Coming of Age for Solid
State Disks
Although manufacturers in the industrial controls
market, like
Square
D and AB were using
rewritable user removable non volatile solid state storage modules 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.
1976 -
Dataram sold an SSD
called BULK CORE which attached to minicomputers from
Modular Computer Systems and
emulated hard disks made by DEC and Data General. Each chassis held
8x 256k x 18
RAM modules and had a capacity of 2 megabytes.
... ...32 years later:- (in
October 2008)
Dataram re-entered the SSD market with its
acquisition of
Cenatek.
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.
1980
- Dataram marketed
an updated version of their
BULK CORE SSD
for use with
DEC PDP-11 and
Data General minis.
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 -
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.
1989 -
Adtron developed its
first memory card drive for the proprietary memory cards manufactured by Epson
and Mitsubishi. These 1st generation memory card drives found applications with
companies such as GRiD, HP, and Trimble Navigation.
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. The company soon after patented technology for Direct AddressingTM -
which maximized SSD performance by translating SCSI addresses directly into
DRAM eliminating intermediate delays.
In 1994 -
StorageTek
documents
mention a RAM SSD product called Arctic Fox which had been developed by a
company called Amperif Corp,
acquired
in 1993.
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
1996 - ATTO
Technology maketed the
SiliconDisk
II. It was a 5.25" form factor SCSI-3 interface RAM SSD with 64MB
to 1.6GB capacity. Throughput was 80MB/s, and performance was 22,000 IOPS.
In
1997 - a
white paper by Peripheral Concepts listed the main SSD vendors as:-
Quantum,
Imperial Technology,
SEEK Systems, and
Solid Data Systems.
In
1997 - Bridgeworks
designed a RAM SSD
with hard drive backup. Sales Director - David Trossell told me - "It was
a little ahead of its time and the company dropped it after poor sales."
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 1999 -
BiTMICRO launched an
18GB 3.5"
flash SSD.
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.
2002 - 1st NAS flash SSD
In
Q1 2002 - SSDs were 4th most popular subject with our readers.
In
August 2002
- M-Systems and
Toshiba announced a
collaboration to market a 16MB version of M-Systems'
DiskOnChip MLC flash SSD
(which later grew to 2GB capacity in 2004.) |
In April
2002 the banner ad (right)
ran here on StorageSearch.com.
2002
was our 2nd year running SSD ads.. |
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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."
The product shown
on the right - from Imperial
Technology (which is no longer in business) - is an example of a 3.5"
parallel SCSI RAM SSD
featured here on StorageSearch.com in June 2002.
In Q4 2002 -
we ran our first ad for a NAS SSD. It was the
NAS-168F from
IEI. |
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2003 - terabyte SSDs become commercially availableIn
February 2003
- Competitors Texas
Memory Systems and Imperial
Technology announced the world's first terabyte class SSD systems.
The
Tera-RamSan, from
TMS, provided 2 million IOPS, a 1024 gigabyte capacity, and 128 2-Gbit Fibre
Channel links. It required 2 racks and 5000 watts.
The MegaRam-10000, from Imperial, cost $2 million for a 1TB
subsystem with 48 fibre channel ports.
In
Q1 2003 - SSDs were 2nd most popular subject with our readers..
In
May 2003
-
Imperial Technology
launched the WhatsHot SSD analysis tool.
In
Q2 2003 - SSDs were #1 most popular subject with our readers.. That's
why we researched and compiled the world's first annual
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.
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In
2004 StorageSearch.com conducted the world's 1st survey of SSD Buyer buyer
preferences. We also published the 1st SSD Buyers Guide which included prices,
and the 1st market model estimating the $10 billion / year potential of the SSD
market.
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. |
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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. | |
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2005 - Samsung declares SSDs a strategic market
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.
Solid Access
Technologies made the first SSD with a
Serial Attached SCSI
interface.
SiliconSystems
published (what turned out to be) a classic white paper -
Increasing Flash
SSD Reliability.
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
the top referring searches to this site.
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.
2006 - SSD awareness flares into notebook user market
In January 2006 -
NextCom became
the first notebook maker to qualify flash SSDs* for use in Windows XP, Linux and
Solaris notebooks.
