GLG News by Mr. Thomas Coughlin, President
GLG News is now G+ Insights
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HDD Areal Density Climbing Towards 1 Tb per square inch
October 13, 2008
TDK Crams 260 GB Into 1.8-inch HDD, Sets a New Density Benchmark | gizmodo.com
* TDK is the last independent HDD head supplier. * In order to remain competitive to vertically integrated HDD companies TDK must push magnetic recording technology. * At the CEATEC conference in Taiwan TDK announced technology with a magnetic recording areal density of 803 Gbpsi. * This would give a 1.8-inch disk drive a capacity of 260 GB on a single disk. * TDK claims they achieved this storage capacity using a TMR head and perpendicular magnetic recording.
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HDD component consolidation continues
October 7, 2008
Hoya, Showa Denko to merge hard disk media business | www.reuters.com
* Hoya is a major manufacturer of glass and supplies many of the glass substrates used in mobile hard disk drives. * In addition to substrates Hoya manufactures some hard disk media as well. * Showa Denko has been a customer of Hoya for media substrates and is the largest independent supplier of hard disk media * Showa Denko has agreed to acquire 75% of a merged Showa Denko and Hoya magnetic media entity. * The merger of Showa Denko and Hoya’s media operations reduces the number of independent media suppliers to two (the combined Showa/Hoya manufacturer) and Fuji Electric.
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Fujitsu HDD offers point to further HDD Consolidation
October 7, 2008
Report: Fujitsu to Sell HDD Business to Western Digital | www.pcworld.com
* Fujitsu is the sixth in unit shipping volume of HDD companies making 2.5-inch drives for notebook, consumer and enterprise applications. * Fujitsu is one of the oldest companies in the HDD business and has been responsible for much technology innovation in the industry. * Reports abound that Western Digital and perhaps Toshiba are interested in acquiring Fujitsu’s HDD business. * The acquisition of Fujitsu by another drive company would be a significant consolidation in the HDD industry and could significantly impact the rest of the market.
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Metadata, the glue that holds content together.
October 1, 2008
Metadata Working Group Introduces First Specification for Interoperability and Preservation of Metadata in Digital Photography | www.examiner.com
* Metadata is information that describes the contents of a piece of data or content * Standards that make metadata created in one device readable in another device are in their infancy * Most metadata today must be entered manually but this takes more time than most people can afford * Metadata standards will help make digital photographs and other content easier to organize and share between different devices.
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Taste of things to come—collaborations of hardware and software
September 29, 2008
Oracle, HP collaborate on server, storage hardware | sanjose.bizjournals.com
* Oracle announced that it is selling an Exadata Storage Server under its own brand * HP makes the storage hardware which uses 64 Intel processors, hard disk drives with storage capacity up to 12 terabytes and runs Oracle database software * The base HP platform is the HP ProLiant DL180 G5 server * The Exadata machine is focused on database applications.
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How Many is Enough SSD Companies ?
September 1, 2008
Shakeout looms in SSDs | www.eetimes.com
§ By some estimates there are over 50 companies currently offering products that they call solid state drives (SDDs) § Many of these products have been designed hastily and some of them show no improvement in benchmarking tests vs. hard disk drive metrics § There will be a significant consolidation and culling of the SSD players over the next 1-2 years § It is likely that SSD consolidation will mirror that of HDDs in the 1980’s
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Hard Disk Makers Work on Higher Performance Drives
August 29, 2008
Western Digital working on 20,000 RPM Raptor | www.bit-tech.net
* There are rumors that Western Digital is working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor drive * Other HDD companies such as Seagate, Fujitsu and others are also working on improving rotational as well as track change drive latencies * SSDs are starting to compete against HDDs for performance oriented applications, one of the more lucrative, higher margin parts of the HDD market * HDD companies will need to respond to the incursions of SSDs into the enterprise and high performance space by using new technologies
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Holographic Storage in Game Systems
August 18, 2008
Nintendo looking into holographic storage solutions | gonintendo.com
* Nintendo and InPhase are apparently doing some joint work on holographic storage * InPhase has been pursuing a holographic storage system (primarily for write once archive applications) for several years * Any holographic storage product likely will not be in a Nintendo game system for several years * It is likely that Nintendo will need some other storage device such as a hard disk drive for its current Wii storage limitations
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SanDisk unveils durability metric for solid-state drives
August 18, 2008
SanDisk unveils metric for solid-state drives | www.eetimes.com
* SanDisk recently revealed a proposal for creating a single metric representing the expected lifetime of a solid state drive * The SanDisk metric is called “Longterm Data Endurance” or LDE * The SanDisk proposal comes at a time that several organizations such as IDEMA and JEDEC are discussing standards for SSD reliability * SNIA, the Storage Networking Industry Association, is also launching a solid state initiative that will explore the evolving use of solid state storage * These are important developments for sustainable growth of SSDs in the enterprise and computer markets
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SSD Vendors Getting Serious About Standards
July 25, 2008
Micron and Seagate to Lead Solid State Drive Standardization Efforts at JEDEC | xbitlabs.com
* JEDEC is a memory standards body that is very active and respected in the electronics industry * JEDEC has formed a committee to develop standards for NAND flash solid state drives * The JEDEC committee will be co-chaired by Micron and Seagate * Seagate expects to announce their first SSD product for the enterprise market by the end of 2008 * The JEDEC standardization effort is part of a standards movement for SSDs that involves a newly formed SSD Alliance, IDEMA and the ANSI T13 committee
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HDD Capacity Continues to Expand
July 17, 2008
Seagate First with 1.5 TB Hard Disk Drives | www.theregister.co.uk
