PCIe is becoming popular for flash memory storage devices since it offers much faster data rates than traditional SATA , SAS or Fibre Channel interfaces, which flash memory storage devices can make use of.
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Some of these interfaces are based upon historical storage interfaces developed for hard disk drives (SATA and SAS) while some are being developed, more or less from the ground up, for flash memory storage devices.
SanDisk competes with other companies that make memory chips or storage devices like Micron and Samsung, Western Digital, Seagate and EMC.
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Other products such as the i-FlashDrive from PhotoFast create USB memory access for external storage devices.
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Although in decline over the last year or so notebook computer makers appear to be poised to offer thin and light weight, reasonably priced products that provide performance and power use like those of flash memory devices with the storage costs of hard disk drives.
Virtualisation provides a way of hiding a computer's resources its central processor, operating system, internal memory, network controller, and storage devices behind a software curtain.
This means that flash memory devices using this technology could have storage capacities of over 200 GB for the price of 64 GB today, by about 2016.
While rival Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people) has launched several players and other devices that use its proprietary Memory Stick storage cartridges, Matsushita has been working with several companies, including Toshiba and SanDisk (nasdaq: SNDK - news - people), to make the SD Card technology and industry standard.
In addition the higher costs of flash memory versus magnetic storage will probably limit the use of these storage devices to acceleration applications for some time to come.
Consumer devices use common digital storage technology such as flash memory, hard disk drives or optical discs.
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These devices use flash memory to create a rugged and low power internal storage.
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On EC2, available CPU, storage, and available memory can be orders of magnitudes larger than on mobile devices.
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That is why I believe that for some users, tablets and other mobile devices will need more local storage than is affordable using flash memory alone.
These postage-stamp-sized bits of flash memory are quickly turning into a major force for consumer electronic devices that need lots of storage in a small space.
Finally storage tiering and the combinations of storage and memory are undergoing a revolution as flash memory and perhaps other solid state storage technology such as MRAM find niches in more and more devices.
Flash memory is the backbone of modern mobile consumer devices and the higher performance and ruggedness of this storage technology make it attractive for computer application as well.
At the Flash Memory Summit Toshiba demonstrated their hybrid hard disk drive, joining Seagate as a provider of these storage devices that can provide performance similar to that of SSD with the storage costs closer to that of hard disk drives.
Flash memory has played an important role in these mobile consumer devices because it is rugged, flash memory chips can be stacked to enable compact devices, it uses small amounts of battery power and enough storage capacity can be included to make these devices useful for some common tasks such as email and media playing.
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The need for local storage has made small storage devices one of the fastest growing markets for hard disk drives and soon perhaps also for flash memory.
But still it's got room for a Secure Digital storage card, the postage stamp-sized flash memory cards that are showing up in all kinds of electronic devices.
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