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See also:-
LSI
- editor mentions on StorageSearch.com and
LSI's
SSD page
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Editor's comments:- January 2013 -
LSI - ranked
#12 in
the top SSD companies
in Q1 2013 - operates in the
PCIe SSD,
SSD controller and
auto tiering / SSD ASAPs
markets.
The company sampled its 1st SSD product in
March 2010.
It was a
PCIe SSD - which is
software compatible with SAS
- an interface which LSI
helped to pioneer. Elements of the IP in the new SSD design came from
Seagate and
SandForce.
LSI
acquired SandForce in January 2012 - and revealed the strategic significance of
this shortly afterwards when it revealed that LSI's PCIe SSD product - the
WarpDrive
- was being oemed by EMC.
LSI's SSDs are
small (rather
than big) SSD architecture and span a wide range of market applications
including:- enterprise
SSDs, industrial
SSDs and consumer
SSDs.
The company has not - at the time of writing this - revealed
what it's doing to develop
adaptive DSP
ECC IP for SSDs. But it must be on the roadmap. |
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In March 2009 -
LSI announced better
support for flash SSDs
in the latest update to its
MegaRAID
SAS adapters. LSI calls this new feature SSD Guard - which can anticipate
some types of flash SSD failures in
RAID 0 configurations
and starts rebuilding data on a spare unit.
In December 2009 - LSI announced it is
sampling
the LSISAS2208 dual-core 6Gb/s
SAS
RAID-on-Chip
IC to OEM customers. It's
intended to support the forthcoming PCIe 3.0 specification, currently under
development and provide performance levels that meet the needs of
next-generation server platforms based on
flash SSD storage.
The new LSI SAS ROC will deliver performance levels of up to 600,000 IOPS.
In January 2010 -
LSI and
Seagate
announced
they have collaborated on designing
PCIe SSDs for the
enterprise accelerator market - which started sampling in March 2010.
At that time - LSI was approximately the 163rd
company to enter the
SSD market (not counting
SSD SoC makers - which
would push the score to about 185).
in November, 2010 -
Demartek
published a sponsored
test
report (pdf) which compares the performance of
SSDs and
HDDs in a simulated
web server environment when managed by LSI's
CacheCade
software - which provides
SSD ASAP
functionality.
Editor's commnents:- The report shows that
throughput and access times were improved by at least 3x using a single
SSD cache compared to the HDD only situation.
However - it's
disappointing that the sizing of the test was not best chosen to draw
meaningful conclusions. Because the web content was only 25% larger than
the SSD capacity! It would have been more helpful to design a simulated case in
which there was at least a 10x or 100x size difference. Because if you
can fit all the web content onto an SSD then you don't need the burden of the
"cache" software at all - and might get better results by switching it
off.
There are case studies going back nearly 10 years which show that
SSDs can provide big speedups in web servers. The exact speedup depends on how
fast the SSD is. This test report doesn't answer the question - is LSI's
CacheCade useful in a realistically scaled environment?
In March
2011 - LSI finally spun off the
Engenio systems
business - selling it for $480 million to
Network Appliance.
In June 2011 -
LSI was one of
several compatible companies named in
FlashSoft's launch of
its auto tiering SSD
software.
In October 2011 -
LSI
announced
a definitive agreement to acquire
SandForce for
approximately $322 million. The transaction is expected to close early in the
first quarter of 2012. SandForce president and CEO, Michael Raam will
become General Manager of LSI's newly formed Flash Components Division.
In
January 2012 - LSI
announced
it has completed the acquisition of
SandForce. And LSI
also announced
that its PCIe SSD product - the
WarpDrive
- will be oemed by EMC.
In April 2012 - LSI
announced
details of its new
Nytro
family of SSD technologies - which integrate and join up several previously
standalone elements in its product line in a new unified marketing roadmap.
In
June 2012 - LSI
demonstrated its SandForce
SF-2000 flash controllers working with Toshiba 19nm and Intel 20nm NAND
flash memory at Computex 2012
in Taipei, Taiwan. |
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| LSI announces a new
technology roadmap for SSD accelerator components |
Editor:- April 2, 2012 - LSI today
announced
details of its new
Nytro
family of SSD technologies - which integrate and join up several previously
standalone elements in its product line in a new unified marketing direction.
In
particular LSI is saying that its legacy MegaRAID controllers and software stack
can be used as reliable proven launch pads for its
SSD ASAP /
acceleration software - which is being integrated in new upcoming generations of
PCIe SSD cards (now called Nytro WarpDrives) which use
LSI/SandForce controllers.
Editor's
comments:- in a 2009
storage market forecast I said - "the high end of the
RAID controller market
is going to disappear" - and I explained why companies in that market -
like LSI had to migrate to PCIe SSDs and SSD systems array technology such as
SSD ASAPs to satisfy the emerging needs of their oem customers - which in
previous decades had been met by RAID adapters and controller chips.
