see also:-
Foremay
- mentions on StorageSearch.com
is remanence in
persistent memory a new security risk?
where are we
heading with memory intensive systems and software? |
|
Editor:- November 24, 2016 - Foremay was ranked
#10 in the
Q3 2016 edition of
the
Top SSD Companies
which is researched and published by StorageSearch.com
Foremay
entered the Top SSD Companies lists in
Q3 2009.
Foremay's
highest rank in this series was #2 in
Q4 2009. |
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|
Who's who in SSD? -
Foremay
by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - StorageSearch.com - November 2014
Foremay first entered
StorageSearch.com's
Top SSD Companies list
in the 3rd
quarter of 2009.
The company dropped out of the lists in
2012 and
2013 - but
then reappeared in Q1
2014.
Foremay offers products which are mainly aimed at embedded
applications in these product categories:-
industrial SSDs,
SATA SSDs,
PCIe SSDs,
2.5" SSDs,
military SSDs.
Despite
many requests to do so - Foremay prefers not to say much publicly about the
architecture of its SSDs - preferring instead to share this kind of info with
customers via NDA.
One thing which differentiate the company is the
consistency of its PR efforts to promote wider appreciation of the
different types of secure
erase / purge in SSDs.
That was the
company's chosen
educational subject in our
SSD Bookmarks
series back in 2011 - and then later in
August 2014
Foremay presented an updated survey of techniques in its paper
Secure
Erase for Embedded SSDs (pdf) which was presented at the
Flash Memory Summit. |
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In June 2009 -
Foremay announced one
of the fastest
2.5" SLC flash
SSDs in the market. The SATA compatible
SC199 Cheetah
V-Series has sustained R/W speeds of 260MB/s and /250MB/s respectively and
42,000 random IOPS. Capacity options range from 32GB to 256GB.
That
makes the 3rd Cheetah in my
Animal Brands in
the Storage Market Directory. Click on the link to see the full storage
zoo.
In July
2009 -
Foremay announced a new
1.8" SLC flash SSD.
The SATA compatible
SC 199 Cheetah
has sustained R/W speeds of 250MB/s and 220MB/s respectively. R/W IOPS are
6,000 and 5,200 respectively. Capacity options range from 16GB to 64GB.
Endurance
for the 16GB device is rated at 87 years assuming 50GB sequential writes per
day.
In September
2009 -
Foremay announced the
SC199 Hi-Rel Series SLC flash SSDs in 1.8", 2.5" and 3.5" form
factors which meet military standards MIL-STD-810G and MIL-STD-833G.
Operational temperature options include -40°C to approx 100°C.
In
October 2009
- Foremay
launched its
EC188 Jaguar
Series flash SSDs optimized for the Mac market. Form factors include
1.8",
2.5" and
3.5", interface
types include SATA, micro SATA, SATA LIF, IDE and IDE ZIF/LIF. Capacties range
from 64GB to 1TB and R/W speeds are upto 260/230MB/s.
Also in October
2009 - Foremay
entered the PCIe SSD
market with its
EC188
Dragon series - which is now sampling.
Supporting both x8 and x16
slots - R/W performance is upto 1.5 GB/s and 1.3 GB/s respectively. Both MLC and
SLC models are available. Capacities range from 128GB to 4TB. Sequential R/W
IOPS is up to 90,000/80,000. Random R/W IOPS is up to 27,000/12,000.
Features
include power outage protection, dual PCIe configuration through a built-in
PCIe RAID controller, and active garbage collection. OS support includes
Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux, and UNIX. ...Later:- in February
2011 - one of my readers who wanted to evaluate Foremay's PCIe SSD cards for
Solaris apps was told that it wan't actually available - but could be expedited
for a considerable development fee. Naughty Foremay! Looks like they
preannounced a feature that doesn't yet exist!
In November 2009 -
Foremay announced it is
shipping the world's
fastest 2.5" SATA flash SSDs.
The
SC199 Cheetah Y-Series has R/W speeds up to 290/280 MB/s in
2.5" and
3.5" SATA form
factors - which approaches the theoretical speed limit of the SATA-II protocol.
It also delivers impressive R/W IOPS of up to 50,000/45,000 respectively.
Also in November 2009 -
Foremay announced
that secure erase and fast
purge options are now available for most models in its
SC199
SSD product family.
In February 2010 -
Foremay started
sampling
its EC188 D-series 2nd generation
fast
PCIe SSDs with
capacity upto 4TB (MLC)
and 1TB (SLC). The new SSDs deliver sequential speeds up to 1.6 GB/s for
reading and 1.5 GB/s for writing, and R/W IOPS up to 200K/180K.
