San Francisco's KPIX
Deploys SAN Solutions' Video Production SAN
Editor:- March 16,
2010 - SAN
Solutions today announced
that its
Video
Production SAN is being used by San Francisco television station
KPIX to
enable file-based production of its Emmy Award-winning HD news magazine show, "Eye On The Bay."
reaching for the petabyte SSD
Editor:- March 16,
2010 - previewing the final chapters in the long running
SSD vs HDD wars -
StorageSearch.com today
published an industry changing new article -
SSDs - reaching for
the Petabyte.
What will the PB SSD look like? When will it appear?
What technology problems do
SSD designers have to
solve to get there? What about the
storage architecture
that the PB SSD fits into? How much electrical power will it consume? And...
you may be curious - how much will it cost?
All these questions and
more - are discussed and answered in this article which - I anticipate -
will inspire product managers and company founders to create completely new
types of SSDs. ...read
the article
Pliant's SSD benchmark video
Editor:- March 15, 2010
- Pliant Technology
today published
benchmark results to illustrate the capability of its
3.5" SAS SSDs
when used in arrays.
The measurements performed and validated by
OakGate Technology were performed on an
array of 16 SSDs and are summarized in a
video.
"We
tested Lightning EFDs under conditions that closely mirrored the data throughput
demands of today's mission-critical data centers..." said Bob Weisickle,
CEO and founder of OakGate. "..even more impressive was the fact that
these phenomenal performance numbers remained stable and consistent over
time, which is a critical requirement for today's mission-critical 24x7 data
centers."
Editor's comments:- when (like me) you're used to seeing SSD
IOPS that
look like telephone numbers, and IOPS that have a
lot of GB/s in them
you have ask yourself - what is this vendor really saying?
I think the
point Pliant is making is that if you are an oem who wants to design a
rackmount flash
SSD which has the performance potential of a proprietary architecture such as
Texas Memory Systems,
or an array of PCIe SSDs
such as Fusion-io,
but you want to stay in the comfort zone of
SAS SSDs while avoiding
the "EMC use it so
it must be expensive" feel associated
STEC - please take a
look another look at their products. The tag line on their home page says "Do
more for less." (I've seen worse.) I've seen
better SSD videos
though. It was another 6 minutes of my life wasted (compared to reading the
text).
new directory - SSD videos
Editor:- March 11, 2010 -
whenever I'm asked -"What do you do for a living?" - the cutest
answer I come up with is - "I waste my time so my readers don't have to
waste theirs."
Few things are so time-wasting on the web - in my
opinion - as videos which talk about the
SSD market. In 99.9% of
cases the same points have already been made - earlier, better, and about 30x
quicker on static webpages.
It's several years since a reader asked -
"Why isn't there a directory of
SSD videos on
StorageSearch.com?"
Well
- there is now. I datamined and filtered it from the tens of thousands of hours
I've spent reading and writing about SSDs. It's the smallest list of links
in any directory page I've created since the web started - and at this rate of
progress will struggle to reach double digits by the time the SSD market
ends. Less is better - when it comes to wasting your time. ...read the article
$100? - too much to pay for a 32GB MLC SSD - says OCZ
Editor:-
March 10, 2010 - OCZ
today announced
it's shipping a 32GB 2.5"
MLC
SSD for under $100.
R/W speeds
are unremarkable - at a mere 125MB/s and 70MB/s respectively - but the main
point of this launch - according to OCZ's CEO, Ryan Petersen - is to
publicize the price point and show what the company is doing "to make SSDs
more affordable to end-users."
Editor's comments:- You get
exactly what you pay for in
SSD pricing. The
big problem is knowing what you want. OCZ's new
Onyx
is a very low capacity, slowish
notebook SSD
which is unsuitable
for server apps. But it does appear to be a good price today according
to
this
comparison. (It may not look so good later.)
Imation renews RDX license beyond HDD afterlife
Editor:-
March 10, 2010 - Imation
today
announced
it has extended its RDX (removable
hard disk) license
agreement with ProStor
Systems through 2020.
Imation also announced that it has
invested $5 million to help advance ProStor's
disk backup technology.
Editor's coments:- RDX was unveiled in
November 2005.
Today's announcement takes the license agreement to
beyond the expected
lifetime of the hard disk market. However,
SSD backup will also be
viable in the same form factor.
WhipTail signs European distributor for SSD dedupe accelerator
Editor:-
March 10, 2010 -
WhipTail Technologies
today announced a Europe wide distribution and support agreement with
Consolidate IT.
"Our
clients are seeing consolidation ratios of 200-300:1 thanks to our true inline
data deduplication,"
said James Candelaria, CTO of WhipTail Tech. "With our blazing read/write
speeds (over 150K
IOPS), we
can accept the overhead hit and still deliver data exponentially faster than a
hard-disk array. The focus
becomes more of cost-per-IOP than a cost-per-GB. We land at 37 cents while a
Tier 1 HDD array is around 8 dollars."
