FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. – March 10, 2009 – Viking Modular Solutions™, a division of Sanmina-SCI Corporation (Nasdaq NM: SANM), and designer and manufacturer of memory and flash modules, today announced SATA Cube3™, an embedded solid state drive (SSD) designed as an ultra small form factor, embedded industrial grade Serial ATA (SATA) SSD. 

“The SATA Cube3 is an ideal solution for OEMs that require the benefits of non-volatile solid state storage and SATA performance in an ultra small form factor,” said Adrian Proctor, Vice President of Marketing for Viking Modular Solutions. “Additionally, this innovative product offers capacities ranging from 4GB to 256GB in the same X-Y footprint.”  

The SATA Cube3 product is the optimum solution for Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) designers in the embedded, server, storage, networking and industrial sectors. Designers of form factors such as ATCA, uTCA, AMC, XMC, PMC and PCIe will find the low volumetric density and high storage capacity of the SATA Cube3  a strong solution for their space constrained application(s). The SATA Cube3 has been designed for the most demanding of environmental conditions where a ruggedized solution is highly beneficial.  

This cost-effective option enables OEMs to design solutions with the high capacity and high reliability of a 2.5” or 1.8” SDD, but with the smallest mechanical footprint available today at 30x32mm. Available in densities of 4GB to 256GB, and with sustained read and write speeds of 110MB/sec and 79MB/sec respectively, the SATA Cube3 is 86 percent smaller than a 2.5” SSD/HDD. The SATA Cube3 is available as a BGA device or with a MicroSATA connector. 

Viking Modular Solutions continues to advance its technology leadership role by proactively developing innovative products for the enterprise, server, storage, embedded and network infrastructure markets.  

About Viking Modular Solutions Headquartered in Foothill Ranch, California, Viking Modular Solutions is focused on delivering innovative, high-quality memory and flash products to the enterprise, server, storage telecommunications and embedded markets. Founded in 1989, Viking Modular Solutions has been providing Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with industry leading design, engineering, product support and customer service for 20 years. For more information, visit http://www.vikingmodular.com. 

About Sanmina-SCI 

Sanmina-SCI Corporation is a leading electronics contract manufacturer serving the fastest-growing segments of the global Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) market. Recognized as a technology leader, Sanmina-SCI provides end-to-end manufacturing solutions, delivering superior quality and support to OEMs primarily in the communications, defense and aerospace, industrial and medical instrumentation, multimedia, enterprise computing and storage, and automotive technology sectors. Sanmina-SCI has facilities strategically located in key regions throughout the world. More information regarding the company is available at http://www.sanmina-sci.com.

EMC has upped its Symmetrix DMX-4, Clariion and Celerra enterprise flash solid state drive capacities to 200GB and 400GB from the current 73GB maximum capacity.

The higher capacity STEC SSDs are available for Symmetrix now and Clarion and Celerra later this year. When the Celerra upgrade was announced in late February, the coming arrival of 400GB flash drives was indicated by Brad Bunce, EMC’s IP storage product marketing director.

EMC reckons that the cost-per-gigabyte of its SSDs compared to traditional Fibre Channel disk drives has reduced by 76 per cent over the past year. It is bragging that it’s delivering its second generation of tried and tested SSDs while other suppliers have yet to get their SSD offerings out of the door.

If we take a quick look at the capacity increase trend of such flash drives, then 2010 should see 1TB SSDs becoming available and their price might signal that the Fibre Channel disk drive’s days are numbered.

We could view a comment from EMC’s Barbara Robidoux, VP for storage marketing, as indicating this: “Customers are focused on being more efficient with their IT environments. The scalable performance, utilization and energy efficiency of enterprise flash technology combined with high-capacity, low-power SATA disk drives has provided them with a great one-two combination, helping them improve performance and save money.”

That’s the potential array future; a one-two combo of speedy SSD plus cheap bulk storage SATA drives.

URL: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/03/18/emc_gen2_ssd/

Samsung PB22-J 256GB SSD

Our new favourite solid-state drive

Review  The catchily named Samsung PB22-J MMDOE56G5MXP-0VB weighs in at 256GB and is the biggest SSD we’ve seen to date. Biggest, that is, in terms of capacity. Physically, it follows the usual 2.5in hard drive form-factor and measures 100 x 70 x 9.5mm. Cosmetically, it’s an attractive drive that has a brushed metal finish but, let’s face it, once the drive is installed, you couldn’t care less what it looks like.…

URL: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/03/17/review_storage_ssd_samsung_mmd0e56g5/