Coming of Age for Solid
State Disks
Although manufacturers in the industrial controls
market, like
Square
D and AB were using
rewritable non volatile solid state storage as early as the 1970s, it wasn't
till much later that the
solid state
disk market evolved into a form which we would recognise today. For most
of its early life, this technology remained an open secret - mainly used in
embedded systems in military applications, or in high performance computer
research labs.
There were many false starts with Non Volatile
semiconductor technologies which didn't survive.
In the late 1970s -
silicon nitride EAROMs (electrically alterable ROMs) were marketed by a
company called General Instruments. Unfortunately after about 3 years - it
became clear that the extrapolated data life of 10 years wouldn't be achieved in
practise. As a result this product was dropped by users and didn't survive in
the market.
In 1978 - a gigabyte of RAM SSD would have cost
$1 million. Texas Memory
Systems introduced a 16 kilobyte RAM-based solid state disk system designed
to accelerate field seismic data acquisition for oil companies.
In the
early 1980s - Intel's 1M bit bubble memory created
a lot excitement as a new non volatile solid state memory technology. Intel
shipped design kits and boards to developers using this technology - which was
positioned as a solid state floppy disk. But it failed to be scalable or cost
effective. Intel spun off the magnetic division in 1987 to
Memtech (who later made
flash SSDs) but bubble memory dropped into oblivion.
1985 -
Adtron founded.
1985
-
Curtis introduced the
ROMDISK, the first SSD for the original
IBM PC.
In
1987
EMC
introduced SSD storage for the mini-computer market, which was the
hottest part of the server market at that time. EMC's SSDs were 20x faster
than the then available hard disks. But market forces and losses led to EMC
exiting the "memory enhancement" business soon after.
... ...21 years later:- EMC
re-entered
the SSD market in January 2008 - with arrays populated by
flash SSDs from
STEC. This time the
market was hungry for this type of solution.
1988 -
SanDisk founded.
In
1990 -
NEC marketed 5.25"
SCSI SSDs using internal battery backed
RAM.
In 1991
Digital
Equipment Corp marketed the
EZ5x
family of Solid State Disk accelerators. However,
SPARC servers from Sun
already ran 2 to 3 times faster than DEC's servers at about half the price of
DEC's
Vax
servers (without needing SSDs). SSDs did not save DEC's server business.
Faster processors might have done. DEC's gamble on denser ECL chip technology
- with its
Trilogy
venture - was an expensive failure.
In 1993 -
Solid Data Systems was
founded.
In 1995 - our
SPARC Directory listed 2
SSD products aimed at the Sun server market.
- T8000 - was an 80MB, 10MBps SSD on a single slot
SBus card,
made by Colorado based CERAM. Units in multiple slots could be chained to appear
as a single SSD upto 960M. Performance was 2,000 IOPs.
- SAM-2000 was a rackmount SSD upto 8GB, with 500MBps internal bandwidth-
made by Texas Memory
Systems. The transfer rate through the SBus adapter was 22MBps. Other bus
interfaces included VMEbus
and
HIPPI.
In
1997 - a
white paper by Peripheral Concepts listed the main SSD vendors as:-
Quantum,
Imperial Technology,
SEEK Systems, and
Solid Data Systems.
in
1998 - STORAGEsearch.com published an
online directory of solid state
disk vendors - in which Megabyte
was shown chipping away at a rock - which remains the current site metaphor
used for general SSDs.
In
November 1999 - the number of market active
SSD manufacturers listed on
STORAGEsearch.com had reached 11.
In
January 2000 - after 8 years featuring editorial about SSDs in our
various publications,
Curtis became our first
SSD advertiser.
In June 2001 -
Adtron shipped the
world's highest capacity 3.5"
flash SSD. The
S35PC had 14 gigabytes capacity and cost $42,000.
In Q1 2001 -
SSDs were the 18th most popular subject with our readers.
In October
2001 - the number of market active
SSD manufacturers listed on
STORAGEsearch.com had reached 21.
In
Q1 2002 - SSDs were 4th most popular subject with our readers.
In
November 2002 -
Bill
Gates, talking about Tablet PC's said:- "There are also a lot of
peripherals that need to improve here. ...Eventually even the so-called solid
state disks will come along and not only will we have the mechanical disks going
down to 1.8 inch but some kind of solid state disk in the next three to four
years will be part of different Tablet PCs."