What
LSI has done in the past few years is acquire or develop individual pieces of
the technology puzzle - and selling their storage systems business
Engenio 12 months ago
so that they didn't compete with their storage oem customers - was just as
important as acquiring SandForce.
I
spoke to LSI about the new Nytro technology last week. From the sales point of
view they see this as offering affordable SSD acceleration for the masses. So
you're going to see low price point fast-enough SSD ASAPs - rather than the
fastest.
Other common features in the product line are that the
products are bootable, work with legacy
SAS software and
have minimal load on the server CPU.
LSI will also work to get better
integration between the functionality of its SSD controllers and the host cards
and caching software. That should lead to better latency and reliability in the
future.
difference between LSI and FIO?
What's the single
biggest difference you may ask - between LSI and some of the other companies in
this part of the PCIe SSD ASAP market? And in particular a company like
Fusion-io?
The
technical ingredients above are very different - and I could summarize that by
saying LSI is at heart an SSD hardware company with most of its IP in chips
- whereas FIO is at heart an SSD software company which uses chips as
deliverables - but nearly all FIO's IP is in software. That's one way of
looking at it - but the clearest difference I see between LSI and FIO is where
they are in the philosophy of their thinking re the SSD market adoption
model.
All the Nytro marketing orientation materials I saw
still talked a lot about how SSDs would fit into an HDD world.
When I
questioned that - I got the impression that LSI's corporate marketing hasn't
gone much beyond that stage. LSI is still at the "SSDs help HDDs point"
whereas FIO and many other SSD makers - and this publication - and many of you
too are beyond that and know that the
future of all
enterprise storage is solid state. The tricky part is navigating safely from
here to there.
Finally - Nytro sounds like a good name for an SSD
brand - but it's not entirely original. |
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| How big was the
thinking in this SSD's design? |
Does size really does matter in SSD
design?
By that I mean how big was the mental map? - not how many
inches wide is the SSD.
The novel and the short story both have their
place in literature and the pages look exactly the same. But you know from
experience which works best in different situations and why.
When
it comes to SSDs - Big versus Small SSD architecture - is something which was
in the designer's mind. Even if they didn't think about it that way at the time.
|
 |
For designers, integrators,
end users and investors alike - understanding what follows from these simple
choices predicts a lot of important consequences. ...read the article | | | |
| . |
| SSD sudden power
loss vulnerability guide |
Why should you care
what happens in an SSD when the power goes down?
This important design
feature - which barely rates a mention in most SSD datasheets and press releases
- has a strong impact on
SSD data integrity
and operational
reliability.
This article will help you understand why some
SSDs which (work perfectly well in one type of application) might fail in
others... even when the changes in the operational environment appear to be
negligible. |
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| we're #2 in PCIe SSDs and
growing fast - says LSI |
| Editor:- May 15, 2013 - LSI today
announced
it shipped over 40,000 PCIe
SSDs in the past 12 months - and has been ranked the #2 merchant supplier
of enterprise PCIe SSDs in the US, and is the fastest growing vendor in this
category according to a recent report by Forward Insights. | | |
| .. |
| new LSI blog on the value
of enterprise flash |
Editor:- March 14, 2013 - You
won't be surprised to see me mentioning a
recently
published blog by Robert Ober,
System and Processor Architect, LSI - about the
value of PCIe SSDs in
big datacenters - which includes these statements:-
- "Work/$ is the correct metric (and not crazy expensive $/bit)."
- "when users say - $8k PCIe card in a $4k server really? - I am
always stunned by this"
I'm guessing that the title of Robert's
blog - What are the driving forces behind going diskless? Will 100% flash
storage make sense in enterprise? - was either inspired by
SEO considerations
(stuffing the title with value-loaded words for search-engines) or was
predetermined before the blog was written.
I prefer this alternative
title - suggested by a banner graphic in the blog itself -
An $8K PCIe
card in an $4k server - huh!?! | | |
| .. |
| NetApp and
LSI do that "my software loves your SSD" thing |
Editor:- March 6, 2013 - LSI today announced
that its
Nytro
WarpDrive (PCIe SSDs)
have been validated for use with NetApp's
Flash
Accel (SSD ASAP)
software.
Editor's comments:- According to
NetApp's pdf
- "Flash Accel has the ability to keep the cache warm and coherent in
the event of disruptive operations and restart caching from the reboot/crash
point, rather than restarting from a cold cache."
But it's not as
unique in these respects as their document would have you believe - although
this suggestion is probably because of when the document was written.
LSI
says in its press release that its "advanced off-loaded
multiprocessor architecture uses up to 4x less CPU and memory resources
than competing solutions".
