| Don't prejudge the
possible impact of the SSD IP from this pioneering SSD software company by
its logo or by its web site (which hasn't been updated for many years.) |
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Among other things - EasyCo
is the original developer of patent pending
Managed Flash Technology - which has
been used in both the enterprise and mobile phone markets. |
..... |
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EasyCo has also developed various other interesting
pieces of large
SSD controller architecture IP which can improve the efficiency, speed and
reliability of MLC flash arrays. | |
see also:-
EasyCo
- editor mentions on StorageSearch.com |
|
who's who in SSD? - Easy Computing Company -
by Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - April 2013
EasyCo entered the SSD market in
2007 with a
unique software solution which dealt with the problem of
write amplification
in flash SSDs called MFT (Managed Flash Technology).
EasyCo's driver
wrapped a layer around industry standard notebook quality
consumer flash SSDs
and enabled them to be used in some enterprise apps. Their technology also
boosted write
IOPS in RAID
configurations, improved endurance and did internal data deduping.
EasyCo's
first enterprise oem customer for this technology was
WhipTail.
But
the need for EasyCo's endurance managing technology in the wider enterprise
market seemed to disappear within a few years of them launching their MFT in
2007 - with the emergence - in
2009 - of
cheap fast enterprise capable MLC
controllers from
SandForce and the
first generation of MLC based
PCIe SSDs aimed at the
enterprise market from Fusion-io.
With the emergence of a flourishing competitive market for enterprise
grade 2.5" flash SSDs
- and many different solutions solving apparently similar problems at the
rack and PCIe
card array level - there didn't seem to be a market role for EasyCo's
technology.
As a result - EasyCo disappeared from public view in
the enterprise SSD market in the period from about 2011 to 2012 as it turned
its attention away from the enterprise and looked towards licensing its
technology for use in consumer products like phones. Among other things
EasyCo developed a flash
mnagement product for the Android market and an accelerator for cheap flash
drives such as USB flash sticks.
I didn't expect to hear anything new
from EasyCo within the enterprise SSD market.
But I learned recently
from the company that EasyCo has been quietly improving the scope of their big
SSD controller architecture - and have some impressive things to say about the
efficiency of their
low latency RAID like
technology - which might even enable SSD oems to challenge the
cost per SSD terabyte
enterprise array leader Skyera.
So
EasyCo could soon become much better known again in enterprise circles.
Which is not at all what you'd expect from its web site - which hasn't been
updated much in the past 5 years. |
|
this is an earlier profile of EasyCo from September 2011
EasyCo entered the SSD market in
2007 with a
unique software solution which dealt with the problem of
write amplification
in flash SSDs. EasyCo's driver wrapped a layer around industry standard
notebook quality 2.5"
and 3.5" flash
SSDs and enabled them to be used in some enterprise apps. Their technology also
boosted write
IOPS in RAID
configurations.
To demonstrate what their technology could do EasyCo
designed and sold a range of
rackmount SSD appliances
and published some excellent benchmarks and whitepapers on the subject of
comparative SSD throughput and IOPS.
EasyCo's SSD architecture fits
into these categories:-
big architecture
and skinny
(RAM cache).
Since then - many small form factor SSD oems have
eliminated the risks of
endurance
based burnout (which are still inherent in many
notebook SSDs)
by introducing intrinsically high IOPS rated SSDs with
controllers from
companies like SandForce,
Pliant and
Anobit.
The
availability of high IOPS SSD controllers based around MLC flash removed the
need for EasyCo's technology in enterprise markets. So the company turned its
attention to leveraging the performance of lower cost consumer USB flash drives
- and sells its software technology directly to end users and systems
integrators - in addition to licensing to some flash storage oems.
My
guess is that its MFT technology will find a market in some future SSD
controller designs. |
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In August 2007 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.
MFT can also
have a beneficial effect on arrays of hard disks, although the effect is not as
dramatic as for flash SSDs. As well as increasing hard disk thru-put
significantly, it can also save drives and power because it creates an
environment where RAID-5 and RAID-10 have identical write performance. Thus, in
larger HDD systems, MFT reduces drive counts per unit of usable space by
approximately 30%
In February 2009 - MFT licensee, WhipTail
Technologies, announced
details of its iSCSI
compatible 2U rackmount RAID protected SSDs.
see also:-
article:-
Understanding Flash SSD Performance (pdf) - This article compares in detail
read / write performance and IOPs of commercial
flash SSDs
compared to hard disks.
Explaining why the write cycle can become a bottleneck in FSSDs - the article
outlines EasyCo's patent pending approach in managing arrays of flash.
In
November 2009 - EasyCo
released USB SuperCharger Software
- a driver for USB 2 flash storage which can apparently speed up writes by
2x to about 5x. |
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