In
Q1 2003 - SSDs were 2nd most popular subject with our readers..
In
February 2003
- Competitors Texas
Memory Systems and Imperial
Technology announced the world's first terabyte class SSD systems.
In
Q2 2003 - SSDs were #1 most popular subject with our readers.. That's
why we researched and compiled the first
Solid
State Disks Buyers Guide in July 2003 which collected together in one
convenient document pricing information from across the whole SSD industry.
It covered the range of budgets from under $50 up to $2 million and everything
in between.
In September
2004 - BiTMICRO
announced it was developing iSCSI
SSDs. But due to the hyped iSCSI market in 2004 being 10x smaller than
analyst predictions - this product was quietly shelved.
In Q3 2004
- a solid state disk manufacturer,
Texas Memory Systems,
became the #1 company profile viewed by our readers (out of more than 1,000
storage company profiles in September 2004). We also disclosed that the
Solid state disks directory
(still at #1) got 42% more pageviews than the year ago period.
In
October 2004 - STORAGEsearch opened the
SSD Survey a 3 month
major market research study to learn more about SSD buyer preferences,
applications and attitudes. Results from the survey were published in articles
in 2005 and detailed findings helped SSD vendors understand the needs of
buyers better, and helped them develop marketing plans which worked around the
prevailing disinhibitors to product take-up and leverage the enablers cited by
buyers in the survey.
Also in October 2004 -
BiTMICRO Networks
shipped the world's first Ultra320 SCSI flash solid state disk.
In
November 2004 - STORAGEsearch published the 2nd annual
Solid
State Disks Buyers Guide. This listed every type of SSD available in the
market by interface type and form factor. It also included a summary of major
developments in the SSD market in the preceding year.
In December
2004 - It was revealed that Solid State Disks were the Product Category of
the Year 2004 on STORAGEsearch.com based on reader pageviews. The Solid State
Disk page was the #1 category (out of more than 70 vertical storage subjects)
viewed by readers for 44 of the first 50 weeks in 2004. In previous years - the
product category of the year in 2002 and 2003 (2 years running) was SATA. Three
of the world's
fastest
growing storage companies in 2004:- (M-Systems, SimpleTech and Texas Memory
Systems) were solid state disks manufacturers.
In January 2005
- STORAGEsearch disclosed results of the
SSD Survey to
strategic oem customers. The results included buyer preferences for form factor
and interface, budgetary data and factors which would make it easier for SSD
vendors to do more business in future. Selected extracts from the survey results
also appeared in articles and editorial.
In March 2005 -
SiliconSystems
announced that Bell
Microproducts would distribute its SSD products in North America. This would
greatly simplify the access to this technology for thousands of systems
integrators and oems.
In March 2005 - 5 out of the top 10
company profiles viewed by STORAGEsearch.com readers in March were SSD Makers
(out of more than 1,000 storage company profiles). Site readership grew 6%
compared to the year ago period and pageviews grew by 25%.
In April 2005 -
Texas Memory Systems
offered the world's first performance related guarantees for SSD products. That
they would outperform any competing storage system, or meet the customer's
agreed application speedup expectation - or the customer would get their monry
back. This approach was founded on market research data from
STORAGEsearch.com's Q405 SSD User Survey - which said that users would be more
likely to try SSD systems if vendors offered such guarantees.
Also in
April 2005 -
Solid Access
Technologies made the first SSD with a
Serial Attached SCSI
interface.
In May 2005 -
Samsung Electronics
announced it was entering the SSD market with 1.8" and 2.5" drives.
This is the first time in this phase of the SSD market's development that a
multibillion dollar company (Samsung's 2004 revenue was $55.2 billion ) has
entered the market.
Also in May 2005 - this was the first time
that the term "solid state disk" generated enough volume to show up on
In
June 2005 -
M-Systems announced
availability of the industry's highest capacity 2.5" SATA SSD with 128
gigabytes of storage. SATA had been identified in STORAGEsearch.com's Q404
market research survey as the #1 most popular interface for future applications.
But at this stage in the market's development (Q205) only 10% of SSD vendors
(3) actually offered products with this interface.
