GLG News by Flash Memory Experts

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Does it make sense to combine HDDs and flash memory?

March 24, 2010

Analysis of:Comeback of Seagate in Hybrid HDD? | www.storagenewsletter.com

In 2007 Seagate and Samsung announced the introduction of hybrid HDDs combining a NAND flash memory cache on the HDD circuit board. Although initially supported by Microsoft, the product failed due to higher priced hybrid HDDs vs. non-hybrid HDDs as well as lack of OS support for dual memory systems. There is a rumor that Seagate is looking at re-introducing hybrid HDDs with less expensive flash, TRIM command support and a controller geared for controlling use of flash and HDD storage

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Isilon joins ranks of enterprise flash memory users

February 22, 2010

Analysis of:Isilon Turbo-Charges Scale-out NAS With Solid State Drives | www.infostor.com

Isilon is using STEC solid state drives for metadata serving in their next generation of NAS systems. This will speed up metadata-intensive namespace operations and assist server virtualization, electronic design and financial analysis. The actual data is stored on SAS or SATA HDDs but metadata access is through the SSDs. Combining SSDs for metadata with HDDs for the data provides higher performance data operations while maintaining the low costs of HDD storage systems

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Consolidation hits the flash memory market

February 22, 2010

Analysis of:SSD Maker Micron to Acquire Numonyx for $1.27B | www.eweek.com

Numonyx is being acquired by Micron for $1.27B. Numonyx was spun off from Intel to pursue phase change memory and make NOR flash memory less than two years ago. Micron will realize about $1.5B of additional revenue from the acquisition. With demand for flash memory high in 2010 this should be a good year for the combined company

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Large high performance disk drives beef up enterprise storage

February 19, 2010

Analysis of:Toshiba rolls out 600GB, 6Gbps SAS drives | www.infostor.com

Seagate introduced a 600 GB 10k RPM SAS drive last week and Toshiba introduced one this week. 2.5-inch disk drives with the SAS interface and high performance provide denser enterprise storage than 3.5-inch form factor drives. 6 Gbps SAS offers fast data interfaces. These new hard drive products provide new value to enterprise storage companies

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Next generation flash will be less expensive

February 3, 2010

Analysis of:Intel, Micron Introduce 25nm NAND Flash Production | www.pcworld.com

Intel and Micron have a joint venture based in Utah working on NAND flash technology. The companies have revealed a 25 nm flash production process, the smallest production semiconductor features yet. Smaller features allows more flash memory cells on a chip and thus lowers the costs of flash storage starting later this year. In order to stay competitive hard disk drives must continue their technology development or they will lose ground to flash.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

SSDs make sense as computer boot drives

January 28, 2010

Analysis of:Kingston Coming With 30 GB ‘Boot’ SSD for $80 | www.tomshardware.com

Kingston announced that it is offering a 30 GB SSD for holding operating system and applications. This drive would be used to let a computer boot more quickly and load and move between applications more quickly. These products can be used with a HDD where user files and content are stored. A hybrid storage approach could make a lot of sense for faster booting computers without giving up the storage capacity of today’s HDDs.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

What could help blu-ray discs become widespread in the US?

January 28, 2010

Analysis of:Blu-ray Beginning to Gain on DVD Player Market | mesalliance.org

Blu-ray discs won the HD format war a little more than a year ago, just in time for the economic downturn and reduced consumer spending. Blu-ray discs and players have become popular in Japan but not as popular in the US due to the costs of drives and discs and the success of upconverted DVD players. In the holiday season of 2009 there were reports of less than $100 Blu-ray players and some Blu-ray titles selling for about $10, lower prices should drive additional demand.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Western Digital confirms growth and profitability for HDDs in 2010

January 23, 2010

Analysis of:Western Digital Posts Higher 2Q Profit, Sales | abcnews.go.com

Western Digital announced total drive shipments of 49.5 M, just 400,000 less than Seagate did the day before. Average sales prices (ASP) for WD were up by $3, similar to Seagate results. Strong desktop growth, especially in Asia contributed significantly as well as consumer retail growth, such as external storage products. WD expects component constraints will restrict the supply of HDDs through 2010. Channel inventories are reported less than 2 weeks, extremely low.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

2010 could be great year for hard disk drives

January 22, 2010

Analysis of:Seagate Reports Great Q2 | quicktake.morningstar.com

Seagate Technology announced one of its best quarters in years for calendar Q4 2009, this was the first public report by a HDD company for this quarter. The company said that Q4 2009 total available market (TAM) was about 160 M units and projected calendar 2010 TAM is 650-670 M units. Seagate indicated their capital spending to increase from $450 to $750 M to meet expected demand levels. Unit shipments increased for all product types indicated general health in the HDD industry going into 2010. Inventories are reported to be almost non-existent coming into 2010 and the industry looks like it will be capacity constrained in meeting demand for most of 2010

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

New HDD format improve storage capacity and performance

December 18, 2009

Analysis of:Western Digital’s new advanced formatting gives hard drives up to 11 percent more space | gizmodo.com

Western Digital announced a new formatting scheme for hard disk drives called “advanced format.” The new sector formatting moves from traditional 512 byte sectors to 4,000 byte sectors. Larger sectors means that the overhead due to the sector heads can be reduced leading to higher format efficiency for the drive, e.g. larger storage capacities. Advance format drives work with Mac, Windows 7 and Vista operating systems while a special utility is required to run on Windows XP

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