| storage chip news |
Viterbi joins Link_A_Media
board
Editor:- September 2, 2010 - Link_A_Media Devices
recently announced that Dr.
Andrew Viterbi has joined its
board of directors.
“I
have followed Link_A_Media’s progress for some time and find its culture of
innovation compelling. The company has already emerged as the technology leader
in the data storage application with its introduction of Low Density Parity
Check SoC products in the mobile
hard disk market,”
said Dr. Viterbi. “With its strong financial backing, customer traction,
technology leadership and executive team, the company is well positioned to
deliver compelling SoC solutions to the broad data storage market.”
The LAMD LDPC data
recovery architecture can tolerate significantly more noise on the recording
medium at the expense of increased complexity relative to
Reed
Solomon decoders. LAMD's current LDPC-based SOC device reduces the number
of errors read from a disk from 1 in 100 to 1 in 100 Million bits of data,
relative to the previously-used concatenated coding schemes. This enables more
efficient utilization of the available disk surface to store more data and
reduce the cost per gigabyte of storage.
Samsung and Seagate to develop SSD controllers
Editor:-
August 13, 2010 - Samsung
and Seagate -
recently
announced
they will jointly develop
SSD controller
technologies to operate with Samsung's 30nm-class MLC NAND.
The
jointly developed controller will be utilized in
Seagate's
enterprise-class SSDs.
Editor's comments:- despite being a keen advocate for solid
state storage since 2005 - Samsung has never had the IP it takes to develop
best in breed enterprise SSDs. Seagate, a relative newbie in the SSD market,
doesn't have SSD IP either - but it does have
hard disk interface
experience.
Developing (or
acquiring) its
own SSD IP has always been desirable for Seagate. The new agreement also helps
to explain why the company was not happy to confirm industry reports that its
1st SSD actually used SoCs from
SandForce.
Will
the 2 companies be able to develop world beating SSD controller technology?
In my long experience of talking to people in companies which do have
strong and unique SSD architectures - I have got the impression that a
successful enterprise SSD design needs:- unity of purpose, very strong
technical leadership, good sense of market direction, and years of fine tuning
design iterations.
I don't think that an inter company collaboration
like Samsung and Seagate can achieve the NO-COMPROMISE design
decisions which are needed to develop world beating enterprise SSD
architectures - no matter how talented individuals in the engineering pool may
be.
Pliant nabs Dot Hill's VP software engineering
Editor:-
August 3, 2010 - Pliant
Technology today
announced
the appointment of Mark
Delsman as VP of engineering.
Prior to joining Pliant, Delsman was VP of software engineering for
Dot Hill.
In his new role, Delsman will manage the software, hardware and
ASIC development
organizations to expand Pliant's position in the enterprise storage market for
solid state based
technologies.
Micron's embedded memory market video
Editor:- July
21, 2010 - Micron's
VP of Embedded Solutions, Glen Hawk discusses the company's strategy with
respect to the embedded memory market and how the Numonyx business
(which they acquired in February for $1.3 billion) fits in - in a
video
interview on YouTube which also mentions prospects for extending the life of
NOR architectures using PCM and also hints at other applications - which I
assume are SSDs.
ASIC vs FPGA for use in enterprise SSDs
Editor:- July
21, 2010 - a reader asked me to comment on the business and technical pros
and cons of FPGAs vs ASICs when it comes to enterprise SSD design.
He
named a bunch of enterprise SSD makers in both camps - and said he hadn't seen
anything about this issue on StorageSearch.com. ... read the article
MOSAID and Nanya sign 7 year DRAM patents agreement
Editor:-
July 20, 2010 - MOSAID
Technologies today
announced
that it has licensed its DRAM patents to Nanya Technology as
part of a 7 year, royalty bearing patent portfolio agreement.
new! - SSD Bookmarks - from SandForce's CEO
Editor:-
July 14, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published
SSD Bookmarks
- suggested by Michael Raam,
CEO SandForce.
It
seems like nearly everyone in the
SSD industry wants to know
what SandForce is doing and thinking.
Michael Raam's suggestions
include some great SSD resources which I had never seen before - which is why
the SSD Bookmarks
Series was created.
Do you want to understand more about the
issues that drive SandForce's thinking? If so - read the article
New NAS systems will scale to 100Gbps
Editor:- July
12, 2010 - designing quad port 100Gbps ethernet will be made easier by a new
interface (PHY) from NetLogic
Microsystems .
The device supports 10Gbps SFI-to-XFI, 40Gbps
XLPPI-to-XLAUI and 100Gbps CPPI-to-CAUI modes to enable a seamless migration of
data centers from 10 Gigabit to 100 Gigabit throughputs. .
2010 Memory market may reach $67 billion - says IDC
Editor:-
July 6, 2010 - IDC
forecasts
that revenues for the semiconductor memory sector (DRAM and
flash) will reach $66.7
billion in 2010.
the Top 10 SSD oems in the 2nd quarter of 2010
Editor:-
July 6, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published the 13th quarterly edition of the
Top 10 SSD OEMs -
with new commentaries and analysis .