In July
2005 - Texas Memory
Systems launched the industry's first SSDs with a 4Gb/s Fibre Channel
interface. The 3U rackmount system offered upto 128-gigabytes capacity and
500,000 random I/Os per second performance.
In August 2005 -
SimpleTech acquired
Memtech. The
acquisition of one SSD company by another has (so far) been a rare occurrence
but could become more common in future.
In September 2005 -
SimpleTech launched the
world's first dual interface SSD. At launch time the Zeus Dual Interface SSD,
with both a USB and
SATA interface,
offered capacities up to 192GB in a 3.5-inch form factor, and sustained
read/write rates of 60 MBytes per second.
In November 2005 -
STORAGEsearch published a new updated market penetration model for the SSD
market called -
Why are Most
Analysts Wrong About Solid State Disks?
Also in November 2005
- Texas Memory Systems
demonstrated the first solid
state disk with a native
InfiniBand interface
at the Supercomputing conference.
In January 2006 -
NextCom became
the first notebook maker to qualify flash SSDs*.
In March 2006
-
Samsung Electronics
started shipping 1.8" 32GB flash SSD drives. Quoting projections from
Web-Feet Research,
Samsung said it expected that the SSD market would double to $1.3 billion in
2007 and reach $4.5 billion by 2010.
Also in March 2006 - the
number of market active SSD
manufacturers listed on STORAGEsearch.com
had reached 36.
In
April 2006 -
Solid Access
Technologies became the first SSD manufacturer to display end user pricing
online for the full range of its SSD products. Previously the volatile nature
of memory pricing and fear of price led competition had meant that most
SSD oems declined to publish any pricing data. The SSD pricing exclusion zone
included their own websites, press releases related to product launches, and
even our own SSD
Buyers Guide.
In May 2006 -
Samsung launched the
world's first high volume Windows XP notebook using SSDs.
In June
2006 - SiliconSystems
launched its SiliconDrive Secure family which included the widest range of
available storage
security features in a solid state disk.
In July 2006 -
market research
company In-Stat
predicted that 50% of mobile computers would use SSDs (instead of
hard disks) by 2013.
Also
in July 2006 - Xiotech
announced support for solid
state disks as accelerators in its Magnitude 3D 3000 virtual storage systems
- making it the first Fibre
channel SAN switch maker to support SSD technology.
In
August 2006 - the number of market active
SSD manufacturers listed on
STORAGEsearch.com had reached 41.
In
September 2006 - Samsung
Electronics announced first working prototypes of PRAM -
Phase-change Random Access Memory. This is a new non-volatile
RAM technology. Samsung
said PRAM is expected to replace high density NOR
flash within the next
decade
Also in September 2006 - the growth of market interest
in SSDs was revealed by STORAGEsearch.com's
web statistics. Pageviews on our main
SSD page increased 50%
in September compared to the year before period, even though readership had
only grown by 10%. The pageview growth happened despite the fact that the SSD
page had slipped down to #3 (out of hundreds of storage categories.) This
indicates a concentrated shift by readers towards the hottest subjects that
matter most to their future plans. At the same time a greater proportion of the
most popular storage
articles were about SSDs.
Also in September 2006 -
Broadbus was acquired
by Motorola.
In October
2006 -
SimpleTech acquired UK
SSD maker Gnutek.
In
November 2006 - Microsoft
announced business availability of its
new
Vista operating system - the first PC market OS which included SSD-aware
support and native SSD cache management.
Also in November 2006
- SimpleTech
demonstrated the first single chip SSD with
USB or IDE interface. The
chip is available with upto 4GB capacity.
Also in November 2006
- SanDisk acquired
M-Systems which had
been the fastest
growing storage company in 2004.
In December 2006 -
Microsoft published
an article:-
Windows
PC Accelerators - which described in detail how the recently launched
Windows Vista OS supports solid state disks.
Also in December
2006 - Advanced
Media entered the SSD market taking the total number of SSD manufacturers
listed on STORAGEsearch.com to 44 - which is 4 times as many as in 1999.
In
January 2007 - pageviews of
the Solid State
Disks Buyers Guide (the most popular article on STORAGEsearch.com) increased
by 74% compared to the year before period. Overall site readership
increased 31% compared to Jan 2006.
In February 2007 - amid
competing claims from various other oems
Mtron launched the
fastest 2.5" PATA SSD - with 80M bytes / sec sustained write time.
