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| WD
Sells Disk Substrate Plant to Hitachi GST |
Editor:- May 20,
2009 - WD
announced it has
agreed
to sell the assets of its media substrate manufacturing facility in Sarawak,
Malaysia, to a subsidiary of Hitachi GST.
The
employees of WD at the facility will become employees of the purchaser. Acquired storage companies,
Hard disk drives
FCIA Reports on 2nd FCoE Plugfest
Editor:- May 20,
2009 - the Fibre Channel
Industry Association today
announced that
it successfully completed its 2nd FCoE Plugfest the week of May 12th at the
University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab.
"This year's FCoE Plugfest was timed appropriately given tough
economic times we are facing today – IT decision-makers are looking for
savings in numerous areas such as power, space and cooling management while
preserving their existing Fibre Channel investments" says Skip Jones,
chairman FCIA and director Technology and Planning at
QLogic. "Last
week's FCoE Plugfest proved that this new technology is ready for prime time and
ready to deliver the cost-savings that customers are looking for and underscores
the arrival of a new efficient data center."
Storage Events,
Storage ORGs
Seanodes Warns of Virtual Storage Indigestion
Editor:-
May 20, 2009 - in what I initially assumed would be a bland
press
release yesterday from Seanodes I saw this
thought provoking observation from Frank Gana who founded the
iSCSI software company.
He
said - "The paradox in the 'virtual world' is that businesses invest in
VMware Infrastructure to reduce costs and simplify their environment, but then
find they need high-end
network storage, which
eliminates a large part of these benefits. Although the model is sound, Storage
Virtual Appliances are not immune from some of the same pitfalls, so we caution
users not to trade a headache for a stomachache just because their budget is
small."
Seanodes is warning that although IT users are looking
at storage virtual appliance to control costs during the economic downturn -
there can be hidden costs or technical problems if you choose the wrong route.
Amen to that - I say. Rushing to save costs by tampering with quick
fixes to technology infrastructure can be the worst way to go about it. Action
is not a substitute for careful research and planning to avoid failure.
Unity Semiconductor Unveils Flash's Successor
Editor:-
May 19, 2009 - Unity
Semiconductor exited stealth mode and stated its aim to have the
lowest manufacturing cost per bit in the non volatile memory industry with a
new breakthrough technology called
CMOx.
The
company said it will ship 64Gb devices in volume in 2011. Unity Semiconductor
says it will develop and produce NAND flash successor technologies and
products that, in time, will extend into high ]performance embedded and
enterprise applications.
"It's a Technology for Terabits that
will challenge high volume rotating magnetic media" said Unity
Semiconductor Chairman, President & CEO Darrell Rinerson a former executive
at Micron Technology
and at AMD.
The
company, also announced today it has closed a Series C funding round for $22
million. This brings to nearly $75M the total funding to date in Unity
Semiconductor.
Inside PCIe Gen3
Editor:- May 19, 2009 - Electronic Design today published a
new article -
PCI
Express And The PHY(sical) Journey To Gen 3.
"PCIe Gen3 will
make possible legacy channel functionality at 8 Gbits/s per lane."
The
article looks at the legacy of PCIe and the interactions between error
correction, data transmission and power saving strategies. And it describes the
architectures and strategies required for the next generation of speedup.
See
also:- SSD Controllers
/ IP, storage chips,
PCIe SSDs
OCZ Raises Performance Summit for its 2.5" Consumer SSDs
Editor:-
May 19, 2009 - OCZ
today launched
its fastest 2.5"
consumer SATA SSDs -
the
Summit Series - with 200MB/s sustained write and 250GB capacity.
Although
not the fastest SSDs
in the industry, they are more than 2x as fast as OCZ's Core series
launched in July 2008.
WD Ships 2TB Surveillance Drive
Editor:- May 19,
2009 - WD
announced availability of a 2TB model in its
AV-GP
line of hard drives
designed for the surveillance market.
Designed to last in always-on
streaming digital audio/video environments the new
SATA compatible
drive (MSRP $299) supports playback of up to 12 simultaneous HD streams.
Editor's
comments:- SoleraTec
has a whitepaper on its site called -
the Video
Surveillance Marketplace (pdf) which provides a good introduction to this
market.
Samsung Buddies up to Fusion-io
Editor:- May 19,
2009 - Fusion-io
announced it's
collaborating with Samsung
on memory technology for its ioSAN (its
PCIe form factor SSD
card with dual integrated 10GbE
or Infiniband
ports.
"Fusion-io has developed new types of solid state storage
products, and our work with them will enable enterprises to take advantage of
this innovative technology in the very near future," said Jim Elliott, Vice
President, Memory Marketing of Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.
...Later:-
May 22, 2009 - an article in
The Register
summarizes recent people IO changes at Fusion-io.
New Standard for 1.8" SSDs
Editor:- May 18,
2009 - JEDEC
today published a
new
standard for 1.8"
Slim SSDs.
MO-297 defines the dimensions, layout and connector
position for 54mm x 39mm SSDs with a standard
SATA connector.
"MO-297
is the first document to standardize a physical outline for a solid state drive.
Adoption of this standard has the potential to deliver significant benefits for
the industry by creating a single outline for storage suppliers and systems
manufacturers to use and reference," said Jim Leidy, Business Development
Manager for Tyco Electronics and
Chairman of the JEDEC Task Group behind the effort. Storage ORGs
Debunking Tier 0 Storage Babble
Editor:- May 18,
2009 - in a new article published today on StorageSearch.com I explain -
Why I Tire of - "Tier
Zero Storage"
You don't need to waste any of your precious
brain cells by investing "tier 0 storage" with an importance this
travesty of
storage jargon
really doesn't deserve. ...read the article
Article Peers into Nanocrystal NAND
Editor:- May
18, 2009 - a good article published on Semiconductor International called
- Peering
into Nanocrystal NAND - looks at factors affecting the potential for future
shrinks in flash memory.
The author David Lammers
tackles an issue which I know has been worrying many flash SSD designers. He
starts with this sobering observation... "As the polysilicon floating
gate becomes smaller, fewer electrons are used to store a single bit. Any
rupture in the floating gate allows the electrons to leak away, presenting
reliability
challenges." ...read
the article |
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| Super
Talent Refreshes Tired Flash SSDs |
Editor:- May 15,
2009 - Super
Talent today announced new
firmware
for its
UltraDrive
ME series 2.5"
SSDs.
This includes what the company calls a "Performance
Refresh Tool" to fix performance degradation problems in its earlier
generation of SSDs.
Although some commentators on the web have
attributed such problems to fragmentation - that's completely incorrect! Since
the access time for random reads in a well designed SSD is nearly identical
for all locations - the real problem in Super Talent's SSDs (and some models
from Intel) was due tobadly
designed products which were rushed to market too soon without adequate
testing. For a deeper look at these issues see
Can you trust flash
SSD specs & benchmarks? - published nearly a year ago - which first
alerted buyers to these problems. See also:-
SSD controllers and IP. |
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| Surviving SSD
sudden power loss |
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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