Cheetah Joins
Fastest SSD List
Editor:- July 2, 2009 - Foremay has recently
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.
Editor's
comments:- that makes the 3rd Cheetah in my
Animal Brands in
the Storage Market Directory. Click on the link to see the full storage
zoo.
SSD Market's Biggest Shifting Trends
Editor:- July 1,
2009 - In a fast growing market like
SSDs - how do you spot the
most significant trends?
I discuss the 2 most significant changes in
the past year and how I think they will affect the future market in my new
preface to the
SSD buyers guide
published today.
SSD Guide Maintains Momentum
Editor:- June 30,
2009 - Despite the fact that June's not yet over - pageviews of the
SSD buyers guide
this month are already 58% higher than a year ago.
Listings of
the most popular subjects and articles this month can be seen, as usual, on the
storage market research
page.
My new article on the
SSD Notebook
market is only 2 weeks old - but already in the top 20 articles viewed this
month.
Looking ahead to July -
StorageSearch.com will publish a
new directory for
MRAM.
This is a market which has been in the so-called "emerging" state for
more than a decade. But due to the low capacity of commercially available
products, its use has been restricted to embedded markets in which no other
technology can do the job - such as car crash recorders in which the write speed
of flash is too slow, and
high mechanical forces have precluded the use of battery backed
RAM.
The big
bucks lure of the flash
SSD market has gotten the attention of MRAM developers. They're waking up to
the industry changing possibilities that could occur if they can deliver higher
capacity products. Over the next few years - this is one of several non volatile
memory technologies we'll be talking about more.
The 9th
quarterly edition of the the
Top 10 SSD OEMs will be published after the holiday on July 7. That's got
a big surprise in it - which you'll see when it's published. It will reveal a
lot about the changing currents in the market - and the upwards (and
downwards) shifts in SSD search affinity. |
|
| Storage Visions
Calls for Sponsors |
Editor:- June 24,
2009 - the 9th annual Storage
Visions Conference is now open for presentations,
sponsors and
exhibitors.
It will be held at the Riviera Hotel Convention Center
in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 5 & 6, 2010. |
| Storage
technologies that will be discussed include:- next generation
hard disk drive,
flash memory and
optical recording,
storage for content delivery networks and new storage-related standards that
will change the world. |
| .................................................................................. |
|
 |
| According to conference
organizer Tom
Coughlin - "The next decade will give us new tools to capture and
organize our lives, more content created by more people and more ways to
distribute, monetize and make that content useful. From cloud storage to
life-logs, from external direct attached and networked storage to the
increasingly high resolution content that we will surround ourselves with
wherever we go-we live in an age when the personal and collective memory of
humans will reach new levels." |
... | |
|
Increasing the
Usefulness of Cheap SSDs with Virtual SAN Software
Editor:- June
24, 2009 -
Seanodes
disclosed
results
of tests using entry level SSDs
with its
Exanodes
virtual SAN software.
In an ESX environment of 8 servers with 1
SSD drive per server, IOmeter benchmark results showed 36,000 IOPS (random read
4K) for a system with an overall cost under $20K (including the cost of SSDs and
Exanodes VM Edition).
"'Traditional arrays have been designed to work efficiently with
spinning disks and can't give the promise of SSDs in terms of performance and
scalability for example," said Frank Gana, Business Development Director at
Seanodes. "This limits the usage and markets and as a consequence most
people use them as Direct Attached Storage with all the usual known problems
that come with DAS. Thanks to Exanodes and its innovative design we can
aggregate and use SSDs efficiently, opening new markets and applications to this
technology".
Editor's comments:- Seanodes says it's trying to
fix the problem of aggregating and sharing multiple low capacity, low cost
SSDs between servers without requiring special tuning skills. But I have to
say the quoted IOPS don't sound impressive to me compared to the
fastest SSDs. So
why wouldn't you use less servers and a better SSD instead?
With so
many other competing solutions in the
rackmount SSD and
PCIe SSD market - I
suspect that Seanode's solution may only provide an economic price point for a
tiny fragment of possible applications - or none at all. There isn't enough
data in the press release to be sure.
Adaptec Ships Flash Cache Backup for RAID Controllers
Editor:-
June 24, 2009 -
Adaptec today
announced the availability of
flash
backup options for its SATA/SAS
RAID controllers.