Cornice became the first
hard disk maker to be ejected out from the hard disk business due to inability
to compete with flash
SSDs.
March 2007
What had been the profitable SSD business
in SimpleTech confirmed the legal change of its company name to
STEC.
SanDisk joined the
overheating market for 2.5" SATA SSDs... In fact there are more oems now
making 2.5" flash
SSDs than hard drives.
What does that tell you?
Intel (at long last) entered
the SSD market with an 8GB
USB connected module.
Super Talent
Technology extended its SSD range to include SATA interfaces and
Attorn
increased the speed and capacity of its HyperDrive4.
Samsung said it has
developed a 64GB 1.8" flash SSD - which has a 60% faster write speed than
its earlier 32G model.
April 2007
STORAGEsearch.com
reported that SSDs were the 2nd most popular subject viewed by readers in the
preceding month - nudging hard
disks down to #3.
Fujitsu announced it had
terminated plans to manufacture 1.8"
hard drives for
portable products - because in this form factor
SSDs can offer better
speed, lower power, lower weight and lower cost.
STEC announced a 512GB
3.5" SSD.
Dell
joined the growing roster of notebook oems offering SSDs as a standard option.
May 2007
STORAGEsearch.com
published a dedicated directory of
flash SSDs. The
F-SSD vendor list had previously been buried within the
SSD Buyers Guide.
Extracting it with related articles, news and ads makes it easier for readers
to sift through the growing content in this segment.
MOSAID Technologies
announced its new flash chip technology could deliver 800M bytes / second
sustained throughput for flash SSDs using today's technology. That's 10x faster
than the fastest commercially available 2.5" SSDs.
PNY Technologies announced at
Computex, it will enter the SSD market with a product launch June 5th..
June 2007
STORAGEsearch.com reported that the
fastest climbing subject in May 2007 was
Flash - based Solid
State Disks - which became the 4th most popular destination visited by
readers in the same month that the page was introduced.
Concurrent Computer
launched the MediaCache 1000, the first in a line of
rackmount flash SSD
storage products based on COTS technology aimed at the broadcast market.
SanDisk launched 64G
1.8" and 2.5"
flash SSDs for the
notebook market.
Cenatek launched the
Rocket Drive Micro:- an
ExpressCard
form-factor, high speed solid state disk designed for use with any ExpressCard
equipped laptop or desktop.
SanDisk launched 64G
1.8" and 2.5"
flash SSDs for the
notebook market.
Apacer showed a 2.5",
128GB flash SSD at
Computex and previewed an SSD based
RAID.
STORAGEsearch.com published a new
2.5" SSD Directory
with quick links to nearly 100 SSD models from 24 oems actively marketing SSDs
in the 2.5 inch form factor.
Myung unveiled its low
power MyStor product family which includes 2.5" IDE, and 3.5" IDE or
SCSI
flash SSD
products.
Samsung began mass
production of 64GB 1.8" SSDs for mobile computing applications.
STORAGEsearch.com published a
directory of the
Fastest SSDs in
each popular form factor....
SiliconSystems
said that it had received an additional patent for its PowerArmor voltage
detection and regulation technology. PowerArmor, used in the company's
SiliconDrives protects critical operating system files and application data
from corruption due to power disturbances.
July 2007
SiliconSystems
launched the first high reliability
USB SSD in CF form factor.
STORAGEsearch.com published a new
article - the Top 10
Solid State Disk OEMs
Solid Data Systems
launched the
StorageSPIRE, a
terabyte capacity Fibre
Channel connected SSD array.
STORAGEsearch.com published a new
3.5" SSD Directory
with quick links to over 22 SSD models from 11 oems.
SanDisk announced that
its SATA 5000 2.5-inch SSD will be offered as an option in IBM's new
BladeCenter HS21 XM.
August 2007
STEC announced it will
sample 3.5" SAS
SSDs in Q108.
Violin
Memory launched world's fastest 2U SSD.
VMETRO acquired
Micro Memory
Attorn said its
new rackmount HyperDrive4 provided the the lowest price per gigabyte for a
RAM based solid state drive.
Targa Systems launched a 64G
3U CompactPCI flash SSD with USB interface.