Apacer scores max on Windows 7
Editor:- March 9,
2010 - Apacer
today said its
Giant
II DDR3 Tri-channel Overclocking Memory Module Series has scored the maximum
7.9 in the
Windows
Experience Index when running on Windows 7.
The company was the
official exclusive memory supplier at the
World
Cyber Games 2009 Grand Final, held last November in Chengdu, China.
Web-Feet tallies SSD numbers for 2009
Editor:- March
8, 2010 -
Web-Feet Research
has just published a quarterly update to its 7th
annual
report on SSD Markets and Applications (annual price $9,000).
This
update focuses on the SSD
market dynamics for the year ending
2009 covering
the Client, Enterprise, and Commercial markets.
Addressed in each of
these markets are the drivers of
SSD adoption,
price points, and
issues associated with SSD adoption. Web-Feet Research has compiled aggregate
SSD shipments and revenue by form factor and application markets covering 2009.
SSD market
research & analysts
Viking's SATA Cube3 DOM MIL certified
Editor:- March
3, 2010 - Viking
Modular Solutions today
announced
that its SATA Cube3 128GB DOM
(launched in March
2009) has successfully completed tests pursuant to the
MIL-STD-810F
specification.
WD offers faster SLC and affordable MLC for disparate 2.5"
SSD markets
Editor:- March 3, 2010 -
WD Solid State
Storage is shipping a new range of
2.5" 128GB
SATA
SLC
SSDs - for
high reliability
24/7 embedded markets - called the
WD
SiliconDrive N1x.
R/W speeds are upto 240MB/s and 140MB/s
respectively. Write
endurance is
quoted as 701GB/Day - compatible with 5 year limited warranty. And
data integrity
(non-recoverable error rate) is better than 1 in 1015 bits read.
"The
WD SiliconDrive N1x SSDs are the newest addition to our SiliconDrive product
family, which has shipped several million units since the 1st products
were introduced. SiliconDrive SSDs have consistently met critical OEM
application requirements for high reliability, high performance and long product
deployment cycles," said Michael Hajeck, senior VP and general manager of
WD's solid state storage business unit.
The WD SiliconDrive N1x SSDs
feature patented and patent-pending WD technologies combined with NCQ and
Windows 7 TRIM command support for high data integrity, long product life and
sustained performance
levels throughout the drive's service life without the need for an external
refresh utility, media over-provisioning
or forced idle times used by many SSDs available today.
Editor's comments:- today WD also
announced
its entry into the
SSD notebook
market. WD's SiliconEdge
Blue 2.5" MLC SSDs offer capacity upto 256GB (MSRP $999), R/W speeds
of 250MB/s and 170MB/s.
To avoid confusion from the branding point of
view - it looks like WD has retained the 5 year market proven "SiliconDrive"
brand for its enterprise products while introducing "SiliconEdge"
as its consumer / MLC brand. To protect its reputation WD says the new
notebook design has passed over 250,000 hours of testing to prevent the kind
of flaky SSD
problems which have occurred in the past when competing oems shipped
incompletely verified products.
PCIe SSD adoption accelerates Fusion-io's revenue
Editor:-
March 2, 2010 - Fusion-io
disclosed today it has experienced more than 80% quarter-over-quarter sales
growth and more than 300% sales growth year-over-year.
This emerged in an announcement that Silicon Valley veteran Dennis
Wolf has joined the company as senior VP and CFO to help it manage its
rapid growth as it continues to expand into new markets around the globe. Wolf
has led several public and private companies as CFO, COO and CEO. He brings more
than 30 years of leadership experience in high-growth technology companies, with
work in finance and other disciplines. Most recently, he served as executive VP
and CFO at MySQL where he was
integral in MySQL's growth strategy and its ultimate sale to
Sun Microsystems in a
transaction valued at $1 billion.
"In the 20 years I've been working in this industry, I've never
seen a company grow this fast and I believe we are well poised to triple our
growth in 2010," said Jim Dawson, senior VP of worldwide sales for
Fusion-io. "As a young company experiencing such incredible, rapid
expansion, Dennis' financial expertise and broad understanding of the
marketplace will be essential to our continued ability to meet customer demand."
Editor's
comments:- the last time I wrote an article about a bunch of storage
companies with
triple digit
annual revenue growth was in 2004 - and the top 2 out of those 4 were in
the SSD market too.
Although Fusion-io is a privately held company and doesn't disclose financial
details - it's sometimes easy to tell which companies everyone seems to be
talking about.
Super Talent's Cryptic USB3 SSD
Editor:- March 2,
2010 - Super
Talent Technology today
announced
imminent availability of a new
encrypted
USB 3
flash SSD - with
upto 256GB capacity.
