Foremay samples 200K IOPS
class PCIe SSD Cards
Editor:- February 8, 2010
Foremay is
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.
"IOPS is one of
the major pain points to be addressed in the deployment of today's high-end and
mission-critical servers and workstations," said Dr. Jack Winters,
Foremay's CTO and cofounder. "We hope that our new EC188 D-series PCIe
SSDs, with greater than 100K IOPS and more than 1GB/s bandwidth, can help solve
problems in the majority of those computing applications where IOPS or speed is
the bottleneck."
Editor's comments:- 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.
Why Can't Users find their Perfect Storage Solutions with 1 Click?
Editor:-
February 5, 2010 - for those of you who work in sales and marketing I've
published a new article this week called -
Why Isn't Web
Marketing Enterprise Technology Simpler?
Users want to buy
enterprise technology stuff.
Vendors want to sell it.
So
why can't users just click and find your products?
Pay
Google some money... and the web marketing's all done. Isn't it? What
could be easier. Another easy tick on the career to-do list. Onto the next
challenge... You know there's more to it than that. ...read the article
New Name for 20 Year Old Austin Semiconductor
Editor:-
February 4, 2010 - Austin
Semiconductor recently announced it plans to change its name and (along
with some other companies) it will be merged into a new entity and brand to be
called Micross Components.
Solaris, SSDs and Sun-Oracle - past failures - the future
challenge
Editor:- February 3, 2010 - in a new article today I
look ahead to the
next 5 years of Oracle,
Solaris and SSDs.
I also look back and give you my
list of Sun's biggest market successes and failures in the past 20 years. ...read the article
25nm Flash will Double SSD Capacities in Q2
Editor:-
February 1, 2010 - Intel
and Micron
today announced they are sampling the
world's
1st 25nm NAND flash memory.
This gives 8GB MLC (classic 2 bit)
flash memory in a
stackable TSOP. The new chips will enable higher density
SSDs to ship in volume in
Q2.
Silicon Motion SSD SoCs - Ready for 20nm
Editor:-
February 1, 2010 - Silicon
Motion announced that its
SSD controller
shipments increased
over
50% year-on-year - in the most recent quarter and now account for
almost 10% of its ($87 million annual) corporate revenue.
The company said - that the vast majority of controllers that are shipping are
for 40nm and 30nm NAND flash and they are on track to deliver controllers for
20nm NAND flash that is expected to be available in the 2nd half 2010. In the
4th quarter 2009 the company also began shipping 3-bits per cell MLC
controllers.
The SSD Backup Roadmap - new article coming soon
Editor:-
February 1, 2010 - in the next 7 days StorageSearch.com will publish a
new article which describes the roadmap for the barely nascent
SSD Backup Market to replace the enterprise
hard disk backup market by
the close of this decade.
There will be many technology and
marketing challenges along the way. It will require entirely new types
of SSD products and new ways of thinking about what the purpose of
backup really is. You
may be thinking - "SSD backup... This can't be serious! Is it April 1st
already? " You too will be serious - and may add it to your own roadmap -
after you read the new article.
SanDisk's Revenue Grew 44%
Editor:- January 28, 2010
- SanDisk
today
announced
results for the quarter ended January 3, 2010 - revenue of $1.24 billion
increased 44% on a year-over-year basis and increased 33% sequentially.
SanDisk's Chairman and CEO, Eli Harari, said the company had
achieved unit sales growth of 55% and gigabyte growth of 100% compared to the
year prior quarter.
Clarifying SSD Pricing - where does all the money go?
Editor:-
January 27, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article -
Clarifying SSD Pricing.
SSDs are among the most
expensive items of computer hardware many of you will ever buy - with high end
models costing more than high end servers.
Understanding the factors
which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating process - not
made any easier when market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more
than 100x to 1! This new guide suggests simple tactics to help
you. ...read the
article
LSI will Compete with Fusion-io
Editor:- January 26,
2010 - LSI and
Seagate today
announced
they have collaborated on designing
PCIe SSDs for the
enterprise accelerator market which will sample in Q2 2010.
