Hitachi, which partners with South
Korea's LG Data Storage to make storage
devices, on Oct. 4 introduced what it called the world's first hybrid NAND
flash optical disk drive with its own on-board storage.
Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology supplies its new 25-nanometer NAND as the
flash memory for the new optical disk drive, oddly enough acronymed ODD. The
chip debuted
last February as the result of a cooperative project with Intel.
The new 25-nm, 2-bit-per-cell chip can hold 8GB of data storage, more than 10
times the 700MB capacity of a standard CD. The chip measures a mere 167 square
millimeters, making it small enough to fit through the hole in the middle of a
CD.
The small size of the flash chip is a big advantage to the manufacturing
process of the drive itself in that it allows designers more flexibility to fit
it into the layout.
The new HLDS (Hitachi LG Data Storage partnership) hybrid drive will be used in
PCs, DVD players and Blu-ray products.
The first edition of the drive will come in embedded flash memory capacities of
16GB, 32GB and 64GB. Higher NAND capacities will be available in future
versions.
The HLDS Hybrid Drive is
designed for thin and light notebooks that traditionally have space for one
drive, Micron said. It can be used for client-side applications that in the
past would have employed a hard disk or solid-state drive for long-term
storage.
In these deployments, the hybrid drive would be used for caching and launching
applications and providing an improvement in system performance, including
faster boot times.
HLDS will be demonstrating the Hybrid Drive
using Micron's 25-nm NAND at the CEATEC conference Oct. 5-9 in Japan.
They will begin showing up in devices later this fall.
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