Foremay's new PCIe SSDs aim at the same kind of customers who currently buy
from
Fusion-io and
Texas Memory Systems
both of whom have been shipping this type of product for over a year
already. Customer qualification by OS and application type is a prerequisite
to sales in this part of the market. Foremay will have to be aggressive
on price to get volume customers interested enough to test its products.
In
April 2010 -
Foremay started
sampling SAS SSDs in
its
EC188
product line. The new models (available in
2.5" or
3.5" form factors,
and available in commercial and industrial temperature grades) have R/W speeds
of 250MB/s and 200MB/s respectively, random read/write
IOPS up to
30,000/25,000 and upto 400GB capacity. That brings the number of
SAS SSD companies
listed on StorageSearch.com to 13.
In
July 2010
- Foremay announced it
is shipping 2TB
3.5" and 1TB
2.5" SATA flash
SSDs in its EC188 M-series model V product range. R/W speeds are up to
200MB/s. ECC is 24-bit. The SSDs are bootable and support all major
operating systems.
In August 2010 -
Foremay's CTO, Jack
Winters presented a paper -
Secure Erase
Options for SSDs (pdf) - at the recent
Flash Memory Summit.
The paper describes the need for
SSD data purge and
the 3 techniques which the company supports in its Avalanche Secure Erase
Suite.
In September 2010 -
Foremay announced it is
shipping SATA 3 versions of its
EC188
M-series flash SSDs (2.5" and 3.5" SSDs) - with R/W speeds upto
450MB/s and 350MB/s respectively.
In November 2010 -
Foremay
announced
shipment of the fastest 1.8"
micro SATA slim flash SSDs - with 280MB/s R/W and random
IOPS as
follows:- up to 30,000 read and 15,000 write. The 5mm high SSDs have
capacity up to 400GB and are available in industrial temperature versions.
In
March 2011 - StorageSearch.com
published a new update in the
SSD Bookmarks series
- with
links
suggested by Jack H Winters,
CTO, Foremay.
Foremay announced it is
shipping 32GB PATA
versions of its
OC177
SSD Disk on Chip which measures 22 x 22 x 1.8 mm and has R/W speeds of 70
and 40MB/s respectively.
In August 2011 -
Foremay announced
that it has shipped SSDs from its
SC199
Hi-Rel range for deployment in NASA's
next generation space program.
In January 2013 -
Foremay shipped 2TB
industrial 2.5"
SATA SSDs with standard 9.5mm thickness.
In January 2017 -
Foremay reminded the market of its US patent - 9,317,422 - for a technique
which physically destroys the nand flash in an SSD using addressibly directed
high voltage.
SSD
news
Can you
trust SSD market data?
Adaptive R/W and
DSP in flash SSD IP
the Silo classification for
all enterprise SSDs
Symmetries and
consequences in SSD design
Understanding what shapes
flash SSD performance
Efficiency - making the
same SSD - with less chips
the
upside and downside of hold-up capacitors in MIL SSDs |
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| Foremay fires patent
warning post about flash data destruct spikes |
Editor:- January 10, 2017 - If you're seriously
interested in data security in SSDs you'll already know that encryption is
simply a promise to delay access to secured data rather than a guarantee that
it will remain denied to those who shouldn't see it. That's why the
SSD fast purge /
autonomous data destruct / fast secure erase market has developed so many
ingenious ways to offer better security assurance - which you can pick to
match your deployment's time to erase, electrical power to erase and
monetary cost budget.
I noticed a
new
post on linkedin by Dennis
Eodice VP Strategic Sales - Foremay - who says
the company has a patent -
9,317,422
- for a technique which physically destroys the nand flash in an SSD using
addressibly directed high voltage.
The implied message being that if
any other companies have used similar techniques to secure SSDs which are
sold in other regions - Foremay thinks this patent is enforceable to prevent
this technique being used in competing SSDs sold in the US. | | |
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| Foremay
ships aerospace 8TB 2.5" NVMe SSD |
Editor:- September 26, 2016 - Foremay today
announced
volume production of 8TB models in its rugged secure 2.5" U.2 NVMe SSD
product range - which with PCIe x4 lanes has R/W speeds up to 1.2GB/s with
latency as little as 25 microseconds. Optional features of the SC199 hi rel
model include:-
- Military secure erase and fast erase features.
- Rugged designs with anti-shock and anti-vibration, meeting MIL-STD-810G/F
standards.
- Anti-radiation and anti-emission, both electrical and magnetic, for
aerospace applications subject to the customer's specifications.