Adaptec's
Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection protects data stored in controller cache for
up to 10 years with no installation, monitoring, maintenance, disposal or
replacement costs unlike lithium batteries.
Editor's comments:-
the industry's 1st flash cache backup module for RAID controllers was
announced in February
2009 by Viking
Modular Solutions.
Phase Change Memory Designers Promised 2nd Source
Editor:-
June 23, 2009 - Numonyx
announced a
technology
agreement with Samsung
Electronics to develop common specifications for
Phase
Change Memory (PCM) products.
Both companies expecting to have
compliant devices ("pin for pin" comatible) available next year.
Editor's comments:- some large oems prefer to have alternate
sources before designing in new chips. It was
IBM's
insistence than Intel allow an official 2nd source for its x86 processors -
as part of the original Wintel PC design - which sowed the seeds for decades of
legal acrimony with AMD. (Intel and AMD didn't like each other much before that
anyway.)
Caringo Offers Free 4TB Cloud Storage Evaluation
Editor:-
June 23, 2009 - Caringo
today
announced
it's offering a free way to evaluate the benefits of its cloud storage -
with the release of a Windows compatible CloudFolder linked to 4TB storage.
The
company says users can drag and drop individual files or whole directories to
CloudFolder for remote storage and can also make it a shared folder. Retrieving
files is as easy as double clicking on a file or folder.
Mark Goros,
CEO at Caringo says "We believe CloudFolder will inspire users to test and
deploy private cloud storage within an organization or throughout a network of
managed service customers."
Samsung Samples Netbook SSD
Editor:- June 23, 2009 -
Samsung is
sampling a SATA mini-card SSD for use in the expanding
netbook
marketplace with these key parameters:-
- footprint:- 30mm by 51mm by 3.75mm
- weight:- 8.5g
- capacity options:- 16GB, 32GB and 64GB
- R/W speeds:- 200MB/s and 100MB/s respectively
- power:- 0.3W
"The market is beginning to embrace a
smaller SSD for the
nascent netbook sector," said Jim Elliott, vp, memory marketing, Samsung
Semiconductor.
Cleveland Indians Fix Baseball Backup Headaches
Editor:-
June 23, 2009 -
CommVault Systems
today published a
case study which describes how the
Cleveland Indians migrated to
their backup software due to problems with Symantec.
The
Cleveland Indians were among one of the first teams in Major League Baseball to
develop a state-of-the-art video system to capture nearly 2,600 games
played by all teams throughout the season for use in training and advanced
scouting. According to the team it now takes less than 5 minutes to restore a
video clip that once took more than an hour to locate and retrieve. And admin
overhead has been cut from 45 minutes a day to less than 30 minutes a week.
Crossing the T's in STEC's SWOT
Editor:- June 23,
2009 - an article published yesterday in EnterpriseStorageForum.com
poses the question -
Can
SSD Maker STEC Be Stopped?
As far as it goes - it makes some good points. But if you're
going to publish a
SWOT analysis
for STEC (or indeed any
other SSD company) you need a far deeper understanding of the currents swirling
around in the SSD market.
Because STEC's future success seems to be tied heavily to oems who use
its products in the server acceleration market, the main factors which
threaten that success are - in my view - the following:-
- PCI express SSD
market.
While it's not intuitively obvious that PCIe SSDs compete head
to head with 2.5" SSDs
- the reality is they do. The growing search volume for PCIe SSDs - which
StorageSearch.com has been tracking in the past year indicates that PCIe SSDs
will be the main factor which limits the size and acceptance of DAS connected
small form factor SSDs in the server box.
- Outside the server box - in the
rackmount SSD
space - the market has moved beyond the traditional
RAM versus Flash
SSDs debate.
The new debate here is how the market will split
between the 2 main options:-
.
- proprietary flash SSDs (such as those made by
Texas Memory Systems,
and Violin Memory).
.
- arrays of Commercial Off The Shelf flash SSDs - such as those marketed
by EMC and
Sun Microsystems (who both
oem STEC's SSDs). But another scope for fragmentation within the COTS space
itself is the appearance of rackmount SSD arrays populated by COTS PCIe SSDs
such as Dolphin and
NextIO.
As
I have discussed in previous articles - I expect all these various
architectural forms to grow and prosper - rather than for any clear winners
to emerge in the near future. That's because users have widely different
profiles with respect to performance needs and risk tolerance - which no single
technology or vendor fits most economically.
