If NAND flash is the fuel, than a controller is the engine. This article takes a look at controller and firmware, it’s importance, and the players that “Own the Controller”. The first debate is what’s more important, the controller itself, or the firmware that drives it? While a debatable issue, we can certainly agree that one does not work without the other. Further, significant Intellectual Property …

Tonight is Hollywood’s big night!  Will you be watching the Oscar’s or surfing the net? The red carpet events are worth watching, looking to see who has the best dress, best hair, all the important things. Then of course there is the fact that Billy Crystal will be hosting. As for all the rest, who wins what and who they wish to thank, …

Up until this morning, the most recognizable characteristic of a ‘SandForce Driven’ SSD was the fact that it’s capacities were always 60, 120, 240 or 480GB, unlike the standard of 64, 128, 256 and 512GB. This was a strong clue which supported our belief that LSI SandForce and Intel had teamed up for manufacture of their enthusiast level 520 Series …

Rosewill has had a renaissance of sorts in the case market.  Trying to provide the right mix of features at the right price is always going to be a challenge “ its a moving target. Lately though, Rosewill has been getting it right and some of their recent offerings have been very well received by enthusiasts. The Ranger-M Chassis seeks …

Have you ever had the chance to be a part of history? Anyone who has been to Niagara Falls, Ontario, and has been on the Maid of the Mist boat tour, can pretty much consider themselves just that. After 165 years, The Niagara Parks Commission has decided that good work ethic and commitment doesn’t amount o much and has chosen a new company …

Recent years have seen the consolidation of the memory market to three Tier 1 players, Hynix, Micron and Samsung. This consolidation was the result of enormous CAPEX requirements, coupled with a highly volatile commodity, DRAM. Today’s NAND Flash landscape is broad, compared to DRAM, however possesses the very same traits. Players today include Hynix, Intel, Micron, SanDisk, Samsung and Toshiba. …

It was just over a year ago that we analyzed the Runcore ProV 3Gbps 240GB SSD as one of the top SSDs available, then surpassing some RAID configuration performance results. As amazing as that review was, it now stands to be a great example of how far SSD technology has progressed this past year. This report looks at Runcore’s ProV Max …

Understanding SSDs Performance and Implications Today’s SSD close up is going to teach us the most valuable thing we can ever learn about an SSD. This is the fourth paper in a series of articles that explain the benefits, types and components of a solid state drive and will go so far as to make up our SSD Beginners Guide …

Maingear, well known for their high performance custom PCs, has announced the release of their Titan 17 gaming laptop. Fully decked out, this beast will include a Core i7-3960x, 32 GB of ram, 2 Geforce GTX 580Ms in SLI, each with a 2GB framebuffer and, the star of this show, 1.8 TB of SSD storage. In this configuration, the brimming behemoth …

Well I guess the secrets out by now.  Intel has this morning officially released it’s new enthusiast level Intel 520 Series SSD and it is none other than ‘SandForce Driven’.  What’s that, you say!? Our report today is a complete analysis of the Intel 520 240GB 6Gbps SSD and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this is only …