* Seagate announced their Barracuda 1.5 TB disk drive, the first announced disk drive with more than 1TB capacity * Seagate also announced their first 500 GB 2.5-inch drive products with 5200 and 7200 RPM * The 3.5-inch 1.5 TB product will begin shipping in August 2008 while the 2.5-inch 500 GB products will ship in Q4 2008 * Separately Hitachi said that 5 TB HDDs will be possible by 2010
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New external storage interface creates multiple device options
July 1, 2008
eSATA Connector provides backup at speeds up to 3 Gb/s. | news.thomasnet.com
* USB 2.0 provides external data rates of 480 Mbps sustained. eSATA, an external version of the SATA interface currently provides data rates of 3 Gbps sustained * Next generation USB will have 5 Gbps and next generation eSATA will have 6 Gbps data rates * Recently several laptop and external storage companies, many based out of Taiwan, have introduced so-called 2-in-1 connectors that support both USB 2.0 and eSATA connector devices Using the space saving 2-in-1 connections customers can use popular USB 2.0 devices or very fast eSATA connections * This will assist in the growth of eSATA external storage devices
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Consolidation Accelerates in the Hard Disk Capital Equipment Market
July 1, 2008
Intevac to Acquire Oerlikon Group's Magnetic Media Equipment Business | news.moneycentral.msn.com
* Oerlikon sold its disk drive sputtering assets to Intevac and exits the hard disk drive business * Oerlikon, in a former incarnation as Balzers used to be one of the major players in the disk sputtering equipment market but had lost most of its business over the last 10 years * Despite making efforts to introduce new products in the last few years Oerlikon placed a distant third to Intevac and Anelva in the media sputtering equipment market * Oerlikon had also been sued by Intevac for violation of patents on disk handling in sputtering systems * The merger of Oerlikon’s disk equipment business into Intevac is only the latest development in capital equipment consolidation for the industry and certainly not the last
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Seagate Expanding to Cover More Enterprise Storage Options
June 20, 2008
Will Seagate buy Intel's stake in NAND JV? | www.eetimes.com
Seagate has stated that they will introduce a SSD device by the end of 2008 This is expected to be an enterprise level SSD to help protect the company’s position in the enterprise storage market There are several rumors that Seagate is looking at acquisitions to enable its SSD effort Intel is looking at extracting itself from its unprofitable joint flash venture with Micron Technology Seagate acquisition of a source of flash memory and flash memory IP could help it establish itself as a player in the emerging SSD market
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June 20, 2008
Hitachi HDD Business to Surpass Seagate Profitability | www.blocksandfiles.co.uk
* Hitachi president Kazuo Furukawa said that Hitachi wants to surpass Seagate’s HDD business profitability * Furukawa-san said that Hitachi has the latest technology required to be competive in the HDD business * He also said that there is synergy between Hitachi’s computer business and its HDD business * In the last two quarter Hitachi has reported profitability, although no where near the levels of Seagate and Western Digital
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EMC Investment Signals Move into Smaller Storage Systems Market
April 24, 2008
Iomega Announces Termination of Share Purchase Agreement with ExcelStor Entities | www.freshnews.com
* Iomega had previously entered into an agreement with ExcelStor Great Wall Technology owned by the Chinese government * Iomega terminated this purchase agreement with ExcelStor * Iomega entered into an agreement to merge with EMC * EMC will probably use Iomega as a means to move into the small business and perhaps even the home storage market
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April 9, 2008
Samsung unveils proper 2.5-inch 500GB hard disk drive | www.pureoverclock.com
* Hitachi introduced a 500 GB 2.5-inch hard disk drive in January 2008 but the product would not fit into a conventional 2.5-inch hard drive bay * Fujitsu followed suit with a 500 GB 2.5-inch HDD announcement with a similar thicker drive package * Samsung announced in March that they would be shipping a 500 GB 2.5-inch drive with the conventional drive thickness found in most notebook computers * The Samsung product using 3-167 GB disks to achieve this storage capacity and form factor * The suggested retail price for Samsung’s 500 GB Spinpoint M6 is $299 (about $0.60 per GB)
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Patent War Looming over Solid State Drives
April 9, 2008
Seagate Claims Solid-State Drive Makers May Infringe Seagate's Patents. | www.xbitlabs.com
* Seagate says that if SSDs start to threaten HDDs Seagate may sue SSD companies such as Intel and Samsung for patent infringement * Seagate and WD have patents with many of the ways that a storage device communicates with a computer and SSDs may use some of these approaches * SSDs are being introduced in laptops and other applications where hard disk drives have traditionally been used * Seagate said that it would ship SSDs in 2008 and WD has had a long standing relationship with SanDisk, a major flash memory producer * SanDisk has its own set of flash memory and possibly SSD patents through its M-Systems acquisition so there may be an interesting patent war brewing
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April 4, 2008
Drowning in a digital sea of content | www.msnbc.msn.com
*Western Digital introduced a 500 GB DVR expander product to add storage capacity to a digital video recorder with an external storage device * Western digital plans to offer a 1 TB version of this product this year * WD joins Seagate/Maxtor and others with external storage products to expand the storage capacity of DVRs and set top boxes * These devices use the external serial ATA interface for a high speed external connection Keeping and organizing digital content is a growing challenge for consumers
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New solid-state drives could endanger high end hard disk drives
February 29, 2008
Start-up builds solid state flash drives for enterprise | www.networkworld.com
* A start-up company, Pliant Technology announced a solid state flash drive for enterprise applications * Pliant joins companies such as STEC in bringing flash memory to enterprise applications that require high throughput such as transaction processing * In January EMC announced that they would ship a version of their Symmetrix DMX storage system that could include STEC solid state drives as well as fibre channel or SCSI high performance hard disk drives * A new tier of enterprise storage is appearing that will first take on DRAM-based solid state drives but could eventually compete against high performance hard drives
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