Engadget is reporting that there have been confirmed cases of Intel’s newest firmware update and toolbox rendering the X25-M SSD inoperable under Windows 7. Intel officially responded, saying

Yes, we have been contacted by users with issues with the firmware upgrade for our 34nm SSDs and we are investigating. We take all sightings and issues seriously and are working toward resolution. We have temporarily taken down the firmware link while we investigate.

No further word is available yet, nor is there any known resolution for consumers whose drives have been damaged by the update.

Icrontic is heading to sunny Las Vegas this coming January for the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. We made a big splash last year, got some great coverage on many awesome gadgets and products, and we’ve got even bigger plans for 2010.

In addition to having more troops on the floor with the addition of Cliff Forster and Lincoln Russell to our coverage team, yours truly was recently tapped to sit on the judging panel for Last Gadget Standing.

Last Gadget Standing is known as a “supersession“, and last year it was the largest supersession. Half entertainment spectacle, half prescient prediction of what will be hot for the coming year, the LGS show has grown in popularity every year and is on track to be the largest at CES 2010 as well.

Judges submit finalists for the hottest gadgets of the show, and they are voted on by attendees in the audience as well as on the website during the show. The nominees use whatever tactics they can to entice the audience to cheer for their gadgets, whether it means hiring Elvis impersonators, dumping dirt on the audience (as Roomba did one year), or throwing free swag to the crowd. It is, after all, entertainment.

Here are some of the trends we’re looking forward to at CES 2010 and LGS: (more…)

It costs as much as your entire desktop.

After a redesign and six months on the burner, OCZ has finally released its PCI Express SSD solution.

Dubbed the “Z-Drive,” the new SSD product comes in two flavors: The e84 series with SLC NAND cells, and the p84 series with MLC NAND cells. Both variants are mated to 256MB of onboard cache and plug into a PCI Express x8 slot.

On the SLC front, the e84 drives offer the choice between 256GB or 512GB, with sustained performance at or around 800MBps read and 750MBps write, respectively. SLC is slightly quicker on the draw, and that’s reflected in the 16k IOPS to the 10k offered by the MLC cells in the e84.

The MLC-based e84, meanwhile, comes in 256GB-1TB flavors and tops out at 870/760MBps for the 1TB model. As we mentioned above, the p84s offer a “mere” 10k IOPS to the e84’s 16k.

The drives are available on the US side of the pond from Amazon and other retailers for $1560-$3370 USD.

Crucial recently entered the high-speed SSD game; how do their new goods stack up?

A firmware bug in Intel’s new 34nm SSDs prompted the firm to halt sales and shipments on July 31. The bug is now fixed and sales have resumed.

Fusion-io, makers of really really fast SSDs, announced a new line of workstation storage cards, the ioXtreme. Marketed primarily towards workstations used in film and television production, as well as high-end gaming rigs, the ioXtreme has an 80 gigabyte capacity and screaming fast transfer speeds averaging around 520 MB/second.

Icrontic spoke with David Flynn, Chief Technology Officer at Fusion-io. David was very excited about the ioXtreme and quite confident of its performance. This was made evident by his passion for his work, as well as Fusion-io’s presentation on the show floor at their booth. In fact, I would suggest that Fusion-io has one of the most impressive booth setups at SIGGRAPH this year. There is a wall of LCD displays, and across this wall is a composite of 1,200 different DVD quality video feeds, all playing at the same time via a single ioXtreme card. The video is completely smooth, with not a single hiccup to be found.

That's 1,200 DVD quality videos streaming at once

David stressed that the ioXtreme is not to be considered much of a storage drive, but rather a high speed method for moving data on a computer. He says the speed of the ioXtreme allows unprecedented response. For instance, it allows compositors to work on HD video feeds in real time.

David explained to us that we are in a new world order of multiple core processors. We buy more cores rather than faster processors. As a result, I/O required an overhaul. Standard hard drives become a bottle neck. Disk drives are great at mass storage, but slow to move large sets of data. The ioXtreme’s strongest suit is pushing data quickly and reliably. The two types of storage devices working together creates an ideal setup that pushes information at blazing speeds.

The ioXtreme will retail at the manageable price of $895, besting most single level cell SSDs on the market today. Its release will be soon, and prospective buyers can join a mailing list on their site to be notified of when the card becomes available.

Intel has halted sales of its new 34nm SSDs as a result of a firmware bug which renders the drive’s data inaccessible if users configure and then alter or disable a BIOS password.

Here’s a video of how solid state drives are made.

Enthusiasts are excited about the SSD’s tantalizing possibilities, but it’s true that most of us would rather take one square in the jewels than summon the bones for solid state. Might the SSD market soon emerge from the ninth level of pricing hell? If Intel — and their herculean manufacturing capacity — has anything to say about it, that just might be the case.

