While I was over in Taiwan covering COMPUTEX Taipei 2010, I had the opportunity to go on a little excursion outside of the main city. It was on that day that we paid a visit to Kingston Technology, seeing how they did what they did. It was also on that day that they revealed two new products to us. Let’s start with those, before we head off into the deep recesses of the factory.
Kingston Offers 64GB SDXC Memory Card
It was way back at CES 2009 in Las Vegas that the SD Association revealed the new SDXC memory card format. Now, these cards are ready for mass consumption.
The new Kingston 64GB SDXC UHS-1 Class 10 memory card looks just like the regular SD and SDHC cards that you’ve been using in devices like the Samsung HMX-U10 camcorder, but it packs quite a bigger punch. For starters, it boasts 64GB of capacity in a postage stamp-sized package.
It uses the new exFAT file system, which is not backwards compatible. Currently, the maximum data transfer speed is 104MB/sec with actual times clocking in at 60MB/sec (read) and 35MB/sec (write).
HyperX USB 3.0 Portable Solid State Drive
One of the emerging trends at COMPUTEX 2010 is the increased implementation of USB 3.0. Kingston is more than happy to join this bandwagon too and they’re doing it with a pretty sweet portable drive.
The Kingston USB 3.0 HyperX portable solid state drive looks like a regular portable hard drive, but it features that beautiful SSD technology, accompanied by the much faster USB 3.0 connection. How fast are we talking? The blue wonder can go up to 195MB/sec (read) and 160MB/sec (write) with sequential data transfers. Those are near SATA speeds.
It will be made available in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities at prices yet to be determined. It will be backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports using the right cable and the HyperX drive is set to launch in August of this year.
The Origins of Kingston Technology
Personally, one of the highlights of my Kingston day was meeting with the company’s co-founder, David Sun. He told us about how Kingston came to be, describing it as “pure luck.”
Someone came to him and asked how to cram more memory into the board and he saw that he could put the chip on a module and make it vertical. All it took was some home-based soldering. Each module cost him $200 in materials, but he started to get more and more orders in, allowing him to increase his price from $225 to $300 to $450 to $600.
Kingston Technology was thus founded in 1987 and it enjoyed a monopoly for four or five years. By Sun’s own admission, “I’m just a lucky guy.” He even went on to sell Kingston in 1996 for $1.9 billion, only to buy it back a short while later for $450 million.
In the Factory: Making DRAM Modules
Hopping on the bus, we made our way to the Kingston Technology factory in Hsinchu. A factory that is many times larger than the one in Fountain Valley, CA toured by us last year. This trip took a little over an hour from downtown Taipei and it allowed us to see a bit of the Taiwanese countryside. After suiting up in an anti-static bunny outfit, we were led to the RAM manufacturing floor.
There we saw row upon row of manufacturing equipment, going through each of the individual steps required to produce a workable DRAM module. Most of the machines had window cutouts so we could see the inner workings, but there weren’t too many employees around. The process is largely automated at this point.
The DRAM modules, not surprisingly, are not produced on an individual basis. The sticks start out on a larger sheet with about a dozen modules, not unlike the large sheets of paper money before they are cut into individual bills.
Further along the production line, the sticks are cut out, labeled, and packaged accordingly. The movement of the modules is done through a series of sliders and suction cups.
Testing for Defects and Reliability
A big point of pride for Kingston Technology is the reliability of their products. Each and every module shipped out to consumers — whether they be desktop RAM, notebook RAM, or any other memory product — is tested extensively before it heads out the door.
Shown above is just one row of open-air motherboards used solely for testing the RAM. Each motherboard is equipped with a red button and a green button, with several motherboards connected to an LCD screen above. The employee starts the tests, reviews the results, and swaps in more modules for further testing.
Don’t think that there is only one row of testing equipment. Shown above is a mere fraction of the units at the Kingston factory. Based on my estimation, there were at least a half dozen rows, each with 30 testing station, each with four to six motherboards. You do the math.
Bag and Tag Those USB Flash Drives
The DRAM modules represent a large part of Kingston’s business, but you may have also noticed that they make USB flash drives too. It seems that this process has a little more hands-on time than the DRAM modules.
The “bare” flash drives are produced on a series of machines, but the plastic jacket that goes over them appears to be placed by hand. The Kingston USB drive is human-inspected before it moves on to the next stage.
A Small, Nimble, and Powerful Operation
Despite generating $4 billion in annual revenue, Kingston Technology continues to be a relatively “small” company and that’s exactly how David Sun wants to keep it. They have about 4,000 employees worldwide, resulting in about $1 million per employee in annual revenue. That’s not bad at all.
Sun had a great sense of humor about his “small” operation. He’s happy every time he sees an employee, because he sees a “money tree” and he’s ready to shake them. It’s that sense of “happy” company culture that keeps Kingston effective and efficient.
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