Now when you see that phrase - off-loaded
- in this kind of context - you can be sure that it's a dig at
Fusion-io.
The pros and cons - in architectural
efficiency and
performance -
aren't as straightforward as they appear from this subliminal value-loaded
phrasing. I discussed these issues a few years ago in an article in
FIO's product page here
on the mouse site.
The motivational reasons you might choose LSI
rather than FIO (or the other way around) probably have less to do with whether
you understand or like the way they design
SSD controllers
(which are evidence rather than motivations of what lies behind their
SSD architecture
thinking) and instead I think the reasons you might prefer one or other as a
strategic supplier would have rather more to do with whether you're
comfortable with their different
philosophies about the best routes to the
future
of enterprise storage and, in particular, whether you agree with their
speculation of what the
destination looks like.
If you're going to be in the same waggon
train for 2-3 years - bumping along comfortably together is what's
important. | | |
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| Over-provisioning flash
capacity in SSDs - article by LSI |
Editor:- January 8, 2013 -
Understanding
SSD over-provisioning - is the title of a new article published in EDN and written by Kent Smith, Sr. Director of
Product Marketing at the SSD controller part of LSI.
Kent's
article describes the trade-offs between performance, the percentage of
over-provisioned flash capacity and the useful impact of compressible data -
which inside SandForce controllers is leveraged to create additional
over-provisioning. The interaction between write amplification counter-measures
and the benefits of using TRIM commands on performance are also noted. ...read
the article
Editor's comments:- there wasn't anything
new for me in this article - which covers similar ground to my 2011 article -
flash SSD
capacity - the iceberg syndrome - which shows how SSD makers leverage
capacity to tweak reliability and performance.
But - having said that -
I learned about over-provisioning by 10 years of talking about it - with
many SSD companies. And some of the things I put in my own article had been
gleaned from past conversations with Kent Smith himself when he was at
SandForce - as well as various other people in
Violin,
Texas Memory Systems
and Adtron.
I'm
guessing that what Kent would have liked to say on OP may have been "trimmed"
by a word count limit in his latest EDN article.
So here are some
other suggestions for more substantial and ideas packed articles I recommend
- which Kent Smith has written in the past for other publications, and which
cover SSD controllers from other angles:-
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| LSI ships 1
million SandForce controllers / month |
Editor:- July 31, 2012 - LSI has announced
enhanced support for the
Ultrabook SSDs
market in its SandForce
SF-2200/2100 controllers:- enabling lower SSD power consumption, faster
boot and support for "virtually all MLC flash product families".
"LSI
has shipped well over 10 million
SandForce processors
and we anticipate our shipment volumes will continue to increase, driven by the
exploding demand and lowering price points for NAND flash technology," said
Thad Omura,
VP of marketing, Flash Components Division, LSI.
Editor's
comments:- last week I asked LSI if the improved power saving feature was
related in any way to
adaptive DSP
care. I haven't got an answer yet - so it may be the answer is No.
On the other hand maybe they're waiting for the
Flash Memory Summit (in 3 weeks
time) before they say more about their adaptive write DSP IP roadmap. |
 |
LSI/SandForce have shipped over 10 million SSD
controllers - since
2010 - and
they're currently shipping over 1 million per month. | | | |
| .. |
| Proximal Data launches
AutoCache for PCIe SSDs |
Editor:- July 23, 2012 - Proximal Data
announced
immediate availability of its first product - a
software based
SSD ASAP - designed
to work with PCIe SSDs
- and in particular those from
LSI and
Micron.
AutoCache ($999
for cache sizes less than 500GB) reduces
bottlenecks
in virtualized servers to increase VM density,
efficiency and
performance. The company says it can increase VM density upto 3x with
absolutely no impact on IT operations.
"LSI and Proximal Data have combined their respective solutions
to provide accelerated enterprise storage performance in a virtualized
environment," said LSI's director of worldwide channel sales and marketing
Brent
Blanchard. "Proximal Data's AutoCache, when used with the LSI Nytro
WarpDrive PCIe flash card, delivers explosive performance and scalability by
lowering data access latencies and resolving the VM density issue that
challenges virtualized environments. We are excited to bring this combination to
our customers."
Editor's comments:- here are some
questions I asked about the new product - and the answers I got from Rich Pappas,
Proximal's VP of sales and business development.
Editor:- How long
does it take for the algorithms to reach peak efficiency?
Pappas:- It varies by workload, but typically it takes about 15
minutes for the cache to warm to reach peak efficiency.
Editor:- Is
the caching only on reads, or is it effective on writes too?
Pappas:-
AutoCache will only cache reads, but by virtue of relieving the backend
datastore from read traffic, we have actually seen overall write performance
improvements as well. This effect is also dependent on the workload.
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