Intel and Numonyx have just announced that they have achieved an important breakthrough in he production of Phase-Change Memory. This type of memory is one of the most promising new technologies currently being developed; like Flash memory it retains information when powered off, but provides faster write speeds and better durability.
One of the problems so far has been storage density. Phase-Change Memory works by changing chalcogenide glass between crystalline and amorphous states; the chips containing these are still rather large, and up until now could not be easily stacked on top of each other. Numonyx and Intel claim to have solved this: Continue reading Intel and Numonyx improve phase-change memory
HotHardware has received a test sample of Fusion-IO’s ioXtreme drive. If you haven’t heard about this before: it’s an internal PCI Express card that provides 80 gigabytes of Solid State memory. It’s presented to your computer as an internal drive, and can achieve very fast read and write speeds because of the direct PCIe connection.
Fusion-IO ioXtreme drive
Continue reading HotHardware shows first benchmarks for Fusion-IO drive
That is the title a certain storage vendor gave a press release that arrived in my mailbox today. Regular readers might have noticed that I tend to take press releases with a grain of salt; but this one was a real gem. I won’t give the name of the company that sent it [...]
Intel just released a firmware update for their X25-M Solid State Drives. The update offers two important changes:
- First, the drives gain support for the TRIM command. This command allows the operating system to communicate information about used and free blocks to the drive, enabling better wear levelling and decreasing the risk of write amplification.
- Second, the 160GB version of the drives gains an amazing increase in its sequential write rate. According to Hot Hardware, the increase is noticeable in various benchmarks, and can be up to 30% in some cases:
After being flashed to the new firmware update, which enables TRIM support and faster sequential write speeds, the Intel 34nm Gen 2 X25-M 160GB drive offered increased performance in every benchmark we ran. Read performance with the new firmware update installed was roughly on-par with the previous version, although the numbers slightly favor the update, by a few MB/s at least. Write performance, however, was increased by over 30% in some cases.
Continue reading Intel boosts X25-M SSD performance with firmware update
Qnap just announced a new addition to their line of NAS appliances: the TS-410U. This 1U system can house 4 3.5 inch hot-swappable SATA hard drives, delivering up to 8 TB of raw capacity. It also supports 2.5 inch drives.
Qnap TS-410U front
Continue reading Qnap launches updated 4-drive rackmount NAS
Isilon has managed to reach the 119th place in this years list of the fastest growing tech companies. The list is based on the revenue growth over the last five years; during that period, Isilon has seen revenue grow by 1,395 percent. Isilon’s CEO, Sujal Patel, offered the obligatory quote for their press [...]
IBM has announced their first new high-end storage system in years. The DS8700 adds increased capacity and better performance-per-watt. In IBM’s words:
The DS8700 includes new dual IBM POWER6-based controllers, a new internal fabric interconnect, and upgraded device adapters that deliver a performance improvement of up to over 150%, compared to the most powerful previous model. This enhances the DS8700′s ability to support the most demanding business applications and business analytics requirements. Continue reading IBM adds new storage system to DS8000 series
Maxwell sent out a press release today about their “new” PC-10 ultracapacitator. In it, they tout the benefits it has for providing backup power for, among others, solid state drives and enterprise storage systems. That comes as no surprise; Sun has shown that capacitators can be used successfully as a backup power source for storage systems by integrating them into their new F5100 system. Continue reading Maxwell discovers a new market for their ultracapacitors
Tech-On reports that the Japanese government is sponsoring development of a new type of Solid State Drive. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology launched the project as part of the CREST program. The development team will be led by Ken Takeuchi, associate professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and [...]
Fudzilla has found documents that give details about an upcoming Solid State Drive from Intel. The drive is supposedly called the X25-X, and would be available before the holiday shopping season starts in a 2.5 inch 40GB unit. It’s based on MLC flash, leading to a 35MB/s write speed. Read performance should be [...]
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