Editor's
comments:- LSI is approximately the 163rd company to enter the
SSD market (not counting
SSD SoC makers - which would push the score to about 185).
Partly
this is due to a strong suction effect from the
SSD market bubble -
and partly an inevitable step given that the high end of the
RAID controller market
is going to disappear.
There's little point in spending money aggregating
IOPS in an
array of hard disks -
if the result costs more, is slower and is less
reliable to
operate.
Avere Adds SLC SSD Options to 2U ASAPs
Editor:-
January 26, 2010 - Avere
Systems today
announced
it's shipping new
SLC
flash SSD options in its
FXT Series
10GbE NAS compatible
SSD ASAPs.
The
2U Avere FXT 2700 appliance (from $82,500) features 64GB of DRAM, 1GB of
NVRAM, and 512GB of SLC flash SSD. FXT clusters can scale to 25 appliances and
support millions of operations/sec and tens of GB/sec throughput.
"One of the main assumptions of Demand-Driven Storage is that
data access requirements are different across applications," said Ron
Bianchini, President and CEO of Avere Systems. "Applications that produce
heavy random read workloads are best addressed by SSDs and the FXT 2700 is
Avere's answer for those users who have a high-end NAS infrastructure that under
delivers when it comes to these types of applications."
Rudderless Solaris Market Gets Open Source Drivers for PCIe SSDs
Editor:-
January 26, 2010 -
Texas Memory Systems
today announced
it is delivering open source drivers on
Linux and
Solaris for its
RamSan-20
PCIe SSD accelerator.
This thin driver offers a simple control paradigm and is easy to port
and manipulate as open source. It offers little burden to the host system and
creates a neat division of labor between the host and the device allowing the
host system to operate to its maximum potential.
Editor's comments:-
IBM and
HP long ago had their own
engineers tweak and customize
Fusion-io's PCIe SSDs
- for remarketing to their own respective server customers.
Despite
several quarters (some might say years) of uncertainty over the Solaris server
market - customers still have to make decisions about what to do to keep their
installed base in good shape. Perhaps the availability of open source code for
these SSD accelerator products will encourage some systems integrators or users
to take architectural tweaking matters into their own hands.
StorageMojo Discusses Prospects for 70TB Tape
Editor:-
January 26, 2010 -
StorageMojo, Robin Harris
published a new article today -
Will
a 70TB cartridge save LTO?
Harris's erudite analysis may provide
some comfort for those lonely few of you still entangled in the
knotty tape backup loop -
and it's a good read for the rest of us who - either already made the
transition to disk backup -
or were too young to ever use a tape (or
don't do backups).
$10 million Funding for AoE Pioneer
Editor:- January
25, 2010 - Coraid
today
announced
that it has closed a $10 million Series-A
financing round with
Allegis Capital and Azure Capital Partners to accelerate the development and
adoption of its AoE
compatible storage.
With this funding, the company has also named
multiple Silicon Valley veterans to its executive team, including: Kevin
Brown as CEO, Audrey MacLean as chairman of the board, Carl
Wright as executive vp of worldwide sales, and Josh Leslie as vp of
channels and business development.
Cactus Launches Rugged Reliable CF PATA SSD
Editor:-
January 25, 2010 - Cactus
Technologies today launched
a rugged 32GByte industrial grade
CF form factor PATA
compatible SLC flash SSD.
The 303 Series offers high
endurance (>2M
write cycles per block),
wear leveling,
defect management and 4M hours
MTBF.
Sai-Ying Ng, President of Cactus Technologies Ltd. stated, “Our
customers were demanding a 32GByte Industrial Grade card that would function in
their existing CompactFlash sockets. By increasing the height slightly to 6.4mm
we are able to accommodate these requirements, while maintaining the Industrial
Grade features of our 303 Series most important to our customers.”