See
also:- PCIe SSDs,
hybrid DIMMs | | |
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| how fast is fast erase?
|
Editor:- January 26, 2016 - When it comes to
SSD security - how
fast is fast erase?
Over
the years I've reported
many
examples of this (erase) and also other methods of
data
destruction the rule of thumb has been:- the bigger the capacity of
the drive - the more time in seconds it takes (and more electrical energy
too).
A
press
release today from Foremay suggests a
fast and scalable sanitization route may come from what they call "crypto
erase" - which renders all data scrambled, scattered and useless.
It's
fast. Takes only a second to complete the crypto erase of a Foremay SED SSD with
capacity of up to 20TB.
This erase can be triggered by a command or a user presettable
threshold of failed access attempts.
Commenting on the benefits of
intrinsic hardware encryption instead of relying on software and aside from
the obvious performance - Foremay says hardware encryption is far more secure
because software can be corrupted...
"Information security on
SSD drives has become increasingly important to all users, particularly in
government, defense, financial and medical industries," said Jack Winters, Foremay's
CTO and cofounder.
Editor's comments:- The effect - I guess -
is a bit like the accidental predicament of needing
data recovery for
a damaged and unsupported encrypted SSD. But a deliberate erase like this
will be more systematic and probably doesn't have a single mode recovery
lever.
| | |
.. |
| In 2016 I think we'll see
more new embedded SSDs which use heavily customized, and proprietary SSD
controllers rather than lightly tweaked COTS controllers. |
| What were the big
SSD ideas of 2015? | | |
.. |
| toughening up DWPD |
Editor:- October 28, 2015 - DWPD ratings have become
a useful shortcut to filter enterprise SSDs because there's consensus that the
number should somehow map into
recognizable
application zones and price bands.
Now we're seeing more military SSDs
wearing DWPD badges too.
Toughening up DWPD
- is my new blog about this trend. | | |
.. |
| Foremay says MIL designers
can now have 8TB in a 2.5" secure, rugged SATA SSD |
Editor:- November 19, 2014 - How much capacity
do you need in a
2.5" SSD?
That
depends on the economics of your application and what other alternatives you
have. But 2.5" SATA is emerging as a safe roadmap form factor for
high capacity embedded projects in the
rugged / military market
- and now those mission critical designers will be able to stretch
their capacities further than most of you.
Jack Winters, CTO -
Foremay said "When
we asked our customers what we should do for the next step in SSDs, most replied
with capacity, capacity and capacity."
That's why Foremay
announced
this week it is now offering 8TB as a variation in its encrypted, secure rugged
SSD range.
Editor's comments:- I spoke to Foremay yesterday to
clarify the availability versus "unveiling" status of the new 8TB
SSDs.
Foremay said - We are accepting orders for small quantites now.
Mass production is expected in Q1'2015 | | |
... |
| Foremay ships 2TB 2.5"
SSDs for industrial market |
Editor:- January 15, 2013 - Foremay today
announced
immediate availability of 2TB
industrial
2.5"
SATA SSDs with
standard 9.5mm thickness.
Editor's comments:- In its press
release for this product Foremay claims to be the first company to do this. But
this is one of those situations where I think being "first" tells us
more about market conditions (where things stand in the
HDD replacement
part of the SSD market) than about the technological supremacy - or
otherwise - of any particular SSD oem.
It's been technically feasible
to make 2TB 2.5" SATA SSDs for the past 2 years. The only reason you
haven't seen them flooding into the market is that such products would have been
unattractive before to both SSD oems and to SSD buyers.
For the SSD oem
- the same bunch of memory chips used to make a 2TB 2.5" SATA drive - have
been much more profitably deployed in faster SSD modules such as
PCIe SSDs or
SAS SSDs.
Meanwhile
for SSD buyers and specifiers - 2TB 2.5" SSDs would have been very
expensive -
compared to the alternatives - while delivering no performance benefits (due to
the slowness of the SATA interface) which means that 2x 1TB SATA drives are
faster in a storage system then 1x 2TB drive.
In today's market,
however, the cost differences between flash SSDs and hard drives have shrunk to
the extent that for industrial equipment designers who look at the cost of
reliability in a
7 year industrial product operating life timeframe - the alternative of using
1 factory fitted SSD compared to the probability of using 2-3 HDDs in the same
slot (taking into account the MTBF distribution over the system population)
makes high capacity SATA SSDs attractive.
This class of SSDs will
also extend the market life of equipment designs which originally used
HDD interface standards as a way of virtualizing and protecting against
generational changes in raw flash
memory - even if they never used hard drives. The extra storage capacity
enables equipment designers to integrate more features and software. | | |
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