Sun, Rivals Seek New Uses for Flash-Based Storage

By DON CLARK.WSJ.03/10/09

Chips called flash memory that have transformed many consumer products are beginning to shake up corporate computer rooms, with Sun Microsystems Inc. emerging as a surprise innovator.


The computer maker, though it lags rivals in data-storage hardware, has been pushing a redesign of servers and storage systems to take advantage of flash-memory chips. In its latest gambit, Sun is trying to popularize a tiny circuit board that can squeeze more flash chips, saving money, space and electricity.

But other companies are pushing rival flash-based products, which are emerging as one of few bright spots as corporations scale back their technology buying because of the recession.

"It's been growing extraordinarily fast, so it's a major focus area for us in 2009," said Bob Wambach, senior director of high-end storage marketing at EMC Corp., which added flash-based storage systems in January 2008.
[sun microsystems flash memory] Stec Inc.

Flash-memory chips became a mainstay of portable devices like iPod music players because they retain data when electrical current is switched off. They are also faster than disk drives; flash-based alternatives called SSDs, for solid-state drives, allow computers to boot up and retrieve files quickly.

Speed improvements in disk drives have been slower. So companies that need high performance have faced costly options.

They include expensive drives that spin at very high speeds, and arrays of drives that store data near the outside edge of disks so it can be fetched quickly.

Companies such as Stec Inc. and Texas Memory Systems Inc. began offering storage modules based on flash memory for military and commercial customers with specialized needs. Such products have gotten more affordable, as competition among chip makers to serve the much larger consumer market has caused prices to plunge. EMC uses such "enterprise" SSDs, as they are called, as does Sun in storage systems it introduced in November.

The price of flash-based technology remains high. Jim Handy, an analyst at the research firm Objective Analysis, estimates that a 500-gigabyte hard drive costs makers of storage systems around $50, where an enterprise SSD that stores 32 gigabytes would cost them $3,000. Factoring in the speed difference, however, the flash-based technology is less expensive in terms of the cost of handling transactions per second, he estimates.

Another concept is to use flash memory as a kind of accelerator. Backers of the approach include Fusion-io and Violin Memory Inc.; Texas Memories is offering a similar product Tuesday.

But some customers worry that flash chips can fail if data is written and erased too many times. Addressing that issue was a major focus of Michael Cornwell, who helped Apple Inc. develop flash-based devices such as the iPod and joined Sun in 2007.

Mr. Cornwell, Sun's lead technologist for flash memory, approached chip makers that include Samsung Electronics Co. to modify their products. The companies estimate the collaboration brought a five-fold increase in the endurance of Samsung's flash chips.

Rather than simply replacing hard disks, Mr. Cornwell favors new combinations that exploit DRAM and two kinds of flash chips -- one best at reading data, and another at storing it -- along with high-capacity disk drives. He estimates such a "hybrid" storage pool fetches data 3.2 times faster than conventional alternatives and save electrical power.

Sun also plans to produce compact servers with no disk drives. "We have some really compelling designs coming out," Mr. Cornwell said.

Sun is proposing that other companies follow its lead in installing flash chips on circuit boards measuring about 69 millimeters by 30 millimeters, less than a third the size of a typical drive-sized SSD. This "open storage module," also allows air to flow more efficiently to cool servers, Mr. Cornwell said.

Gene Ruth, an analyst at the Burton Group, notes that other companies have their own ideas about the best way to exploit flash technology. But the right combination could produce "a killer product that will change the industry. And I think that Sun has a leg up there," he said.

Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

Two New Devices Give Presentations Some Portability

Digital projectors are the best way to get the biggest possible image for a PowerPoint presentation or a movie. But the projectors are often pretty big themselves, with even most "pocket projectors" too big to stuff into the typical pocket or laptop bag.


That is changing. A new miniature-chip technology from Texas Instruments called pico is making digital projectors truly portable, instead of merely luggable. For the past couple of weeks, I've been using two of the first pico-based projectors on the market, Dell's M109S and Optoma's Pico PK-101.

The products are designed for different customers with different needs. Dell positions the 13-ounce M109S as a notebook companion, best suited for work presentations. The four-ounce Optoma projector is designed more as an iPod or digital-camera accessory for watching movies and slide shows on the go.

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The Dell M109S
Dell

The Dell M109S
The Dell M109S
The Dell M109S

Their portability requires compromises, most obviously in brightness and image resolution. The Dell and Optoma projectors, respectively, support 50 and 11 lumens -- a standard measure of projector brightness. That's far dimmer than top-notch projectors that offer several thousand lumens. So neither product excels in well-lighted rooms, where overhead and ambient lighting overpower their images. You can compensate somewhat for this weakness by placing the devices closer to the surfaces onto which they're projecting -- for example, a wall. But the darker the room you use, the better.

At about the size of a candy bar, the $399 Optoma device is the smaller of the two projectors and the one with the most intriguing possibilities for expanding the tiny screen sizes of mobile devices like the iPod.

It's powered by a rechargeable battery that Optoma says lasts for an hour on full brightness or two hours on a power-saving setting (the projector comes with two batteries). The projector has a tiny speaker, but people who want decent sound will need to use headphones or external speakers.

In theory, the Optoma device is small enough to bring along on a camping trip to show a film on the side of a tent, or to a restaurant, where you could inflict a vacation slide show on dinner mates by projecting onto a napkin or tablecloth.

I tested it on a recent airplane flight by projecting an episode of "Mad Men" from an iPod touch onto the back of the seat in front of me. The seat was a dark blue with embossing on it, so it didn't work very well. It's best to project onto an unmarked, light-colored surface. The quality of the image was better when I lay in bed one night, projecting a video onto a white ceiling.

Even under the most favorable circumstances, however, I found the images from the Optoma projector very dark, muddling the outlines of characters and action on screen. Although Optoma says you can get up to a 60-inch image from the projector, 45 inches was about as big as I could make the image before it got too fuzzy.

Optoma says the projector will ship with an iPod-compatible connector cable when it goes on sale in the U.S. on Dec. 15, though the unit I tested didn't come with one. I connected the device to my iPod touch using a $50 cable from Apple.

Compared with the Optoma device, the $449 Dell M109S is a behemoth, yet it's still only about the size of a short stack of drink coasters. Most projectors weigh at least a few pounds, if not more, which is big enough to make them a hassle to carry around. I barely noticed the Dell projector inside my laptop bag.

Unlike the Optoma projector, the Dell M109S has to be plugged into an electrical outlet to work. It comes with an unsightly set of connectors for plugging the projector into a video source, such as the VGA port found on most laptops and a composite video plug that is standard on DVD players. I was, however, able to plug my iPod touch into the Dell projector using the $50 Apple cable.

And unlike the Optoma, the Dell doesn't have speakers. To get sound for a movie, you'll need headphones or speakers, like those on a laptop.

Despite its extra bulk, the Dell M109S literally outshines the Optoma projector. It produces a bright image that I found very watchable, even if it wasn't high-definition. I projected the movie "James and the Giant Peach" onto an interior wall of my house, creating an image that was about 7 feet, measured diagonally.

The Dell M109S includes a capability called keystone correction, a standard feature in most projectors that adjusts a projected image to give it the proper dimensions, rather than the trapezoidal shape that results when a projector is angled upward. The Optoma projector doesn't have this feature. To get a normal rectangular movie image, I had to hold the projector level, toward the projection surface.

For business travelers who do presentations or for people who want to create a theater-like experience in a hotel room, vacation house or against a sheet in the backyard, the Dell projector would be a good fit. For now, the Optoma projector is a good idea that needs refinement.