Intel could sell off its flash and SSD business

Intel has announced its Q1 fiscal 2008 earnings and CEO Paul Otelllini has hinted that the remaining flash business may be sold off.

Otellini reiterated his committment to sorting out the flash business, but not, specifically not, to making a success of it. This business has been hit by lower prices per GB. Flash production increased from the last quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of this year as a new Intel flash foundry came into operation. Chip capacity doubled but prices went down. There is over-supply and little prospect of prices going back up in the near-term.

Researcher iSuppli has forecast a flash slump.

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First de-duplicating front-end for Dell/EqualLogic

Exagrid has produced a de-duplicating appliance tailored to front-end a Dell/EqualLogic PS-Series iSCSI SAN array and approved by Dell.

The ExaGrid iSCSI De-duplication Gateway is a 1U rack unit holding an Intel Dual Core XEON processor, Intel motherboard and ExaGrid Software which carries out byte-level data deplication.

Normally such an embedded server is paired with ExaGrid’s own disk storage to provide a NAS-type disk-to-disk (D2D) backup target for standard backup applications. What ExaGrid has done is to decouple its server from its storage and use Dell/EqualLogic PS Series IP SAN storage as the backend.

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NAND flash memory host interface spec ratified

A specification for a host computer intrface to non-volatile memory has been produced by a working group set up by Dell, Intel and Microsoft (DIM).

The not very charismatically named Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface (NCMHCI) working group was set up about a year ago, chaired by Intel which was then not keen to get out of the flash memory business at all. How times change? Virtually the same day that Intel CEO Paul Otellini is talking about, nod, wink, Intel examining all options for its flash business, the working group issues a ratified v1.0 specification.

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Thin provisioning all the way

FalconStor has enhanced the technology in its foundation IPStor platform with virtual storage appliances, and released significantly improved network storage server and continuous data protection products, extending thin provisioning to replication and disaster recovery. It can also accelerate storage performance through solid state disk (SD) appliances.

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UK IT buyers see no ships

Perhaps using a Nelsonian blind eye, UK IT buyers don’t see any recession, well, maybe one in 2010.

That’s the result from a B2net-sponsored survey in the UK. Today there are predictions that employment in London’s financial district could see 40,000 job losses. Despite this IT buyers are optimistic – 64 per cent believe a recession is unlikely in the next few years.

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Q4 guidance down

Hard disk drive market leader Seagate reported a solid third quarter in its fiscal 2008 but sees bumps in the road ahead.

The company stated it made about 43 million drive units in its Q3. Net revenue grew 10 percent year-on-year to $3.1 billion, and net income increased 62 percent year-on-year to $344 million.

CEO Bill Watkins said: “We are pleased with Seagate’s solid operational and financial performance in the quarter driven by continued strong global demand for storage products. Further, we delivered strong year-over-year revenue and earnings growth in the third quarter. We continue to believe that there is significant opportunity in the notebook and retail markets – two areas where the company recently has not performed to expectation. We expect to see improved performance in these areas in the June quarter and through the calendar year.”

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We were there before you

Flash solid state drive (SSD) manufacturer STEC cannot understand how Seagate has grounds to sue considering that STEC built SSDs as early as 1994, long before any of the disputed patents were issued to Seagate.

Seagate CEO Bill Watkins (pictured left) has said STEC is, in effect, stealing Seagate’s intellectual property.

Seagate is sueing STEC for infringing four Seagate patents dealing with how SSDs interface to a host computer and how errors are detected and corrected. The four patents in question are U.S. Patent Nos. 6,404,647 (issued in 2002), 6,849,480 (issued in 2005), 6,336,174 (issued in 2002) and 7,042,664 (issued in 2006).

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Can store a petabyte

For a petabyte-class moving experience use Data Islandia’s data scooter to transfer files to its Iceland-based data centre archive facility.

Data Islandia offers secure and energy-efficient off-shore archiving relying on 100 percent renewable energy resources. Its problem is how to get the vast amounts of corporate archival data, terabytes of the stuff, into its remote storage facility.

The company has come up with a near-roll-along solution, a Hitachi Data Systems CAP (Content Archive Platform) product packaged inside a robust and wheeled case, the data scooter. This is wheeled into a corporate data centre and hooked up to its network. Files are transferred across to it and, when complete, the data scooter is then transferred to an airport and, using jumbo net, transferred to Data Islandia’s Icelandic data centre.

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Its growth rate just got increased

IDC has increased the growth rate for InfiniBand in the 2007-2011 period due to accelerated InfiniBand take up.

An InfiniBand fabric has servers or storage devices connected to it by host channel adapters (HCA) and intervening InfiniBand switches. The current bandwidth is 20Gbit/s with 40Gbit/s just beginning – Mellanox has started shipping 40Gbit/s product – far beyond 10Gbit/s Ethernet or 8Gbit/s Fibre Channel.

IDC reckons that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for InfiniBand HCA shipments from 2007 to 2011 should be 51.5 percent, up from its previous 29.3 percent, with shipments reaching 991,878 in 2011 and HCA revenues reaching $279.7 million.

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High-definition recording capacity

Panasonic Broadcast has announced an unprecedented 64GB capacity P2 flash card for its solid state camcorders and connection to desktop and laptop computers.

The AJ-P2C064 card has double the capcity of the 32GB product announced in November last year, and four times that of the 16GB P2 card announced earlier last year. This is a quadrupling of capacity in just over twelve months.

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