Tracking the search volume of
millions of SSD readers - the series is designed to alert you to emerging
market trends and simplify your process of shortlisting potential partners
and suppliers. ...read
the article
intro to Nanocrystal Memories
Editor:- June 30,
2010 - a recent blog from Denali Software
describes the
characteristics
of nanocrystal memories - a flash-like
nv memory technology from
Freescale
Semiconductor.
This
comparison
table on Freescale's web site suggests 10x faster write cycle - and
upto 30x
endurance
(10 million cycles) than traditional flash. The technology is shipping in some
embedded microprocessors.
Macronix research pushes flash density
Editor:- June
16, 2010 - Macronix
today
announced
its research results related to its patented BE SONOS (barrier engineering)
charge-trapping technology which could make terabit NAND flash feasible.
Using 3D stacking, NAND Flash may achieve higher data storage capacity
and effectively lower fabrication cost without relying on advances in
lithography technology. Consequently some memory manufacturers have invested in
3D research recently.
Anobit aims at SandForce SSD SoCs slots
Editor:-
June 15, 2010 - Anobit
announced it is sampling
SSDs based on its patented Memory
Signal Processing technology which provide 20x improvement in operational
life for MLC SSDs in high IOPS server environments.
Based on
proprietary algorithms that compensate for the physical limitations of NAND
flash, Anobit's MSP technology extends standard MLC
endurance
from approximately 3K read/write cycles to over 50K cycles - to make MLC
technology suitable for high-duty cycle applications. This guarantees drive
write endurance of 10 full disk writes per day, for 5 years, or 7,300TBs
for a 400GB drive, with fully random data (worst-case conditions).
First-generation Anobit Genesis SSDs deliver 20,000 IOPS random
write and 30,000 IOPS random read, with 180MB/s sustained write and 220MB/s
sustained read.
Anobit says that some of the world's largest NAND
manufacturers, consumer electronics vendors and storage solution providers
currently utilize Anobit's MSP technology in their products.
"For too long, the high prices of SLC SSDs and
concerns about
MLC SSD endurance have slowed the adoption of
flash memory storage in
the enterprise. Anobit Genesis SSDs effectively neutralize both of these
concerns," said Prof. Ehud Weinstein, Anobit CEO. "By delivering true
enterprise-class SSD
reliability at affordable MLC SSD prices, Anobit Genesis SSDs unlock the
full promise of solid-state enterprise storage."
Editor's comments:- superficially the endurance delivered by
Anobit's SSD controller
is better than that obtainable from
SandForce - whereas
the performance lead is the other way around. For most oems what will be more
important is that they do not need to be locked into a single technology
supplier to get adequate metrics for their MLC SSD product lines.
will it work any better this time? - consumer bybrids
Editor:-
June 3, 2010 - Denali
Software is named as a possible savior of the hybrid drive concept in a
new white paper by Objective Analysis
-
Flash
Cache is Back (pdf) - which predicts that soon all computing platforms
will employ a cache layer between the
HDD and the
DRAM.
Author
Jim Handy says projections from
notebook SSD
makers that SSDs would already have replaced tens of millions of HDDs were over
optimistic and may "never happen". Instead he says a flash cache,
supported by a properly designed
SSD ASAP controller "will
provide near-SSD
performance at near-HDD
prices".
Early implementations of such flash cache schemes -
cited in the article - didn't work properly because... ...read
the article (pdf), ...read editor's
comments |
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| this way to the Petabyte
SSD |
In 2016 there will be
just 3 types of
SSD in the datacenter.
One
of them doesn't exist yet - the bulk storage SSD.
It will replace the
last remaining strongholds of
hard drives in the
datacenter due to its unique combination of characteristics, low running costs
and operational advantages. |
 |
... |
The new model of the
datacenter - how we get from here to there - and the technical problems which
will need to be solved - are just some of the ideas explored in this
visionary article. | | | |
| . |
There
are
hundreds
of SSD articles on StorageSearch.com
Here are some examples.
|
- SSD
Market History - lists product and technology milestones in the 30 years of
the SSD market upto the end of 2009.
- RAM Cache
Ratios in flash SSDs - it's important to know the underlying RAM cache
architecture - even if you're happy with the R/W and IOPS performance.
- 2010 - 1st Fizz
in the SSD Bubble? - even the dogs in the street know this is going to be a
multibillion dollar market. Greed will play as big a part as technology in
shaping the
SSD year ahead.
- the pros and cons of
using SSD ASAPs - auto tuning SSD appliances are a new category of SSD
which entered the market in the 2nd half of 2009 to accelerate servers without
needing human tune-ups. How can you tell if they are right for you? And how
well do they work?
- the Problem
with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs - long established as a useful performance
modeling metric - this article explains why some specs are exaggerated when
applied to flash SSDs - or predict the wrong results for many common
applications.
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