M-Sys Releases 90GB Fastest Flash Disk

[Hyper Saxon]

M-Sys Releases 90GB Fastest Flash Disk
By: César A. Berardini - "Cesar"
Mar. 10th, 2004 03:29 pm


M-Systems announced today it has released a new solid-state flash disk with Ultra ATA interface in a 2.5" disk casing up to 90GBytes. M-Systems' FFD are state-of-the-art solid-state flash disks, which are designed as drop-in replacements for 3.5" and 2.5" ATA and SCSI mechanical hard disks. The new FFD 2.5" Ultra ATA is an ATA-6 flash disk with an interface speed of 100MB/s, supporting Ultra DMA 5 transfer mode.

"The FFD 2.5" Ultra ATA provides five times the performance of the FFD IDE Plus and is designed for applications that need the fastest read write rates such as video recording," said Ofer Tsur, M-Systems' marketing manager for FFD products. "The ability to offer higher capacities in slimmer casing makes the FFD Ultra ATA an ideal solution for rugged laptops, tactical computers and other demanding applications."

But don't get too excited yet. This is not what M-Systems is cooking for the Xbox sucessor. Anyway, it is interesting to see what Microsoft partners are up to and what innovative solutions they bring to the industry. Without a doubt, Microsoft chose right when it selected M-Systems as a solid state memory provider.

Thanks to The Inquirer for the heads-up.
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This is an article I found on Team Xbox's web site. As this article states, this isn't what Xbox owners are going to be using for memory. But just think about it, the Xbox's HD contains approximately 8 GB of data storage. From what this article is stating, M-Systems can make memory units for Xbox with even more space on them than the Xbox HD!

How much data will a memory unit hold? I dunno, but from the looks of things M-Sys is capable of cramming a bunch of data into em! You'll definitely only need to buy one of them. So everyone who thinks they're going to have to buy tons of memory units for Xbox Next had better think twice :)

And since these things will have a ton of data on them, things like downloadable content and custom music aren't entirely out of the question either. Exact specifics on what M-Systems is going to make are uncertain as of yet but expect Microsoft and M-Systems to announce more on this soon.

[Hyper Saxon]

bump bump bumpity bump look at Frosty go!

[Thegaminggamer]

I would definitely not dislike it if this was to replace Xbox 2's hd. This or something like it would make a killer substitute.

[Hyper Saxon]

Hurray someone agrees with me!

I think it would be awesome if you could save music on one of those and then play it in a custom music player or something like that, and then you could save all your game data on there, downloads and XBL info too. And you wouldn't even have to worry about running out of room because... well, you wouldn't!

[Sega_Sage]

The thing about portable memory devices on a large scale, is that they get pretty expensive. A 128MB portable hard drive runs you about $70 at Target. One that comes with about 1.5GB's runs $250. A zip drive even runs you about $70 for a low end one. I imagine that whatever the XBOX 2 uses it will not amount to 100's of MB's or even GB's. It will most likely revert to older game related standards of blocks, but with a high density.

For instance, the offical SEGA brand memory card for the Sega Saturn cost about $30 back in the day, but had something like 7,000 blocks of space. The average saturn game only consumed 25 blocks or less
(unless it was an RPG, sports game or Virtua Fighter 2). That is over 300 game saves off of a single cartridge. And it didn't require a hard drive.

All Microsoft needs is a storage medium that saves games based on their relative physical consumption rather than Sony's old system which all games took up 1 or 2 blocks even if they didn't need the full space. The old SEGA method was efficent and cheap and guaranteed lots of save capactiy without compression (which risks file corruption). I personally think that is the route that Microsoft will take.

[Hyper Saxon]

You do have a point with the expense factor, the more memory it has means it'll be more expensive. But I could care less as long as I only have to buy one of them. For M-Systems to make some tiny memory units with a few measily MBs in them would be kinda stupid since they're capable of so much more than that. But I definitely wouldn't expect anything along the lines of 90 GB in em cuz that's just ridiculous.

All they really need to give us is what's required in order to save everything we need to save. That includes everything from custom music to downloadable content. 90 GB would be ludacris plus it'd be way too expensive. My guess is it'll definitely be more than the 8 GB that the Xbox HD contains.

[xdscast]

The thing about portable memory devices on a large scale, is that they get pretty expensive. A 128MB portable hard drive runs you about $70 at Target. One that comes with about 1.5GB's runs $250. A zip drive even runs you about $70 for a low end one. I imagine that whatever the XBOX 2 uses it will not amount to 100's of MB's or even GB's. It will most likely revert to older game related standards of blocks, but with a high density.

For instance, the offical SEGA brand memory card for the Sega Saturn cost about $30 back in the day, but had something like 7,000 blocks of space. The average saturn game only consumed 25 blocks or less
(unless it was an RPG, sports game or Virtua Fighter 2). That is over 300 game saves off of a single cartridge. And it didn't require a hard drive.

All Microsoft needs is a storage medium that saves games based on their relative physical consumption rather than Sony's old system which all games took up 1 or 2 blocks even if they didn't need the full space. The old SEGA method was efficent and cheap and guaranteed lots of save capactiy without compression (which risks file corruption). I personally think that is the route that Microsoft will take.

those arent factory direct prices, a Gefore 3 when it was top was about $90, then slumped to $30 a year later, despite being a $500 chip.