WD Reports Results
Editor:- January 21, 2010 - Western Digital
today
reported
financial results for the quarter ended January 1, 2010 - revenue of $2.6
billion up 44% compared to a year ago and up 18% compared to
$2.2
billion, in the same quarter 2 years ago.
I said - a few days
ago in the case of Seagate - that you get a better comparison by comparing
revenue with the peak year for the HDD market - rather than the worst quarter
affected by the Credit Crunch.
Doing that - by summing the results for
the 2 biggest hard drive companies - shows zero revenue growth for the
hard disk market compared to 2 years ago.
Most revenue shifts
in this market in 2010 will in my view be due to shifts in market share - and
effects due to other companies which have exited the HDD market - rather than
organic growth in overall hard disk revenue. It will be easy for hard disk oems
to continue reporting double digit percentage revenue growth compared to a
year ago - because that was dip in the market.
Viking Enters 2.5" 6Gbps SAS SSD Market
Editor:-
January 21, 2010 - Viking
Modular Solutions today
announced
it is sampling a range of SAS
and SATA compatible
SSDs using
controllers from SandForce.
Form
factors will include:- 1.8",
2.5" and
innovative "non-HDD-like"
solutions for space constrained and/or rugged applications.
"Today's
announcement represents the results of collaboration between Viking Modular
Solutions and SandForce for current and future high performance SSD products
that target enterprise, storage and multiple other applications requiring
superior performance and security," stated Hamid Shokrgozar, President of
Viking Modular Solutions. "This joint effort clearly highlights our
commitment as an industry leader by continuing to deliver innovative products at
practical costs to our customer base."
Interpreting Seagate's Results
Editor:- January 20,
2010 - Seagate
today
reported
financial results for the quarter ended January 1, 2010 - revenue of $3.03
billion up 32% compared to a year ago but down 11% compared to
$3.4
billion in the same quarter 2 years ago.
Seagate is positioning
these results as a strong recovery for the
hard drive market -
because they shipped a record 49.9 million drives in the quarter.
However, another way to view it is simply a rebound from the lowest point of the
Credit Crunch quarter - back to a position which is not as good as it was
before.
IDC Tallies SSD Shipments
Editor:- January 20, 2010
- IDC
says that
SSD shipments in
2009 exceeded
11 million units, an increase of 14% year over year.
Looking forward, IDC says it expects SSD adoption will continue to experience
tangible growth in 2010 and beyond, with shipments expected to achieve a
compound annual growth rate of 54% over the 2008-2013 forecast period.
Solid State
Drives - market research & analysts
Samsung Agrees $900 million Settlement with Rambus
Editor:-
January 19, 2010 - Rambus
and Samsung
today announced
that they have reached agreement settling all claims between them and licensing
Rambus' patent portfolio covering all Samsung semiconductor products including a
perpetual fully paid-up license to certain current
DRAM products.
As
part of the overall agreement, Samsung will invest $200 million in Rambus stock.
Other consideration to Rambus includes an initial payment of $200 million and a
quarterly payment of about $25 million for the next 5 years. In addition the
companies have signed a memorandum of understanding relating to a new
generation of memory technologies and interfaces.
New Integrity Tool for Old Tape Archives
Editor:-
January 18, 2010 - Crossroads
Systems today
announced
details of ArchiveVerify - a new monitoring option for its
ReadVerify Appliance
that safeguards the future readability of data
backed up on
tape.
"In our experience, the Achilles' heel of a data recovery
strategy is often the uncertainty of the data's readability, and this single
point of failure can render then entire restore process useless," adds
Bernd Krieger, Managing Director, at Crossroads Europe.
Editor's comments:- Crossroads was originally a specialist in
the SAN router business.
In recent years it has done a lot of work in the area of
storage reliability.