EasyCo launched its "Managed
Flash Technology" a storage system which includes a RAID-5 array of
flash SSDs with a
patent pending drive management layer which results in system write performance
that is 100x faster than the bare solid state flash drive.
STORAGEsearch.com published a new
article:- RAM SSDs
versus Flash SSDs - which is Best? With features from the world's
leading SSD companies this article looks at how technology and price trends have
reduced the gaps between the 2 main SSD technologies.
September 2007
BiTMICRO Networks
received $9.3 million in Series F funding and promised to ship 412GB 2.5"
flash SSDs in Q108.
Texas Memory Systems
launched the RamSan-500 - which delivers 2 terabytes of high speed flash SSD in
a 4U rackmount package. Performance is 100,000 IOPS sustained random read,
10,000 IOPS sustained random write. Throughput performance from fibre-channel
hosts to internal flash storage is 2G bytes / sec sustainable (3G bytes / sec
peak).
Objective
Analysis published a 110 page report called -
the
Solid State Disk Market: A Rigorous Look to their offering
Third I/O demonstrated a
prelaunch version of its Iris SSD at the Intel Developer's Forum in San
Francisco. Sustained performance reached 1,540MB/s on a single 8 Gb/s port.
October 2007
Addonics Technologies
launched what it called a "low cost large capacity SSD" platform. It's
a PCI card that can be installed with 4 Compact Flash cards with inbuilt
RAID support. The risk
with this approach is that most CF cards aren't designed for intensive write
operations and don't have wear levelling controllers. That means if a user
installs such a product in a server application - as a lower cost alternative to
a true SSD - the storage media may fail in under a year.
STORAGEsearch.com published the new
quarterly ranking of - the
Top 10 Solid State Disk OEMs
Texas Memory Systems took
part in an 8Gbps Fibre Channel demo at
Storage Networking World
Violin Memory said it would
announce a supported InfiniBand
interface for its Memory Appliance at November's
SC07 .
SiliconSystems
launched a postage-stamp sized
USB solid-state drive
designed for embedded storage applications - called the SiliconDrive USB Blade.
November 2007
BiTMICRO Networks
announced plans to sample a terabyte class 3.5" flash SSD in Q108. With
1.6TB capacity and a 4Gbps Fibre
Channel interface - it will deliver sustained throughput more than 230MBps
and upwards of 55,000 IOPS.
Samsung
Electronics announced it was sampling faster versions of its 64G 1.8"
and 2.5" SATA flash SSDs with sequential write speed of 100MB / sec
and sequential read speed of 120MB / sec.
SanDisk launched a PCIe
compatible 16G flash SSD.
Micron Technology said it
would launch a family of SATA 1.8" and 2.5" flash SSDs in Q1 2008
bringing the total number of market active
SSD oems to 60.
INTELLIAM launched its
LeanSTOR flash SSDs with AMC card form factor, SATA interface and 128GB
capacity.
December 2007
STEC started shipping its
MACH8-MLC 1.8" and 2.5" PATA / SATA flash SSDs aimed at the notebook
market. While the performance is at the middle range of the market spectrum -
the new SSDs are available in high capacities upto 512GB (2.5"). Pricing is
aggressive. STEC offers this SSD family at pricing of $5/GB today, declining to
less than $2/GB within two years.
Toshiba said it will enter
the SSD market with 1.8" and 2.5" SATA models which will be sampled in
January 2008.
Commenting on the current success of the
disk to disk backup market
- STORAGEsearch.com predicted that
the earliest realistic threat to
hard disks as a backup
media (from solid state storage) wouldn't be before around 2014.
White Electronic Designs,
well known as a supplier of high
reliability
products in the military
market, announced its first medical series CompactFlash cards.
Objective Analysis
predicted that the Hybrid Hard Drive would not make a big splash in 2008 in a
new 36-page report called Hybrid Hard Drives: How, Why, And When? - The author
Jim Handy said - "Unfortunately, the hardware is ready but the software
support is weak. Hybrid drives will have to wait for better support to justify
their small additional cost."
January 2008
Nanochip (founded in
1996) said it expects to sample its first commercial products in 2009. The
company will compete with
flash SSDs using
its own proprietary non volatile storage technology.
