healthy demand as individuals and enterprises alike are moving to SSDs instead of replacing PCs. The price has a good bit of the Elpida acquisition baked in. Price target: $14.

If you want market-thumping returns, you need to put together the best portfolio you can. Of course, despite a strong four-star rating, Micron may not be your top choice.

We’ve found another growth play we are incredibly excited about — excited enough to dub it “The Only Stock You Need to Profit from the NEW Technology Revolution.” We have compiled a special free report for investors to uncover this stock today. The report is 100% free, but it won’t be here forever, so click here to access it now.

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The article Why Micron Technology Is Poised to Keep Poppin’ originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Brian Pacampara has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

News, Politics, Government

Micron Earnings Confirm Improving Memory Market

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By Trefis Team, Contributor

Quick Take On account of strong growth in NAND and DRAM, Micron’s Q1 2013 revenue and gross margins increased by 13% and 6% q-o-q, respectively After a 8% decline in calendar year 2012 revenues, it looks like the memory market fundamentals are improving Micron’s DRAM revenues increased by ~25% on account of 38% higher bit sales, which were partially offset by a 10% sequential decrease in DRAM prices With a higher proportion of demand coming from alternate markets (besides PC), the average DRAM selling price can increase by a few percentage points; DRAM for PCs have lower per bit selling prices Micron generates <10% of its revenue from mobile DRAM, which can increase after Elpida’s acquisition and is one of the fastest growing market for DRAM products Micron's NAND revenue grew by 8% sequentially and can increase further with higher demand for SSDs and mobile devices though a shift to high density product mix will lower selling prices Micron Technology, one of the leading manufacturers of memory products (DRAM, NAND & NOR), witnessed an 8% decline in revenues in calender year 2012 on account of persistent weakness in the memory market. The memory market is highly cyclical in nature and is currently seeing excess supply. The slow demand on account of macro headwinds combined with intense competition further put pressure on selling prices which in turn impacted Micron’s bottom line. However, judging by Micron’s Q2 2013 earnings release on March 21, it looks like the memory market fundamentals are improving. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Why the Dow's Ignoring the Naysayers Again This Morning

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By Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool

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For U.S. investors, international crises tend to be short-term events that have little long-term impact. That seems to be the direction the banking crisis in Cyprus is taking: Optimism that banks and government officials will successfully resolve the immediate problems before conditions worsen has helped push stocks higher around the world. As of 10:50 a.m. EDT, the Dow Jones Industrials are up 64 points, or 0.45%, erasing most of yesterday’s losses as investors instead focus on the recent positive news on the U.S. economic front.

Among Dow stocks, General Electric is up just a few cents, but a report from The Wall Street Journal revealed an interesting story involving the company’s GE Capital division. Apparently, GE Capital has been in talks with Dell to buy the computer maker’s financial-services business. Working alongside Blackstone, GE Capital is reportedly trying to take advantage of the turmoil resulting from Dell’s attempt to go private in order to snatch up lucrative assets opportunistically. The mechanics of the deal might be difficult, but such a move could greatly boost what has been a shrinking part of GE‘s overall business.

Outside the Dow, BP rose 2.5% after announcing that it would initiate a big buyback of its stock. Having sold off its 50% interest in its TNK-BP venture to Russian oil company Rosneft, BP expects to keep about $4.5 billion of the proceeds to pay down debt, but it should be able to return the rest to shareholders over the next year to 18 months. BP will also own nearly 20% of Rosneft, giving it continuing exposure to the vast opportunities in Russia.

Finally, Micron Technology has soared 10.5% on positive earnings news. Although the company posted a loss for the quarter, highly optimistic comments about rising prices for both DRAM and NAND memory chips point to better times for Micron, and the memory maker has also cut costs to improve margins. Given the up-and-down cycles in the industry, it’ll be important for Micron to take maximum advantage of the good times while they last.

GE survived the financial crisis by scaling back its GE Capital division in favor of making strategic bets in energy. But given the speculation about Dell’s financial business, where is General Electric really headed with its business strategy? Find out in our premium research report on the conglomerate, in which our industrials analyst breaks down GE‘s multiple businesses and gives reasons to buy or sell GE today. To get started, click here now.

var FoolAnalyticsData = FoolAnalyticsData || []; …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Computers

Samsung appoints co-CEOs

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J.K. Shin Samsung CEO

Samsung Electronics has promoted the heads of its mobile and consumer electronics businesses to share leadership along with the existing boss who oversees components, as the company looks to strengthen the independence of its massive internal divisions.

J.K. Shin

The company said Friday that both J.K. Shin, head of IT & Communications, and Boo-keun Yoon, who leads consumer electronics will be promoted to “CEO,” a role they will share with existing CEO Oh-Hyun Park.

Samsung Electronics dominates in multiple consumer product categories, including mobile phones and TVs, as well as components such as NAND flash, displays, and DRAM. The South Korean giant said in a press release that the personnel moves were aimed at distinguishing its growing handset and television set businesses, which have outgrown its massive component division.

“The new leadership structure will serve to clarify and enhance independent management of the two set divisions, as well as the independent management of the set and component businesses,” the company said in the release.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Buffalo sets February launch date for 'world's fastest' external PC hard drive

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Buffalo Technology has set the end of this month as the launch date for its DriveStation DDR external hard disk enclosure, which uses a 1GB DRAM cache to achieve what Buffalo says is the world’s fastest transfer speed.

The company said the newest addition to its DriveStation lineup can hit speeds of over 408MB per second over its USB 3.0 connection, fast enough to copy a thousand 800KB images in 3.5 seconds from a high-end Windows 8 computer.

