Seagate has thrown its gauntlet into the SSD fray with Pulsar, but only for the enterprise market, for now.

CORP TALK: The corps are talking, and hard drive manufacturer Seagate is finally throwing its gauntlet into the Solid State Drive (SSD) fray.

Called the Pulsar, the SSD is part of Seagate’s enterprise family, offering up to 200GB capacity in a 2.5-inch SATA-interfacing form factor.

It’s also based on single-level cell (SLC) flash memory technology, where one bit of data occupies a single cell of flash memory for optimum performance (as opposed to multi-level cell, MLC, where four bits of data occupies one cell). With SLC, the drive is marked with a low 0.44% AFR (annualized failure rate) rating and comes with a 5-year limited warranty.

Performance peaks at up to 30,000 read IOPS (input/output ops per second) and 25,000 write IOPS, and the Pulsar gives 240MB/s sequential read and 200 MB/s sequential write speeds on paper.  The Pulsar was shipped to select OEM customers in September 2009. For more information, check here.

Navin Danapal, Editor, HWM Malaysia

Navin (HWM Malaysia): Seagate may be the latest to join the foray of the SSD market, as the shift from hard drives move to flash drives, but aside from the high cost of SSD versus HDD, there is also another issue that hasn’t been solved by SSD makers which is only apparent upon usage.

This is the rapid deterioration of SSD performance which is highly noticeable over the course of time.

This drop in performance can quickly make a speeding netbook, notebook or even desktop start crawling to its knees when in the beginning it was zipping faster than its hard drive counterparts.

With rival Western Digital soon to release their SSDs, the hard drive market will have to battle it out not only with evolving hard drive brands, but existing flash drive and even memory players, who are beginning to etch their mark in the SSD territory. (more…)

Will SSD prices fall to a level that can beat HDD or even Blu-ray Disc on a per GB level in the next 3 years?

T&A: Nikkei Electronics Asia has just released a feature story on the challenges Solid State Disks (SSDs) are posing to traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs).

What’s interesting with the feature is how it begins by talking about Baidu.com, the world’s third largest search engine in terms of searches (according to comScore Inc.), and how the China-based firm plans to utilize SSD (instead of HDDs) for almost every tenths of their search servers and 100% for Web search servers. (Editor opinions: 1) (more…)

The CeBIT 09-announced ASUS Lamborghini VX5 boasts a 1-terabyte solid state drive, Core 2 Quad processor, 16-inch Full HD display, NVIDIA GeForce graphics and Blu-ray drive.

T&A: Looks like ultra-large storage space with no moving parts is fast becoming a hot topic, especially when it comes bundled in a top-of-the-line notebook. Unveiled at the CeBIT tradeshow, currently ongoing in Hannover, Germany (of which yes, our Vijay Anand, Editor for HardwareZone.com is there reporting), ASUS has revealed its latest ASUS Lamborghini VX5 notebook which packs the 1-terabyte solid state drive (SSD). 

The notebook itself boasts an Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 4GB memory, 16.9-inch Full HD display, an NVIDIA GeForce GT130M graphics chipset with GDDR3 1GB VRAM, illuminated keyboard and a Blu-ray Disc combo optical drive. 

No pricing info yet, but we’re guessing it’s going to be as stratospheric as the high-end specs here.

CORP TALK: Toshiba Corporation and Fujitsu Limited reached an agreement to transfer Fujitsu’s hard disk drive (HDD) business to Toshiba with the aim to complete the transaction in the fiscal first quarter of 2009. Toshiba will acquire an estimated 80% stake in a new subsidiary within Toshiba, while Fujitsu will hold the remaining 20% over some time to ensure a smooth transition.

With the transfer of Fujitsu's HDD business into its fold, Toshiba's goal to become a leading storage provider in the 2.5-inch space will be further boosted after it announced a half-terabyte (512GB) 2.5-inch SSD hard drive in December 2008.

According to the MOU, Fujitsu will transfer its HDD design, development, manufacturing, sales and all other functions to Toshiba, except Fujitsu’s HDD head and media businesses. The transfer also includes HDD manufacturing subsidiaries in the Philippines (FCPP) and Thailand (FTC), and HDD sales and marketing offices outside Japan.

David Chieng, Editor, HWM Singapore

David (HWM SG): Hard disk drives are notoriously low margin businesses from the retailer point of view; and even more so when it comes to the manufacturer, especially since we’re seeing the total cost of storage dropping like a rock year on year. This is great for the end user, but not so good for the manufacturer, making competition extremely intense. After all, Seagate bought up Maxtor not too long ago, leaving the desktop hard disk drive market dominated by Seagate and Western Digital. (more…)