Hasta La Gadget!

Crucial‘s budget-friendly yet high-capacity 2.5-inch M500 SSD has finally cropped up for sale today, as have the reviews of it from the usual enthusiast sites. While it’s still not exactly low-cost, many applaud the fact that the company’s $600 960GB drive is the cheapest near-1TB model you can get on the market. It uses Micron’s 20nm MLC NAND flash, a SATA 6 Gb/s controller and is the first to implement the new 128Gb MLC NAND die. According to Benchmark Reviews, it certainly bests its m4 predecessor with peak speeds that reach 500 MB/s read and 400 MB/s write, with 80,000 IOPS in operational performance.

Both TweakTown and Anandtech concur that it’s not quite as fast as its closest competitor, the Samsung 840 Pro, but as Anand Lai Shimpi said in his review: “If you need the capacity and plan on using all of it [960GB], the M500 is really the only game in town.” TechnologyX, however, gives the nod to the 480GB model, if only because it’s about $200 cheaper if you’re willing to compromise on space. Crucial also offers the M500 in 120GB and 240GB for $130 and $220 for those with smaller wallets. If you’re keen to see the full breakdown on this tiny wonder, head on over to the sources to judge for yourself, or just click on the Crucial link below to get your own.

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Source: Benchmark Reviews, Tweaktown, Anandtech, TechnologyX, Crucial

Micron has announced a new line of enterprise SSDs namely the P400m. Featuring Micron’s XPERT for extending SSD performance and enhancing drive life span and data integrity, these high endurance 2.5-inch SSDs (100GB, 200GB & 400GB models) are equipped with 25nm MLC NAND flash memory chips, a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface, a MTBF of 2 million hours and promise to deliver read and write speeds of up to 350MB/s and 300MB/s, respectively. Prices unannounced yet. [Micron]

Look out silicon and magnetic storage, here comes glass. Micron has announced production of the first commercial cellphone phase-change memory (PCM) modules, a type of flash RAM that works by changing a crystal solid to an amorphous state. The 1Gb chips will share a circuit board with 512Mb of standard volatile memory, just enough to go in feature phones for now — but the company claims it will eventually offer larger modules for smartphone and tablet storage as well. PCM could scale to much faster speeds than conventional NAND flash, since it doesn’t require a time-sapping erase before rewriting — and with read speeds of 400MB/s, it’s already into regular flash territory while still just a first generation product. Once the tech gets even quicker, PCM could even replace volatile RAM, allowing more secure storage in case of a power loss and reducing device costs and power usage. That means the glassy new kid could eventually bump silicon-based storage altogether — ending its 40-year plus reign as king of the memory substrates. To see some of the ways it trumps NAND, check the video after the break.

Continue reading Micron first to market with phase-change memory modules for portable devices (video)

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Micron first to market with phase-change memory modules for portable devices (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Micron Technology Inc. has agreed to acquire debt-ridden Japanese chip maker Elpida Memory for about $750 million in cash to boost Micron’s manufacturing capacity and bump them up behind Samsung–the global market leader for DRAM memory chips. The agreement involves a sponsorship which will require Micron to spend about $2.5 billion to acquire Elpida’s equity and pay off some of its debt.

Elpida is an Apple Inc. supplier for chips used in their smartphones, tablets and computers. Micron’s acquisition of Elpida will double its share in the market for DRAM memory chips or dynamic random-access memory chips. About $1.25 billion will be invested in building up DRAM product, which should leave Micron with about a quarter of the global DRAM business. Samsung holds over 40 percent.

Of course, until all the details have been settled and approval is obtained from Elpida’s creditors, Micron will likely not issue any further statement about the acquisition. Some are predicting that once the acquisition has been finalized, Micron will focus on server DRAM and NAND while Elpida plants will focus on production of mobile and commodity DRAM.

[via Reuters]

Micron to buy Elpida Memory to compete with Samsung is written by Elise Moreau & originally posted on SlashGear.
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