- Inside the 2.5" SSD market itself - there are many emerging point
products which can threaten STEC from a performance point of view.
Instead
I think the biggest 2.5" SSD threat comes from STEC's customers designing
their own SSDs (if they perceive that the small form factor SSD is indeed the
way they want to go). With more than
20 chip companies
offering the bits and pieces needed to design SSDs - and with the option of
mixing and matching acquisitions
with internal and external technology
it's getting easier.
The advantage to big server oems doing this - is that they can tailor products
which meet their exact needs - and add unique features which can't be easily
copied by their systems competitors. That's a much bigger threat to STEC than
its customers than them buying SSDs from companies using
SandForce's
controller (which was mentioned in the ESF article). To keep this
analysis short - I haven't gone into internal business factors such as cash
flow, logistics and supply chains. Any of these coming under stress could
impact STEC's ability to service increasing demands from its customers (even
without the external competitive threats listed above.) As you can see - the
picture and outlook for STEC (or any other SSD company) is far from clear and
certain. The market will decide - once it has absorbed and processed the
confusing range of
SSD choices on offer.
One useful way to see which SSD companies are
getting more interest or less interest from customers in the market is to
analyze changes in the quarterly
top 10 SSD companies
published by StorageSearch.com. The next edition will be published July 7.
Crocus Ports MRAM to Tower Fab
Editor:- June 18,
2009 -
Tower Semiconductor,
announced
it has taken an equity position (value approx $1.25 million) in Crocus Technologies,
and announced it is porting Crocus's
MRAM
to its 200mm wafer fab.
Editor's comments:- Crocus's
whitepaper -
the
Emergence of Practical MRAM (pdf) - gives the best explanation I've seen of
why, despite so many companies entering the MRAM market, so few useful products
have actually come out. It describes flaws in the intrinsic technology which
lead to data corruption (similar in concept to read-disturb errors in flash -
although completely different physically). It's necessary to fix these problems
to enable
reliable data storage.
The paper describes the proposed solution and also compares MRAM's
data density to other semiconductor memory technologies, including SRAM,
DRAM and
flash.
91% of Compellent's Customers Want to Evaluate SSDs
Editor:-
June 17, 2009 - Compellent
today announced results generated through attendee polling conducted at its
annual customer conference.
91%
of business partners and 78% of customers responded important, very
important or critical when asked, "What is your level of interest in
evaluating SSDs in your
environment?"
NextIO Unveils PCIe flash SSD
Editor:- June 17, 2009
- NextIO today
announced
it will demonstrate a 12 slot
PCIe flash SSD system,
designed in collaboration with
Marvell later
this month.
Each slot will be capable of over 200,000 IOPs and offer
400GB capacity.
Editor's comments:- there are nearly as many
companies making PCIe SSDs
today - as there are making 2.5"
SSDs. And it wouldn't surprise me to see the PCIe SSD oem count to become
the larger of the two.
With the growing number of
SSD controller and IP
companies in the market it's getting
easier to design
SSDs.
An electronics college graduate could probably build a
passable demonstration product as a summer project. But it's another matter
entirely - how well such a college demo unit would work in a variety of
applications and OS platforms. There's no shortcut to market experience. Users
will have to judge how much it's worth becoming beta sites for the mass of new
SSD companies flooding into the market.
NextIO is better
funded than most
students. The most recent
$15
million funding round announced earlier this month took their total to
over $55 million.
Avnet to Distribute WEDC
Editor:- June 17, 2009 -
Avnet has
become
a distributor for White
Electronic Designs
"WEDC products offer
defense and aerospace
customers unique package solutions with extended environmental performance,"
said Bryan Brady, vp of defense/aerospace for Avnet Electronics Marketing
Americas. "This strengthens our ability to offer distinct product size,
weight and performance advantages for
high reliability
applications."
WD Ships SiliconDrive III
Editor:- June 16, 2009 -
Western Digital
Solid State Storage announced that it has begun shipping its new
SiliconDrive III
SSD product family which includes 2.5" SATA and PATA and 1.8" Micro
SATA products with target read speeds up to 100MB/s and write speeds to 80MB/s
in capacities up to 120 GB.
