TOKYO, May 15, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- STEC, Inc. (Nasdaq:STEC), a leading global provider of solid-state drive (SSD) technologies and products, today announced that the company has validated its proprietary CellCare™ Technology's ability to extend the endurance of 24nm consumer-grade multi-level cell (cMLC) NAND flash memory to 40,000 program/erase cycles. This represents an increase of greater than 13 times the manufacturer's specified endurance metric of 3,000 program/erase cycles. This is a significant advancement in one of the company's core technologies, as it provides for the development of a new generation of STEC's enterprise-class SSDs that utilizes low-cost cMLC NAND chips, while still achieving 10 full capacity random writes to the drive each day for five years, and data retention for three months (at 40°C)—all with no degradation in performance. This equates to approximately 7.3 petabytes (PB) of data being written to a 400GB SSD over the life of the drive.
"The results of the 24nm cMLC endurance testing, performed at our San Diego R&D center, are testimony that the solid flash management algorithms and digital signal processing/ error correction code within our patented CellCare Technology bring true enterprise-class capabilities to consumer-grade flash memory," said Pablo Ziperovich, STEC's Vice President, Flash Channel Development. "We have now tested the use of lower-cost 24nm cMLC NAND with our CellCare Technology to withstand the rigorous workload environments of enterprise storage applications—specifically, to provide for 40,000 program/erase cycles."
After applying STEC's CellCare Technology in combination with its fourth-generation ASIC-based SSD controller, STEC engineers performed a series of JEDEC -standard tests, including a program/erase endurance and data retention stress test; a stress-test-driven qualification of integrated circuits; and a SSD requirements and endurance test.
Results of the endurance testing are outlined in the table below:
| Key Metric | 24nm cMLC NAND Flash | 24nm cMLC NAND Flash with CellCare™ Technology |
| Endurance | 3,000 | 40,000 |
| Retention (EOL) | 3 months at 40° C | 3 months at 40° C |
| ECC | 40b/1KB | 32b/1KB |
| Program Speed | 1.5ms | 1.5ms (controlled) |
| Erase Speed | 4ms | 10ms (controlled) |
| Read Retry (EOL) | up to 100% | <0.011% |
"This announcement opens up a lot of new opportunities, as cost is king in NAND and SSDs," said Alan Niebel, founder and chief executive officer for Web-Feet Research, Inc. "Being able to take consumer-grade MLC NAND from 3,000 cycles to 40,000 cycles presents a huge leap in cost-effective enterprise endurance—enabling much more adoption."
"The intelligence embedded in STEC's SSD controller via CellCare Technology is truly remarkable," said Gregory Wong, founder and principal analyst for Forward Insights. "The dramatic endurance-extending capabilities of CellCare Technology on 24nm consumer-grade flash will help accelerate the proliferation of cost-effective SSDs to the enterprise."
CellCare Technology is a proprietary combination of hardware and firmware working together to improve MLC flash performance and endurance throughout the life of the drive. Key endurance-extending features of this patented technology include:
- Flash parameter tracking per die, which delivers reduced and controlled wear;
- Flash management through the lifetime, which delivers reduced wear, controlled performance, improved performance, and lower write/read latency; and
- Advanced error correction with digital signal processing to improve data reliability and require a minimum of re-reads.
CellCare Technology is embedded in STEC's full line of MLC NAND-based enterprise-class solid-state solutions, including its PCIe solid-state accelerators, ZeusIOPS® SAS SSDs, and MACH16™ SATA SSDs. STEC's 24nm cMLC NAND flash-based SSDs are currently in development and testing, with production anticipated for later this year.
About STEC, Inc.
STEC, Inc., The SSD Company™, is a leading global provider of enterprise-class solid-state drive (SSD) technologies and solutions tailored to meet the high-performance, high-reliability and high-endurance needs of today's data-intensive server and storage platforms. With headquarters in Santa Ana, California and locations worldwide, STEC leverages almost two decades of solid-state knowledge and experience to design, manufacture and deliver the most comprehensive line of PCIe, SAS, SATA and embedded SSDs on the market today. In addition, STEC's EnhanceIO™ SSD Cache Software enables IT managers to cost-effectively scale server application performance. For more information, please visit www.stec-inc.com.
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STEC, the STEC logo, The SSD Company, CellCare, ZeusIOPS, MACH16 and EnhanceIO are either registered trademarks or trademarks of STEC, Inc. in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks or brand names referred to herein are the property of their respective owners.
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995
This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including those statements concerning customer adoption, sampling, qualification and utilization of CellCare Technology and other STEC products and solutions, including the use of consumer-grade flash; the adoption of CellCare Technology and other STEC products and solutions into new applications and markets; overall product and solution cost savings; the capabilities, performance and benefits of CellCare Technology and other STEC products and solutions; endurance testing; and the evolving enterprise storage and server markets. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including factors that could delay, divert or change any of them, and could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from current expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements are detailed in filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made from time to time by STEC, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K, its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and its Current Reports on Form 8-K. The information contained in this press release is a statement of STEC's present intention, belief or expectation. STEC may change its intention, belief or expectation, at any time and without notice, based upon any changes in such factors, in STEC's assumptions or otherwise. STEC undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date hereof, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.