After a 20 year
gap
EMC re-entered the SSD
market with the launch of its Symmetrix DMX-4 networked storage systems
populated with SSDs from
STEC. You may not
realise that EMC was an SSD pioneer 20 years ago (in
1987).
Samsung
announced it has developed a 128GB MLC flash SSD in 1.8" and 2.5"
form factors that will ship in volume in the first half of 2008.
Texas Memory Systems
announced new SSD IOPS records (audited by
SPC). Its RamSan-400 SSD
delivered 291,208 SPC-1 IOPS with a record average response time of just
0.86 milliseconds.
BiTMICRO Networks said it
will sample its highest capacity 2.5" flash SSD -the E-Disk Altima 832GB
- in the 2nd quarter of 2008 - with volume production expected in Q3.
Memoright announced
availability of 64GB and 128GB versions of its 2.5" PATA / SATA flash
SSDs.
February 2008
SMART Modular
Technologies acquired
Adtron.
Intel and
Micron Technology
unveiled details of their new
high speed NAND
flash technology which can sustain speeds up to 200MB/s for reads and
100MB/s for writes.
Ridata brand SSDs (made by
Advanced Media)
appeared in retail outlets - in 34 Fry's Electronics stores.
Mtron said that in April it
would be producing a 1.8" flash SSD aimed at notebooks with a maximum read
speed of 120MB/s and write speed of 100MB/s.
Pliant Technology
announced it had received $8 million in Series A
funding to drive the
development of SSD storage devices for enterprise computing markets.
STEC launched
the the 32GB MACH4 CompactFlash - the fastest CF form factor SSD on the market
with 90MB/s read and 55MB/s write speeds. It's got low power consumption too
- just 1W.
March 2008
Imation entered the SSD
market with products oemed from
Mtron
SeaChange claimed it had
eliminated the need for spinning disks in the on-air broadcast chain with the
announcement of its FML200 - rackmount flash SSD broadcast library.
Memoright launched a
faster family of 2.5" SATA flash SSD. The GT Series has upto 64GB
capacity and 120MB/s sustained read/write.
OCZ entered the SSD market
with a 2.5" flash
SSD - taking the number of SSD
oems listed on STORAGEsearch.com to 70.
STEC announced Q407 revenue
declined 28% compared to the year ago quarter.
STORAGEsearch.com published a new
1.8" storage drives
directory listing 21 oems actively marketing SSDs and HDDs in the 1.8
inch form factor.
Toshiba launched 3 MLC
flash SSD families with SATA
interfaces and form factors including module,
1.8" and
2.5".
Trident Space & Defense
launched the BGADrive - an IDE compatible 32GB flash SSD in a 29mm x 29mm form
factor module for embedded applications.
A
CNET
article insinuating high customer reject rates for
Dell's SSD based notebooks
was dismissed as
not
true.
XLC Disk
unveiled its multi-level cell nand flash technology for high density flash
SSDs.
International
Microsystems launched a range of
SATA flash SSD
testers for parametric qualification and burn-in.
Fusion-io announced it
had secured $19 million funding for its ioDrive.
April 2008
Texas Memory Systems
celebrated 30 years making SSDs.
Seagate filed suit against
STEC alleging patent
infringements related to hard disk interfaces.
Nimbus Data Systems
announced an SSD
accelerator option in its Breeze H-series 10GbE IP Storage.
STEC said it was in volume
shipment of its Zeus-IOPS
range of 2.5" and 3.5" flash SSDs with
4Gbps Fibre Channel
ports.
Link_A_Media
Devices secured $22 million in Series B
financing. Its
controller chip technology will increase
IOPS and
data recovery in flash
SSDs.
STORAGEsearch.com
published the new quarterly ranking of -
the Top 10 SSD OEMs
...and also a timeline
Predicting Future Flash
SSD Performance ...and also a new directory of
PCIe, PCI & cPCI SSDs,
and also a new directory of
1.0" and smaller SSDs.
Shining Technology
entered the flash SSD
market with the launch of its 32GB CitiDISK SSD aimed at the digital video
camera market.
Panasonic
said it would ship a 64GB version of its proprietary P2 card SSD for use in its
camcorders in the fall. Panasonic has delivered more than 80,000 P2 HD/P2
units worldwide with over 840 television networks and stations having adopted
the solid-state recording format.