"SiliconDrive III is the first example of how WD plans to
productize solid state technology developed by SiliconSystems. The launch of
SiliconDrive III will also enable WD to leverage its global sales and
distribution channels to accelerate the adoption of SSD technology beyond
SiliconSystems' traditional embedded systems OEM customer base into data
streaming applications such as multimedia content delivery systems and data
center media appliances," said Michael Hajeck, senior VP and GM of WD's
solid state storage business unit. "SiliconDrive III is an ideal solution
for OEMs that require increased performance, capacity,
reliability and
data throughput in their applications."
Editor's comments:-
some oems in the small form factor flash SSD market have earned a bad
reputation due to shipping sexy sounding products in volume before the
design and qualification process was adequately completed.
In contrast
- SiliconSystems' SiliconDrives were never the fastest products in their class -
but due to the background of its founders - the company's prime concern was to
design SSDs that were reliable and stayed reliable. When WD looked at the
spectrum of SSD technologies to acquire - an important consideration was this
proven reliability - established in millions of products over many years.
Of
all the SSD parameters to tweak - the easiest one is to make a product faster.
But. as many other HDD and SSD companies have learned you can't quickly fix
a reputation for flaky products.
DataSlide Says Revolutionary HD is Closer
Editor:-
June 15, 2009 - Dataslide
announced it was close to
productizing
its revolutionary hard drive technology.
DataSlide says it leverages
LCD and HDD processes to create an ultra thin massive
2D head array which
enables symmetric read and write performance of 160,000 random IOPS with
transfer rate of 500MB/s.
"DataSlide's Massively Parallel
architecture with 64 heads per surface could saturate a 32 lane
PCIe bus," said
Charles Barnes, CEO of DataSlide. "The Hard Rectangular Drive has the
industry reliability and cost advantages of
Hard Disk Drives with
superior performance and lower power then
Solid State Drives. The HRD
is over 60% lower power then HDD and during idle the media has zero power
dissipation making it the GREEN storage winner."
Editor's comments:- This journey started 7 years ago - and
there are still many marketing hurdles to cross before you can expect to click
and add such drives into your shopping basket.
Dataslide made its début
in the pages of StorageSearch.com in 2002 - when it announced it had
filed patents for a
revolutionary design of hard drive.
In 2004 - Dataslide
announced it had demonstrated
a prototype (under NDA) with the equivalent of 72,000 virtual RPM and the
potential to reach the mechanical equivalent of 12 million RPM.
Is
there a place today for such a new technology in the enterprise storage space?
Most hard disk makers have now accepted that SSDs will provide the
performance part of heavy transactional loads - while HDDs provide economies of
scale for massive content. Meanwhile - within the SSD space - there are many
new technology pretenders promising to claim flash's throne at some time in
the future. Until more is revealed publicly about capacity and price - the
competitiveness of Dataslide's technology can't be judged. And even if that
looks promising reliability
remains a key question for any new storage technology.
Notebook SSD Market Overview - is not pretty
Editor:-
June 15, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
published a new article today called -
Overview of
the Notebook SSD Market.
There's a simple way to summarize
the complex view of the SSD Notebook / Netbook market.
Lots of
initial hype and optimism that the market would deliver an astonishingly
new product experience to users, followed by dismay and disillusion due to
a flurry of poorly conceived, badly designed and ineptly executed products.
...read the
article
|
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| |
other
storage news on this
page
Cheetah Joins Fastest SSD List
SSD Market's 2 Biggest
Shifts
SSD Guide Maintains Momentum
Storage Visions 2010
Increasing
the Usefulness of Cheap SSDs
Flash Cache Backup for RAID
PCM
Designers Promised 2nd Source
Try 4TB Cloud Storage Free
Samsung
Samples Netbook SSD
New Baseball Backup
Crossing the T's
in STEC's SWOT
Crocus Ports MRAM to Tower Fab
SSD
Evaluations are Compelling
NextIO Unveils PCIe flash SSD
Avnet to Distribute WEDC
WD Ships SiliconDrive III
Revolutionary
HD Steps Closer
Notebook SSDs Overview
| |
|
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| SSDs on
StorageSearch.com |
Over 130 SSD
manufacturers listed
and profiled on our classic SSD page.
Click on the link above to go
there. | |
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Editor:- With thousands of articles going back more than 10 years,
finding things here on StorageSearch.com can be quite hard, so I hope you'll
find the site search function above (provided by
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