TDK Launches Single-Chip SSD

[Guest]

TDK has developed a single-chip SSD that is significantly smaller than previous similar products.

TDK Launches Single-Chip SSD : Read more

 

[dgingeri]

This would be wonderful for VMWare host machines, for the main Hypervisor. Of course, the gust machines would use other storage, but this would be a great boot drive.

 

[beans4you]

Whats the maximum data read speeds of the chips?

 

[dgingeri]

They were saying 30MB/s, or right around the speed of a higher end USB flash drive. Not much, but better than using a USB port, I suppose.

 

[Marco925]

Aren't single chip SSDs simply flash drives on a USB Controller?

 

[alvine]

just give us lower SSD prices

 

[freggo]

1 to 4GB on this little chip.

Before you say 'not enough'... let's go Back to the future for a moment to say, 1986.
We where selling 8MB expansion boards for the Amiga than for $1800 (Yes, OneThousandEighthundred).
So that 4GB Chip holds the memory of 500 of these ancient cards; worth $900.000

The cards where full length cards weighting about a pound each; so we are talking replacing some 500lb with a chip weighting in at maybe an ounce.
Oh, how times have changed.

 

[rosen380]

How does that invalidate 'not enough'? In 1986 people didn't store 1000s of songs and movies on their portable devices.

Around 1990 I bought 8MB of RAM [8x1MB] for $54 per MB, now I can buy a single 8GB stick [1024x the capacity and 100s of times faster] for under $50. All it says is that technology gets cheaper and better over time.

1-4GB is actually not enough for smart phones, tablets, desktops, laptops, netbooks etc...

 

[Marcus52]

[citation][nom]alvine[/nom]just give us lower SSD prices[/citation]

This kind of technological development will help lead to lower SSD prices.

 

[techcurious]

Douglas, you are taking your total disregard for proofreading to a new low..

The maximum data read speeds of the chips is MBps and write access speeds reach up to 30 MBps.

Now that I have done part of your job for you, would you care to fill in the missing numbers? Or shall I go google that myself and post the answer here for you as well?

 

[techcurious]

Ok Douglas. Here you go.. apparently the maximum read speed is 55 MBps. I'm sure you won't bother to fact check and will just take my word for it..
If you want to share your paycheck with me, we can make this a regular thing!

 

[freggo]

[citation][nom]rosen380[/nom]How does that invalidate 'not enough' . . .1-4GB is actually not enough for smart phones, tablets, desktops, laptops, netbooks etc...[/citation]

The chip is not likely to be aimed at tablets or high end phones of course.
I could see it in ECUs, Avionics, smart remote controls, entry level phones and numerous industrial applications.

Not every chip is aimed at improving Angry Bird deployment on smart devices

 

[freggo]

Ah yes, and while they start out with only 1-4GB you know in 6 month they will have 16GB etc...

 

[loomis86]

One step closer to a complete PC on a single chip.

 

[yumri]

I am wondering if they will be intergateing these chips into system boards so we will not have to put the OS onto the SSD or HDD for our data as that will be a very good thing but the chip array will have to be somewhere around 80GB for it to work with windows OS doing that.

 

[razor512]

[citation][nom]Marco925[/nom]Aren't single chip SSDs simply flash drives on a USB Controller?[/citation]
pretty much, but they were able to take all that of a flash drive and shove it into a single chip instead of the 2 chips and 15( caps, resisters,etc) other components that it takes to make a flash drive

so while it is not a big leap from flash drives, it is a step in the right direction, especially when more businesses start producing similar chips, it will allow for mobile devices to become even smaller since the single average sized BGA component will be doing more tasks by it's self, (eg imagine an iphone using that storage to save space in order to add a micro sd card slot (like a phone should have)

 

[__-_-_-__]

there's already a thing like this. They are called memory cards and many have much better read and write speeds, also some are smaller.

 

[saturnus]

[citation][nom]loomis86[/nom]One step closer to a complete PC on a single chip.[/citation]

Already down to a 2 chip solution now. One of these and one of the PoP SoC ARM chips which integrates everything including RAM and all controllers needed and you have a 2 chip solution.

 

[happyzoo]

Interesting, by having things more integrated we'll have more lasting mobile devices.

 

[TeraMedia]

Too large, too slow, too little capacity.

2/3" (17mm) x 2/3" is pretty large when it comes to mobile devices. Given that all this chip should need is power and SATA connections, I don't understand why it needs so many pins. They've made the addition of SATA-connected non-volatile memory to an embedded system easy, but they need to work on footprint, performance and capacity before this can meet it's potential. If they could even hit just 16 GB, that would be enough for most phones and tablets to hold the O/S and basic storage. If they could improve to 100+ MB/s reads as well, this could work as a built-in boot cache (ala Intel RST) for Mobos. And if they could shrink the size down to something more like 10 x 10 mm, that would be much more useful for phones and such that require absolute smallest-possible size.

It's too bad. It's not a bad concept - non-volatile, solid-state SATA storage device on a chip. They should figure out how to go 3D with their memory chips and stack several of them on top of a better, multi-channel controller / SATA interface chip (all inside the same package). Then they'd get better capacity, better performance, and a smaller footprint.