Intel has announced that the next generation of the X25-M SSD that stunned reviewers with its speed and reliability will soon launch to the tune of massive price cuts.

What’s the big deal?

While most NAND cells that lie at the heart of any SSD are fabbed on a 50nm process node, the new X25-M models use a brand new 34nm process. The transition to the 34nm process does nothing for the drive’s sustained sequential speeds which remain at 250/70MBps read/write, but it has improved read/write seek and read/write latency to 65µs/85µs and 4.2ms/4.7ms respectively.

Most importantly, however, the transition to 34nm allows for the production of some 30% more cells per wafer. As the PC industry is no stranger to the laws of supply and demand, the savings have been passed on to us in the form of a 60% price cut. That’s right: The new X25-M drives are 60% cheaper than their predecessors.

VP and GM of Intel’s NAND Solutions Group Randy Wilhelm explains that the transition was about performance and cost.

“Our goal was to not only be first to achieve 34nm NAND flash memory lithography, but to do so with the same or better performance than our 50nm version,” he said. “We made quite an impact with our breakthrough SSDs last year, and by delivering the same or even better performance with today’s new products, our customers, both consumers and manufacturers, can now enjoy them at a fraction of the cost.”

Cost and models

The new X25-M will be dropping in 80GB and 160GB flavors, though a 320GB model is expected by the beginning of next year.

Intel X25-M 80GB (SSDSA2MH080G2C1): $225.00 USD
Intel X25-M 160GB (SSDSA2MH160G2C1): $440.00 USD

Perks and musings

Once Windows 7 launches in volume, Intel has pledged to join manufacturers like OCZ and GSkill with a firmware update to support the heavily-touted ATA TRIM command. The new command will allow SSDs to keep tabs on the whereabouts of their free space so they can continue to maintain a consistent level of performance throughout their lifetime. Solid state disks without TRIM are doomed to performance decay that can only be righted through a hard wipe of the disk’s contents.

We can all agree that the $/GB ratio of the X25-M is not a stone’s throw away from toppling the mechanical drive. But we can agree that an instant 60% price cut to one of the market’s fastest drives is an exciting event. Between etailer markdown, future price cuts and competitor response, the SSD may just be finally coming into its own.

While other memory manufacturers have been big players in the SSD race, Crucial has remained largely absent until this week’s introduction of the modestly-named M225 SSD series.

Crucial has been a long-time player in the memory market. Through flash cards, memory modules and flash drives, the consumer arm of Micron Technology has cemented a reputation for quality in solid state media. It is for this reason that many have been perplexed by Crucial’s lack of activity in the SSD space beyond a selection of sluggish parts in the RealSSD line.

But it seems that Crucial’s time in the slow lane is coming to an end. The recent acquisition of Lexar Media’s generous solid state portfolio (not to mention its manufacturing tech) appears to have primed Crucial’s ambitions in the budding performance SSD space.

The new Crucial M225 products are priced for immediate sales and can be yours in one of three flavors:

• 64GB (CT64M225): 200MBps read/150MBps write
• 128GB (CT128M225): 250MBps read/190MBps write
• 256GB (CT256M225): 250MBps read/200MBps write

The M225 line uses MLC NAND cells which we reckon are sourced from Micron (surprise), while the sustained I/O numbers point to an Indilinx controller.

Enterprise SSD maker WhipTail has recently announced the introduction of a 6TB SSD which sounds fabulous until you hear that it’s all jammed into a 2U enclosure. Talk about buzzkill.

SUMMIT, N.J. – July 8, 2009 – Today, WhipTail Technologies Inc., a provider of solidstate drive (SSD) tier 0 storage appliances, announced availability of its 6TB WhipTail^TMSSD appliance. Still manufactured as a 2 rack unit (2U), this makes WhipTail the highest-capacity SSD tier 0 appliance available to mid- to large-sized enterprises, with the smallest footprint.

OCZ Technology has announced an upgrade to their popular Vertex line of SSDs. The new Turbo-branded parts boost read speeds from 230-250MB/s to 240-270MB/s, while write speeds have jumped from 135-180MB/s to 145-210MB/s.

The performance boost is owed to a pair of improvements: New proprietary firmware for the flash transition layer enhances access times and a 14MHz boost for what is now 64MB of 180MHz onboard SDR cache improves throughput.

And now we break for an obligatory cut to the firm’s PR wire:

OCZ Vertex Turbo Series provides a cutting-edge design for enthusiasts looking to transform their desktops or laptops. Enabled by a proprietary firmware and 64MB of 180MHz DRAM cache, the Vertex Turbo Edition ramps up performance levels to new heights, while providing the snappy computing, longer battery life, and shorter boot-ups users have enjoyed from the original. The Vertex Turbo delivers best-in-class read and write speeds clocking in at up to 270MB/s read and 210MB/s write along with the lower power consumption and superior durability compared to conventional hard drives.