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.
DV Nation became the
first US reseller to market SSDs online aimed at consumers and SMBs.
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.
I called 2007 - the "Year of SSD Revolutions".
This was the year in which
2.5" and 3.5"
flash SSDs from Mtron
and Memoright broke
away from the me-too performance pack - and showed that single flash SSD
drives in traditional HDD form factors could economically challenge the R/W
throughput and random IOPs of the fastest enterprise
hard drives.
Meanwhile
rackmount flash
SSDs from EasyCo (array
of COTS SSDs) and Texas
Memory Systems (proprietary flash array) showed that flash SSDs could
replace some market niches previously held by
RAM SSDs - at much
lower cost and without worrying about wear-out.
Fears and
myths about
endurance had in earlier years precluded flash as a serious contender in
high R/W applications. And although those problems would reoccur - with good
reasons - in later phases of the market - SLC was a safe technology choice in
server apps - provided the controller
architecture was designed correctly.
Year of the SSD Centurians. This is the year which the
number of SSD oems passed
100 companies, and in the server market fast flash SSDs broke the
asymmetric R/W IOPS
barrier!
I explained why I thought 2009 would go down in history as
the Year of SSD
Market Confusion. This is the year in which search volume for
PCIe SSDs
surpassed that for any other SSD form factor - knocking
2.5" SSDs off the
#1 slot.
It was also the year that flash SSDs reached the same storage
density as hard drives in the same form factor.
SSD news /
Storage History
/ StorageSearch.com |
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Megabyte's ancestor, Sir
Squeaks-a-Bit could
remember the days when computers were made
out of
metal and magnets and you could hear
them clicking away at their
machinations. |
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| SSD Pricing -
where does all the money go? |
SSDs are among the most
expensive computer hardware products you will ever buy.
Understanding
the factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating
process... |
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...not made any easier when
market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more than 100x to 1!
Why is that? ...read
the article | | | |
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Timeline Correction
I
originally stated that - in January 2006 -
NextCom became
the first notebook maker to qualify flash SSDs*.
I later added the
note "for use in Windows XP, Linux and Solaris notebooks."
Thanks
to Robin Harris, editor StorageMojo.com
for this email note (April 19, 2006).
"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
Editor:- strictly speaking
the Omnibook drive wasn't an SSD, because it didn't include
wear-leveling. But
it was an early example of
flash replacing hard
disk storage in a notebook style product. | |
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| 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. |
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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 | | |
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| Genesis of
the Serial Attached SCSI
SSD Market |
The
SAS SSD market was the
slowest part of the SSD market to take off - in the post "SSD awareness"
era.
And for many years there were only 1 or 2 vendors in the market.
One flash
SSD oem (Adtron) had
even said publicly in
2007 they
couldn't
see the need for SAS SSDs at all - because the leap in performance going from
hard drives to
SATA flash SSDs was
already so great - that the marginal difference of SAS wouldn't be worthwhile.
Here's the timeline
November 2001 - Serial
Attached SCSI was proposed as a new interface.
StorageSearch.com became the 1st
publisher to set up a dedicated directory for
SAS storage.
January
2005 - the SSD
buyers survey showed SAS SSDs as the 8th most desirable SSD interface to
meet buyers' future needs. The #1 on this list (with 5x as many responders
saying they would use it) was
SATA SSDs - although
at the time of the survey - neither type of product actually existed.
April
2005 -
Solid Access
Technologies made the first SSD with a SAS interface. It was a rackmount
RAM SSD.
August
2007 - STEC
announced it was designing a
3.5" SAS SSD.
December
2008 - Hitachi and
Intel announced they were
jointly designing a new range of high IOPS flash SSDs with
SAS interfaces -
expected to ship in Q1 2010.
January 2009 - As the number of
oems talking about SAS SSDs headed towards double digits - StorageSearch.com
launched a dedicated directory page for
SAS SSDs.
February
2010 - Gartner
estimates cited in the article -
the
Evolving Enterprise SSD - suggest that the SAS SSD market size may reach
approximately 2 million units in 2013. | | |
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