I've read lots of their whitepapers which describe their research and products
addressing data integrity. Although there has been a historic trend for users
to migrate away from
tape to disk backup - many super users of huge
tape libraries (with the
biggest archives) will be the last to migrate away - due to logistics and cost.
It's those kind of users who can benefit most from automated tools or services
which increase the data integrity they achieve and cut down media waste and
unrecoverable events.
WEDC Launches Secure PATA SSD in PBGA
Editor:-
January 18, 2010 - White
Electronic Designs has
introduced a
4GB secure PATA SLC
SSD in a 22mm x 27mm
PBGA for embedded military applications. |
 |
It's designed for applications
in aircraft, communications and missiles. A hardware and software triggered
fast purge can
eliminate all data in less than 10 seconds and device options include
sanitization
compliant with various government agency specifications.
New Error Technologies Required to Scale MLC SSDs
Editor:-
January 18, 2010 - Forward Insights
publishes a new market report this month -
ECC and Signal
Processing Technology for SSDs and Multi-bit per cell NAND Flash Memories.
Bit
errors are becoming more severe as NAND flash memory scales below 40nm process
technology and transitions to 3-bit and 4-bit per cell architectures.
Increased ECC
requirements will be required, however, traditional error correction codes
such as BCH, RS and Hamming code suffer from increased overhead in terms of
coding redundancy and read latency as the number of errors corrected increases.
In addition, the number of electrons stored in the memory cell is decreasing
with each generation of flash memory resulting in reduced signal/noise requiring
enhanced sensing techniques.
Digital signal processing technology has been employed in the magnetic
recording industry since the early 1990's when partial-response
maximum-likelihood technology (PRML) was commercialized. DSP technology is now
being deployed in 3-bit per cell and 4-bit per cell NAND flash memories and a
concerted effort is being made by NAND flash manufacturers and a variety of
startups to employ digital signal processing technology to improve the endurance
and performance of next generation NAND flash memories and SSDs. Signal
processing technology will be essential for the continued scaling of NAND flash
memories.
This research report examines the current state of ECC methods and
explores the technology, roadmap, market, cost and competitive landscape in the
flash signal processing space.
New Directory for AoE Storage
Editor:- January 15,
2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new directory for
AoE (ATA-over-Ethernet NAS
Storage).
Although this
NAS mode first hit our news
pages in 2003 -
support for it has been miniscule and compatible products are only available
from a handful of vendors. Will 2010 be the year that it all changes? Maybe.
SSDs could play a part -
because less latency is wasted in this low level network storage interface. |
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other
storage news on this
page
Foremay Samples 200k IOPS PCIe SSDs
Why can't users find
their Perfect Storage
New Name for Austin Semiconductor
SSDs
and Sun-Oracle
25nm Flash will Double SSD Capacities in Q2
Silicon
Motion SSD SoCs - Ready for 20nm
The SSD Backup Roadmap
SanDisk's
Revenue Grew 44%
Clarifying SSD Pricing
LSI will Compete with
Fusion-io
Avere Adds SLC Options to 2U ASAPs
Open Source
Drivers for PCIe SSDs
StorageMojo Discusses 70TB Tape
$10
million Funding for AoE Pioneer
New Rugged Reliable CF PATA SSD
WD
Reports Results
Viking Enters SAS SSD Market
Interpreting Seagate's Results
IDC
Tallies SSD Shipments
Samsung Agrees $900 million Settlement
New Integrity Tool
for Old Tape Archives
WEDC Launches Secure PATA SSD in PBGA
New
Error Technologies Essential for MLC SSDs
New Directory for AoE
Storage | |
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JW Electronics founded in
2005 and headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan is an
innovative developer and
supplier of proven AoE Enabler solutions for building
RAID storage based
on the AoE (ATA over Ethernet) protocol. | |
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| There
are
hundreds
of articles about SSDs on StorageSearch.com |
Here, below, are some
examples.
- 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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