MLC Flash Disk on PCIe Mini Card by STEC

STEC, Inc., a designer, manufacturer and marketer of solid state drives (SSDs), announced a new SSD optimized for the emerging category of low cost, ultra mobile PCs. The Ultra-Mobile Solid State Drive (UM-SSD) is in the PCIe mini card form factor — an ideal total storage solution for ultra-mobile, low-cost PC (UMPC) applications. The UM-SSD offers superior performance and reliability and thus a compelling alternative to HDDs as the main storage technology within ultra-mobile notebooks.

In order to enable this category of PC, the primary storage needs to be low cost, high performance and highly reliable. In order to achieve those characteristics, the storage must utilize MLC-NAND, it must have a high performance 4-channel controller, and it must have high levels of data reliability. To date, the alternative storage technologies available for the UMPC have been based on SLC-NAND, have not had the right controller technology, nor had the right data reliability capabilities.

"STEC’s core technology around high reliability and high performance solid state drives enables us to meet the storage requirements of new product categories that range from the Enterprise storage to notebook computing products," said Patrick Wilkison, vice president of marketing and business development at STEC. "By leveraging our innovative, proprietary controller technology we can deliver unrivaled performance and reliability at extremely low prices — making low-cost SSD storage a reality for cost-sensitive applications."

Ultra-mobile PC manufacturers will find the UM-SSD of interest due to its high performance, reliability and encryption features. While most alternative products in this category suffer from limitations in write performance and reliability, the UM-SSD product delivers the type of performance and reliability which make it suitable as the primary storage medium as a replacement for HDDs. Product specifications include:

• Performance (sustained sequential speeds) — 55MB/s read speeds, 25MB/s write speeds with MLC NAND
• Reliability: Full datapath protection, advanced static + dynamic wear-leveling, power-loss data protection, strong 8-bit error correction capabilities, and STEC’s ‘LCM – Life-Cycle Management’ feature which provides drive vitality metrics while the drive is deployed
• Interfaces: SATA and PATA/IDE (UDMA 6)
• Dimensions: 50.95mm(L) x 30.0mm(W) x 2.4mm(T)
• Compatible: with all ultra mobile PCs

"STEC is traditionally viewed as an Enterprise SSD company, and we remain fully committed to that Enterprise market," said Wilkison. "Our new product offerings allow us to offer solid state storage to a new category of non-Enterprise applications, thus expanding our reach and enabling new applications. We view these as important complementary markets with good scale; according to IDC, the market is projected to exceed 5 million units annually in 2009."

Availability
MACH4 PCIe Mini Card is sampling today and is expected to be in mass production in July 2008 with capacities up to 32GB (in increments of 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB). Capacities of 64GB are expected in the first quarter of 2009.