Samsung is looking to sell the unit for US$1.5 billion, but it may consider a deal under US$1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. A potential buyer is Seagate Technology.

IM Flash Technologies (IMFT), Intel and Micron's joint venture, released 25 nanometer (nm) circuitry a little over a year ago. In the next few weeks, IMFT plans to annouce 20nm NAND flash chip production.

SanDisk expects tablet sales will increase from 17 million units in 2010 to nearly 205 million units by 2014. The firm also estimates the flash based storage per device (SSD storage) will more than triple during the same period from 31 Gb/unit in 2010 to 96 Gb/unit in 2014.

Fusion-io, a maker of NAND flash memory cards that enhance the performance of data center servers, has announced that it plans an initial public offering it hopes can raise US$150 million.

"Hard disk drives will serve the bulk of the laptop market for many years to come as makers of solid state drives remain overstretched to meet ever-growing demand for laptop storage..."

OCZ Technology Group, a provider of high-performance solid-state drives, has said that it expects to report record revenue of about US$64 million in its fiscal fourth quarter, nearly double the level of a year ago.

Although more flash production capacity is coming online, SanDisk CEO Sanjay Mehrotra downplayed the risk that oversupply will hurt prices this year.

"We are excited to complete the transition to the next generation 2Xnm NAND components which reiterates our strategy of producing high performance SSDs at the most attractive price point available for consumer applications," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology.

OCZ Technology, a provider of solid-state drives (SSD) for computing devices and systems, has signed an agreement with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) for asset-based financing of up to US$25 million.

Western Digital again shipped more disk drives than Seagate in the fourth quarter of 2010, although Seagate's stronger enterprise presence allowed it to top WD in overall revenues.

OCZ Technology, once primarily known for its DRAM/memory products, has in recent years expanded its product portfolio to include cooling products and power supplies. Another product category that has seen large gains for the company has been the SSD market.

The upgrade reflects improving 2011 prospects for NAND flash memory demand, driven by tablets, smartphones and solid-state drives. The improving demand picture offsets concerns about higher supply due to new NAND fabs from Samsung, Toshiba and Micron expanding production in 2011.

Smart Modular Technologies has said prices of DRAM chips were decelerating at 20-25%, hurting profits, especially in its key Brazil markets that account for over half of its revenues.

Samsung Electronics has said its new SSD with built-in hardware encryption provides the highest level of protection against unauthorized access to sensitive information on a lost or stolen laptop.

This new investment round was led by Intel Capital and includes new funding from strategic investors and Anobit's current investors. Anobit is a provider of NAND-based products and systems ranging from embedded flash controllers to enterprise-class SSD.

New suggested pricing for the Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD is now US$199 for an 80GB drive. Users can double the storage capacity with a 160GB X25-M drive for US$415. The company has also added a new 120GB version of the Intel X25-M for US$249.

Revenue in the company's core SSD product line totaled US$20.2 million, an increase of 81% from the US$11.1 million posted in the second quarter of fiscal 2010. "The discontinuance of our commodity memory products has allowed us to aggressively reallocate resources towards SSD growth," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology.

OCZ Technology is teaming up with SandForce to deliver exceptional new SSD products that leverage SATA3 and cost-effective NAND flash components. OCZ is set to begin sample distribution to current and potential clients in the fourth quarter of 2010, with mass production beginning in the first quarter of 2011.

Pliant Technology has introduced a new family of lower-cost, higher-capacity solid state drives (SSD) based on consumer-grade NAND flash memory but built for data center use.

OCZ Technology is discontinuing the production of some lower-margin DRAM products as part of a shift to focus on higher-margin specialty and high-performance memory products.

A leaked slide of Intel's nine-month solid state drive (SSD) roadmap shows a 400GB multi-level cell (MLC) enterprise solid state drive due in the first quarter of 2011.

SanDisk's SSD P4 and SSD G4 offer up to 128GB and 256GB of storage, respectively, double the capacities of the company's previous SSD offerings.

Greenliant, a new company headed by SST's former management, will use the acquired product lines to form the core of its solid-state storage product portfolio for the embedded system, data center, and mobile Internet markets.

We all know that for the absolute best throughput of storage available to us today, it's in solid-state-drives. The problem with SSDs is cost and the limited storage capacity in comparison to the magnetic solutions. But upcoming solutions from Seagate and Toshiba may be able to come up with something in between.

"I think it'll be a story in 2011, and it'll be pretty good penetration in 2012. But, you know, maybe I'm wrong," said Mark Durcan, president and CEO of Micron Technology.

The 32GB model is being positioned for use as a boot drive for basic setups, whereas the the larger 256GB SSD is reccomended for use in more high-end systems.

A new research report predicts that the number of solid-state drives (SSD) in enterprise servers and storage systems will explode over the next five years, increasing by a factor of 50.

OCZ Technology has been approved to be listed on the Nasdaq Capital Markets and will commence trading its common stock under ticker symbol "OCZ" on April 23.

Ultimately, only ramped up production will drive SSD prices down, and that is not expected to begin until 2011.

Micron Technology will bring faster interfaces to its enterprise SSD (solid-state disk) line in June when it begins shipping its P300 drives to makers of storage equipment.

On the heels of OCZ Technology's release of its first sub-US$100 solid-state drive (SSD), Intel has revealed it is shipping a US$125 SSD called the X25-V Value SATA SSD.

Plextor, a maker of optical drives, has announced the release of its first-generation SSDs that use Marvell controller chipsets. Plextor SSDs are available now, with MSRP around US$225 for 64GB and US$400 for 128GB.

The drives have arrived more than a year after SanDisk announced them, and more than six months after they were originally supposed to ship. A spokeswoman said the delay was due to a desire to "optimize" the product.

Researchers from Toshiba and the Keio University in Tokyo have jointly created a 1TB SSD prototype the size of a small postage stamp, consisting of 128 NAND flash memory chips and one controller chip.

Intel wants to avoid the cyclical, market share game in the NAND flash chip sector against the likes of Samsung, Hynix and Toshiba. But Intel dropped hints it wants to unseat Samsung as the No. 1 player in SSDs.

Currently Seagate makes a Pulsar SSD with a 3Gbit/s SATA interface. It fits in a 2.5-inch HDD slot in a disk drive enclosure. A PCIe-connected SSD fits into a server as a plug-in flash card and that's where LSI comes in.

MO-300 defines the dimensions, layout and connector position for very small form factor (50.8x29.85mm) SSDs with the new mini-SATA interface connector. Supporting 1.5Gb/s and 3.0Gb/s data transfer rates, the mSATA connector is designed especially for netbooks and other portable electronics devices.

OCZ said it will demonstrate an external hard drive at the CES show in Las Vegas. The drive uses Symwave's USB 3.0 storage controller and will deliver 10 times the transfer rate of USB 2.0 - which transfers data at 5Gb/s.