The drive can quickly store data in its 1GB DRAM cache before writing it more slowly to the hard disk. While some external and internal drives use a NAND flash cache to increase performance, pricier DRAM caches provide faster access. One downside, though, is that if a RAM cache loses power before the data is copied to disk, then the data is lost too.

To achieve its record speed, Buffalo also used its backup software, which it says more than doubles USB 3.0 transfer speeds on Windows machines. A Mac version increases speeds by 60 percent and can copy the thousand images in about 4.1 seconds. The company did not state the drive’s performance when copying more data than would fit in its cache in one go.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Intel delivers good performance and value with its 525 Series mSATA drives

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Intel is looking to capture and more of the SSD market with the release of its 525 Series mSATA drives. These tiny storage devices deliver respectable performance at good prices. The new 525 Series is based on Intel's 25nm NAND memory and LSI Logic's SandForce SF-2281 controller. They measure approximately 3.7mm thick by 51mm long by 30mm wide (full-size mSATA) and come in 30GB, 60GB, 90GB, 120GB, 180GB, and 240GB capacities. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Computerworld Latest

Science & Technology

Toshiba starts sample shipment of industry's first embedded NAND flash memory modules

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Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has started sample shipments of a 64-gigabyte (GB) embedded NAND flash memory module, the first in the industry equipped with a UFS I/F. The module is fully compliant with the JEDEC UFS Ver.1.1 standard and is designed for application in a wide range of digital consumer products, including smartphones, tablet PCs. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org

Computers

Review: Intel delivers good performance and value with its 525 Series mSATA drives

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Intel is looking to capture and more of the SSD market with the release of its 525 Series mSATA drives. These tiny storage devices deliver respectable performance at good prices. The new 525 Series is based on Intel’s 25nm NAND memory and LSI Logic’s SandForce SF-2281 controller. They measure approximately 3.7mm thick by 51mm long by 30mm wide (full-size mSATA) and come in 30GB, 60GB, 90GB, 120GB, 180GB, and 240GB capacities.

If you’re not familiar with this standard, mSATA is an acronym for Mini-Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. Its edge connector is similar in appearance to that of a PCIe Mini Card and is electrically compatible, but its data signals are sent to the computer’s SATA controller instead of its PCIe controller. The standard is designed for small SSDs that fit in tight spaces where their 2.5-inch and even 1.8-inch siblings can’t.

Retail pricing for the Intel 525 series is $54 for the 30GB ($1.80 per GB), $104 for the 60GB ($1.73 per GB), $129 for the 90GB ($1.43 per GB), $149 for the 120GB ($1.24 per GB), $214 for the 180GB (1.18 per GB), and $279 for the 240GB model ($1.16 per GB). That’s more expensive per GB than larger drives, but it’s very competitive with other mSATA products.

Each model in the 525 Series is a SATA 6-GBps drive, but real-world speed scales with size. This is true of most SSDs: More memory means more pathways across which to distribute read/write operations. Our testing with the 120GB, 180GB, and 240GB flavors bore this out. While read speeds increased only mildly, write speeds rose significantly with each jump in capacity. See the numbers in the table below:

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…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Crucial M4 (512GB): A fast-reading, slow-writing, high-capacity SSD

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The 512GB Crucial M4 is one of the highest-capacity solid-state drives we've tested; it also proved to be one of the faster readers. Using a Marvell 9174 controller, 25nm MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash memory, and the latest SATA 6Gbps interface, the M4 read our 10GB collection of small files and folders at 416.7 megabytes per second (MBps). The drive was also quick when reading a single large file–it accessed our 10GB test file at 472.8 MBps.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Computerworld Latest

Computers

Crucial M4 (512GB) review: A fast-reading, slow-writing, high-capacity SSD

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The 512GB Crucial M4 is one of the highest-capacity solid-state drives we’ve tested; it also proved to be one of the faster readers. Using a Marvell 9174 controller, 25nm MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash memory, and the latest SATA 6Gbps interface, the M4 read our 10GB collection of small files and folders at 416.7 megabytes per second (MBps). The drive was also quick when reading a single large file—it accessed our 10GB test file at 472.8 MBps.

The M4 proved to be much slower at writing files, however; it wrote our 10GB file/folder combo at a poky 265.1 MBps, and it wrote our single 10GB file at a leisurely 326.8 MBps. Because SSDs have a limited write lifetime, most people will tend to use an SSD to store the computer’s operating system and application software than to store rapidly changing data (documents, photos, music, and other types of files). So it could be argued that the M4’s excellent read performance renders this SSD a strong value all on its own.

This is a large capacity drive, however, and while flash memory has dropped in price considerably over the past year, it’ll still cost you. Crucial lists the M4 at $425 for a bare drive. (A package that includes a mounting bracket and a SATA cable adds $5 to the price tag, while a kit with adata-transfer software adds $12, so make sure you know which one you’re buying.) We found the kit that includes the data-transfer software (but no SATA cable) selling online for $400 (as of January 22, 2013). That’s a chunk of change, but when you break it down to cost per gigabyte, you end up with a very reasonable—for an SSD, anyway—78 cents per gigabyte. A smaller-capacity high-performance drive, such as the 256GB Samsung 840 Pro (with a $239 street price), costs closer to 94 cents per gigabyte. Samsung’s 512GB 840 Pro, meanwhile, fetches a street price closer to $490.

So the M4 scores big wins in two categories—price and read speed. Knowing that an SSD will inevitably wear out, however, buyers should also take the manufacturer’s warranty into account. Corsair offers a three-year warranty where some other manufacturers—including Samsung—provide five years of coverage. Overall, Crucial’s 512GB M4 is a good deal.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld