Yesterday, OCZ released a curious statement saying that it was unveiling a proprietary interface it's calling the “High-Speed Data Link” (HSDL) to accelerate connection to solid-state storage. The company is apparently unsatisfied with existing interface options (SAS, SATA, PCIe) and has developed HSDL to eliminate I/O bottlenecks and enable SSD technology to operate at its full potential. One HDSL can operate at transfer rates as fast as 20Gbps and multiple channels can be ganged for even higher transfer rates. The announcement also reveals an upcoming SSD to be called “IBIS” that will make use of the HDSL interface. Each IBIS drive will ship with single-port HDSL adapters and the company also plans to offer multiport adapters for systems that need multiple drives and more bandwidth. OCZ says it’s making HDSL an open standard and hopes to attract other vendors’ support for the high-speed storage interface.

The headline pretty much says it all. Memory vendor Elpida hit all the DRAM high notes in its most recent announcement of a new 30nm DDR3 SDRAM. First, Elpida says in one place in the press release that it will produce this SDRAM with a “30nm-level” process. However, most of the announcement doesn’t qualify “30nm” with “level” so this may well be a true 30nm process technology, which makes this quite advanced for an SDRAM process technology and ahead of other announces SDRAM production process technologies. For system designers, however, what’s important is that the 30nm process will produce SDRAMs that run on 1.35V, consume 15% less operating power and 10% less standby power than the company’s 40nm SDRAMs, and these SDRAMs can meet the DDR3-1866 transfer rate (although not at 1.35V). At 1.35V, the SDRAMs' operation is “limited” to DDF3-1600.

One really notable part of the Elpida announcement is its mention of 3D assembly using TSVs (through silicon vias). The Elpida release says: “The company also plans to use the process together with Through Silicon Via (TSV) technology to support one-chip memory solutions for mobile phones, digital still cameras and PC DRAMs.” Of course, the producers of high-volume mobile and consumer products are already using 3D chip packaging, but mostly rely on wire bonds to connect the stacked chips. A 3D assembly process based on TSVs promises a host of benefits including faster interchip I/O rates, lower operational power, less heat, and even lower assembly costs (at least eventually). So the inclusion of this mention in an SDRAM press release is really more significant than it may seem at first glance. However, system designers only realize these benefits when the chips are designed for TSVs—thus the importance of including this information in this announcement.

On October 5 through 7, LSI Corp will be hosting a conference and technology showcase in at the beautiful Crowne Plaza Hotel in suburban Milpitas, just north of San Jose. Allow me to especially point you to two interesting panels. The first is on 3D ICs, which is a topic that just keeps getting hotter. Sure, it’s a high-volume technology, but it has fascinated vendors up and down the food chain for decades and it seems that the technology’s time has now come thanks to the Lilliputian dimensions and corresponding component requirements of today’s mobile devices. That panel takes place on Wednesday at 1:30 pm.

Immediately following at 2:45 pm is a panel on the critical memory needs of networking ICs. Not many applications bang on memory the way like high-speed networking and this panel will cover the issues, today’s answers, and future directions as only Brocade, Cisco, Infinera, LSI, TSMC, and Memoir Systems can define them. By the way, I’m moderating this panel because I’m the author of the Denali Memory Report blog (http://www.denali.com/wordpress/) so I can assure you that this is going to be one excellent panel.

LSI’s event is open to anyone interested in LSI Corp’s new ASIC and standard product solutions, except for LSI’s competitors of course. If interested, check out www.lsi.com/AI-conference for registration details but hurry because seating is limited. I hear they’re giving away some iPads too, but please don’t attend just for that. There’s also lunch.

I’ve just started a new blog called the EDA360 Insider (http://eda360insider.wordpress.com/). It’s about the ins and outs of system design from a Cadence insider’s perspective. I’ll be covering topics associated with the three key facets of system design according to the EDA360 vision document: System Realization, SoC Realization, and Silicon Realization. If you’re involved in any form of system design, you might want to take a look. Thanks.

Samsung has announced that it is now shipping 8Gbyte DDR3 SODIMM SDRAM modules for high-end laptops that can accommodate that much memory. The modules are based on Samsung’s 40nm SDRAMs. (As noted previously, Samsung just announced production of 36nm SDRAM chips.) Many laptops aren’t designed to accommodate that much RAM, but Dell’s Precision M6500 mobile workstation can accommodate as many as four of these modules, for a total RAM capacity of 32 Gbytes. The Dell Precision M6500 has a 17-inch display, so it’s on the large side for a laptop PC. Dell is also placing two of these modules in its 15-inch Precision M4500 mobile workstation.

Last month, DRAMeXchange published rankings for the top “branded” NAND Flash vendors. No surprise, Samsung remains in the lead, selling almost $2 billion worth of NAND Flash chips during the quarter in a market that DRAMeXchange estimates as a $4.776 billion market. With those sales, Samsung pushed its market share just above 40%. Toshiba was in second place with a bit more than $1.5 billion in sales, for a 33% share. So between the #1 and #2 players, we see almost three-quarters of the NAND Flash market. Micron’s third with about 12% followed by Hynix and Intel. The market grew nearly 10% from 1Q09 to 1Q10.

Three of the end products clearly driving this sales growth for NAND Flash are the rising popularity of smart phones; the smash success of pad-like tablets, namely Apple’s iPad since competitors are only just now starting to appear (but when they come fully on line, watch out); and the rise in ebook reader consumption mainly driven by Amazon’s Kindle. These three application-driven product categories ensure a healthy, growing market for NAND Flash.

You can see all of DRAMeXchange’s numbers for 2Q10 here.

Note: Here’s a very informative video teardown of a Kindle 3 reader from Australia’s EE phenom Dave Jones:

An article in ComputerWorld reports that JEDEC (www.jedec.org) has just announced two new standards for evaluating SSD performance and reliability: JESD218 Solid-State Drive (SSD) Requirements and Endurance Test Method and JESD219 Solid-State Drive Endurance Workloads. JESD218 defines SSD requirements including conditions of use and corresponding endurance verification requirements. SSD endurance should be rated using standard use conditions for the appropriate SSD class, but the JEDEC standard also establishes requirements for additional use conditions as agreed to between manufacturer and purchaser. JESD219 defines workloads for the endurance rating and endurance verification of SSD application classes and is used along with JESD218. You can download both standards from the JEDEC site, if you’re a member.

You might also be interested in an SSD tutorial JEDEC is sponsoring on October 5 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. The tutorial features an in-depth technical session facilitated by Alvin Cox, a senior engineer with Seagate Technology and Chairman of JEDEC's JC-64.8 Subcommittee for Solid State Drives, and Steffen Hellmold, Vice President, Business Development with SandForce. The tutorial costs $175 for JEDEC members and $200 for non-members.

The Bright Side of News (BSN, www.bsn.com) Web site reports today that Crucial is selling its M225 drives for $1/Gbyte (256Gbytes = $256) but there’s a catch or two depending on your perspective. First, the BSN site points out that these are MLC drives and implies that they’re not the world’s fastest SSDs but Crucial’s 256Gbyte M225 drive has a rated read/write speed of 250/200 Mbytes/sec, which is not a shabby speed rating at all. An internal 64Mbyte DRAM buffer no doubt helps in that department. Second, and perhaps more important, these are refurbished drives. What “refurbished” means in the context of an SSD is anyone’s guess and is not clarified by Crucial's Web store listing.