Adtron started sampling
true industrial grade SLC flash SSDs with 128GB capacity in a 9.5mm-high
package - the highest density SLC SSD in this form factor. |
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| Squeak!
- SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance" |
| Does the
fatal gene of "write endurance" built into
flash
solid state
disks prevent their deployment in intensive server acceleration
applications - such as RAID
systems? |
It was
certainly true as little as a few years ago.
What's the risk with
today's devices?
This article looks at the current generation of
products and calculates how much (or how little) you should be worried. |
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| RAM based SSDs have been
used alongside RAID for years - but
flash SSDs are
physically smaller and have bigger capacity (upto 160G in 2.5", 512G in
3.5") and are lower cost than RAM-SSDs and could actually be configured
in standard RAID boxes. F-SSDs aren't as fast as RAM based products but a single
flash SSD can deliver 20,000 IOPs - which when scaled up in an array - starts to
look interesting.
...read the
article,
storage reliability
solid state disks | |
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Squeak!
- the Fastest Solid State Disks
Speed isn't everything, and
it comes at a price. |
But if you
do need the speediest
SSD then wading through the web sites of over 61 current
SSD oems to find a suitable
candidate slows you down.
And the SSD search problem will get even
worse. |
| |
I predict
there will be over 100 SSD oems in 2008.
I've done the research for
you to save you time. And this page is updated daily from
storage news and direct
inputs from oems. ...read
the article, | |
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Flash
Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win? - article by Semico Research
There's
a confusing picture in many consumer products like phones, cameras and music
players in which one day it seems that the storage function is done by flash
and next day another company announces they're doing the same thing with
miniature hard disks.
Is there any sense to this seemingly random
choice?
This article uses pricing trends, technology trends and
unique market analysis insights to show that users and oems may be able to
reliably predict which storage devices will be most cost effective depending
where you are on the future history curve. ...read the article,
...Semico Research profile,
Hard disk drives,
Flash Memory,
Market research,
Solid state disks | |
| . |
Squeak! -
Why are Most Analysts Wrong About Solid State Disks?
Most
analysts and editors of other computer publications don't really understand the
solid state disk market. They show their ignorance and naivete by prefacing
every discussion of SSDs with a superficial analysis which compares the cost per
byte of storage between flash and hard disk drives.
That's the wrong
answer to the wrong question. And it's far removed from why the SSD market is
racing to become a multi billion dollar market seemingly in blithe ignorance of
the cost per byte proposition.
This new article tells you what's
important to users and the main applications in which SSDs are already being
used and new applications where they will be used in the next 3 years. ...read the
article, Solid State Disks | |
| . |
*...Later:-
April 19, 2006 - Correction - re World's First Portable PC with SSD Option
thanks
to Robin Harris, editor StorageMojo.com
for this email note.
The original
HP
Omnibook 300 offered a PCMCIA flash disk as a several hundred dollar
option ($400?) back in (I think) 1993.
I know because I bought it and used one for years. The option had
10MB of capacity and HP packaged in a compression utility that automatically
compressed everything on the flash card, so the effective capacity was 20MB.
The real benefit wasn't weight, as the 300 weighed in at 2.9lbs with
or without a hard disk. The win was battery life - which went to 10 hours with
the SSD from about 3-4 hours with the HDD.
With an instant-on feature that really worked, and a decent PDA and
terminal emulation, built in Word & Excel (to which I added Powerpoint) I
had a very solid, unfussy machine that I only had to charge every few days.
Lived with it daily for 5 years until I had to give it up because it would no
longer do what I needed.
See also:-
article:-
Passing of an Old Friend - HP's Omnibook | |
| . |
|
|
| . |
| Are MLC SSDs Ever
Safe in Enterprise Apps? |
This is a follow up
article to the popular
SSD Myths and
Legends which, in early 2007, demolished the myth that flash memory
wear-out (a comfort blanket beloved by many
RAM SSD makers)
precluded the use of flash in heavy duty datacenters.
This new
article, published in Feb 2008, looks at the risks posed by MLC Nand Flash
SSDs which have recently hatched from their breeeding ground as chip modules
in cellphones and morphed into
hard disk form
factors. |
 |
It starts down a familiar
lane but an unexpected technology twist (which arrived in my email this
morning) takes you to a startling new world of possibilities. ...read the article | | | |