When I asked for more technical details I was
told the datasheet isn't ready yet. The USB 3.0 SuperCrypt is a true SSD (with
wear-leveling).
Internally the module (95 x 34 x 15.4 mm) is a
SATA SSD with a USB
bridge chip.
FalconStor tunes Violin's SSD
Editor:- March 2,
2010 - FalconStor
today announced
technical
and VAR channel support for Violin Memory's 2U
rackmount FC flash SSD
- the Violin 1010 .
Although
the headline specs of this very fast flash SSD are substantially the same as
when it was launched in
November 2008
the 2 important things which have changed are:-
- the price point
- $32,000 for the 500GB (lite capacity) version, and
- the availability of SSD
ASAP-like features implemented by FalconStor's SafeCache and HotZone
software.
STMicroelectronics samples dual port RFID EEPROM
Editor:-
March 2, 2010 - STMicroelectronics
is sampling a pioneering new family of dual technology access EEPROMs -
which add a standard RFID interface to the conventional serial interface. |
 |
No power is required to
operate the M24LR64 (64k bit capacity) in RF mode. The
chip
gathers both the energy and the data from the RF system.
"This
highly innovative ability to program or read a memory wirelessly, as well as
electrically, will provide tremendous added-value to our customers, enabling
highly flexible supply-chain management and also stimulating new types of
products with powerful features and capabilities," said Benoit Rodrigues,
General Manager, Memories Division, STMicroelectronics. |
|
STEC samples slim SSDs with
deep roots
Editor:- March 2, 2010 -STEC has started
sampling a new family of
SlimSATA and SATA-CF
32GB/64GB flash SSDs for use in embedded markets.
Performance is
15,000 / 6,000 R/W
IOPS and R/W transfer rates are up to 135MB/s and 130MB/s respectively.
Editor's comments:- in a way this is STEC going back to its
roots. In the server
market - where it is better publicly known - STEC is dependent on the success of
partners like EMC whose
secret ingredient in the SSD cola experience is bottling the water.
STEC is also vulnerable to being substituted out for other
2.5" SSDs (or
sideswiped by PCIe SSDs)
at any time.
But STEC knows how to market to designers in embedded
markets. These are currently much smaller than the other segments in the classic
SSD market
penetration model. Nevertheless it's a way of boosting revenue.
And
here's something else to think about... which links together the oldest
segments in the flash SSD market with the newest one for
SSD backup - which is still
at the birth stage.
The important feature in these new products is
the ratio of sleep mode power to operating mode power - which is 10 to
1. That's not too far off the ideal ratio (100 to 1) it needs to reach in the
next 5 years to support the concept of putting petabytes of SSD archive storage
into 2U racks. More about that later... In the meantime experience gained in the
unsexy (but reliability
obsessed) embedded SSD
modules market can be viewed as a long term investment in what will be
the biggest market for SSD shipments long after the
current SSD market
bubble.
Front Porch Digital Bucks Broadcast Equipment Trends
Editor:-
March 1, 2010 - Front
Porch Digital today announced that the company's 2009 sales bookings
were the best in its 11-year history, representing a gain of more than 30%
over 2008.
Front Porch Digital's success is more striking, according to
Mike Knaisch, the company's president and CEO, because a recent
industry research
study indicates some 97% of
broadcast
vendors experienced declining sales in 2009. |
|
RunCore's new Express Card
SSD / USB 3.0 adapter
Editor:- March 1, 2010 - Among the many
SSDs which RunCore
will show at CeBIT 2010
this week is an Express
Card flash SSD designed for
notebooks.
|
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| As well as providing upto 64GB
capacity (R/W speeds 120MB/s and 90MB/s) - the Express 34 module also
provides 2x USB 3.0 ports
with connectors for linking the notebook to external devices. See also:-
events. | |
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other
storage news on this
page
KPIX Deploys SAN Solutions' Video Production SAN
reaching
for the Petabyte SSD
Pliant's SSD benchmark video
new
directory - SSD videos
$100 too much for a 32GB SSD
Imation
renews RDX beyond HDD afterlife
WhipTail signs European distributor
Apacer
scores max on Windows 7
Web-Feet tallies SSD numbers for 2009
Viking's
DOM Mil certified
WD's new 2.5" SSDs
Fusion-io
world's fastest growing storage company?
Super Talent's Cryptic USB3
SSD
FalconStor tunes Violin's SSD
STMicroelectronics
samples dual access RFID EEPROM
STEC samples slim SSDs with deep roots
Front
Porch Digital Bucks Broadcast Equipment Trends
RunCore's new Express
Card SSD
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| Clarifying SSD Prices |
Calories count is an inconvenient
issue for storage
searchers impatient to sample the market's delicacies. | | |
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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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