Intel Delivers
1st 34nm MLC SSDs
Editor:- July 21, 2009 - Intel announced a
process
shrink for its
X25-M -
SATA 2.5" MLC flash SSD.
The new 34nm devices deliver
upto 8,800 (4KB) write IOPS and up to 35,000 read IOPS. R/W speeds are 250MB/s
and 70MB/s respectively. R/W latenciy is 65µS and 85µS. The 160GB
model is priced at $440 (1,000 unit price point).
...Later:-
within a few days,
shipments
of the new Intel SSDs were suspended due to an internal bug.
Seagate Gasping for Air in HDD Buying Vacuum?
Editor:-
July 21, 2009 - Seagate
said its annual revenue
declined
23% in the year ending July 3 to $9.8 billion compared to the
previous
year.
The company also reported a net loss of $3.1 billion.
Editor's
comments:- Seagate is a single product company which makes nearly all its
money from products and services related to
hard drives.
In
addition to the recession - the company has been impacted by faster than
anticipated take up of SSDs
- a technology in which Seagate's biggest investments to date have been:- an
unsuccessful legal attack on
STEC's patent IP - and
numerous articles and blogs in which Seagate's spokespeople pontificate
about why SSD technology isn't good enough yet.
That's in stark
contrast to hard disk maker
Western Digital -
which instead of spouting off about SSDs -
acquired and
integrated an SSD
company earlier this year. (Most other HDD makers are parts of big storage
companies which already had their own SSD product lines years ago.)
Although
the effect of the SSD market in the past year represents a low
single digit
part of Seagate's 23% revenue decline - the impact of SSDs is a high double
digit factor affecting its morale, thinking and outlook for the year ahead.
The company must be well aware of the many design wins in new server
and notebook products - which hard disks have already lost to SSDs. In the
enterprise server market, in which Seagate was the biggest supplier - the
switchover to SSDs will impact some of Seagate's most profitable products.
It
must be especially galling for business managers inside Seagate to learn that
many of its biggest customers are choosing SSDs instead of HDDs in many product
applications - even when the cost per GB of the SSDs is higher.
StorageSearch.com explained why
this would happen 6 years ago in our
SSD market
adoption model . It's not a surprise. Unlike the hard disk market wars of
the past - with now
extinct
competitors - which Seagate won through lower costs - the
SSD war is one
it can't win.
The best hope for the company is either - that bad
things happen in the SSD market - creating a user backlash - or that new
applications enabled by SSDs also create a surge in demand for low performance,
high capacity, cost sensitive, hard drives.
EMC Secures Data Domain for $2 billion
Editor:- July
20, 2009 - EMC
, today
announced that it has acquired majority ownership of Data Domain.
Once
EMC completes the acquisition of Data Domain, which is expected by the end of
July, Data Domain will become the foundation of a new product division within
EMC's storage business focused on the development and delivery of
next-generation disk-based
backup, recovery and archive solutions.
EMC's successful offer
price of $33.50 per share effectively values Data Domain at $2.1 billion. EMC
said it expects expects this new division to continue growing revenue at
significant double-digit rates achieving $1 billion in revenue in 2010.
Editor's
comments:- the Data Domain bidding saga surfaced in the newswires 2
months ago - when Network
Appliance made an offer for about
$1.5 billion.
Looking for Cheaper Flash?
Editor:- July 17, 2009 - "Future
NAND price reductions will be much less than what we have experienced" -
according the analysis in a new
article
by Lane Mason, Memory Market Analyst at Denali Software.
Lane
Mason analyzes the market assumptions, and historic cost base for SLC and MLC
flash (including x4) for various geometries and suppliers - and discusses the
likely cost per GB upto 2013.
In the past 4 - 5 years the price per GB
for flash memory shrank by approximately x100 - but the author warns
that in the next 4 years the price shrink may be in low single digits. ...read
the article , Analysts
- SSD market
STEC Announces Nearly $150 million of SSD Orders
Editor:-
July 16, 2009 - STEC
announced it has received
$120
million order for its
ZeusIOPS SSDs from
a single enterprise storage customer for delivery in the 2nd 1/2 of 2009.
This
followed an earlier announcement that the company has partnered with a leading
defense systems contractor to supply its
MACH8 industrial SSDs
for integration into a platform designed on behalf of the U.S. Military as part
of a 12 month,
$28
million supply contract.
SaberTooth SSD Bites into Eee PC Upgrade Market
Editor:-
July 15, 2009 -
Active Media
launched its
SaberTooth
brand of SATA Mini PCIe MLC flash SSD cards as upgrades for Asus Eee PCs. R/W
speeds are upto 155MB/s and 100MB/s respectively. The 64GB model costs
$219.95.
The company's marketing VP - Jerry Thomson says "SaberTooth
SSDs deliver read and write speeds that are up to 5x faster than stock
storage devices in the Eee PC. Upgrading gives users a huge performance boost..."
Verbatim's 500GB USB HDD
Editor:- July 15, 2009 -
Verbatim
launched the
SureFire
range of palm sized Firewire
/ USB compatible
hard drives.
The
top of the range, 500GB model, costs about $179.99.
That's about 44%
less than a similar 500GB USB drive cost
12 months ago. |
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| SSD Pricing -
where does all the money go? |
SSDs are among the most
expensive computer hardware products you will ever buy.
Understanding
the factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating
process... |
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...not made any easier when
market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more than 100x to 1!
Why is that? ...read
the article | | | |
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the fastest SSDs
Speed
isn't everything, and
it comes at a price......... |
But if
you do need the speediest
SSD then wading through the web sites of over 180 current SSD oems to
shortlist products slows you down.
And the SSD search problem will
get even worse as we head
towards a market
with over 1,000 SSD oems. |
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