Reports Confirm
Weakness of STEC's Channel to Market
Editor:- November 6, 2009 -
STEC has
disclosed that its biggest customer, EMC, hasn't sold as many
of its SSDs as expected - and
will
carry inventory into 2010.
If this was a surprise to anyone
it's only because they didn't read my analysis (published April 1, 2009) which
appeared in the 8th
quarterly edition of the top 10 SSD oems and was repeated in my comments in
STEC's profile page.
I
said - "Although STEC has been successful in getting its products designed
into storage arrays by large storage oems such as
EMC - STEC's partners have
not added enough value or IP to their own
rackmount SSD
offerings.
Consequently these "STEC inside" SSD systems
are weak in comparison to many competing systems which are faster or cheaper
(due to better leveraged SSD technology). In the view of StorageSearch.com -
STEC relies too much on market pull-through by partners who are me-too or weak
in the SSD space. Unless it invests more in its SSD branding - its business
is vulnerable to substitution and replacement by any new SSD kid on the block
with a faster SSD
controller."
Google provides clearer reflection of what it knows about You
Editor:-
November 5, 2009 - Google
today -
announced
new audit tools - which give users (of its sign-in services) better
visibility about the data which is stored about them.
I had a look
myself at, one of these - the new Google
Dashboard. I consider myself a weak user of Google's opt-in services - but I
was impressed by the unified view it provided - reminding me of functions I had
started to look into long ago but then forgotten about.
Toshiba Ships Leanest 120GB 1.8" Hard Drive
Editor:-
November 4, 2009 -
Toshiba announced
volume shupments of the industry's most power-conservative SATA
hard drive - the
1.8", 5mm high,
120GB, single platter, 4,200 RPM
MK1235GSL.
Significantly
surpassing 2.5" HDDs in durability it can tolerate up to 1,500Gs of
non-operational shock and 500Gs of operational shock.
New SSD Features - coming soon
Editor:- November 4,
2009 -
StorageSearch.com will
publish 3 new major feature articles on the
SSD market in the next 30
days. See sidebar (right) for more details.
VAIOs get SanDisk SSDs
Editor:- November 3, 2009 -
SanDisk
announced
that its 64GB
(9,000
vRPM) pSSD module has been selected as a standard SSD option in
Sony's
new VAIO X ultra-thin laptop.
Adaptec Publishes Naively Designed SSD Benchmark
Editor:-
November 3, 2009 -
Adaptec today
released
the results of 3rd party performance testing of its new MaxIQ SSD Cache
Performance Solution in MySQL environments.
AppLabs evaluated the
performance of MaxIQ in its MySQL Testing Environment (which assumed 95%
reads and 5% writes) and found that
read
and write throughput increased 8x with MaxIQ SSD cache enabled.
Transactions per second improved 6.9x going from 346 tps with SSD cache
disabled to 2,374 tps with SSD cache enabled.
Editor's comments:-
I was underwhelmed by these results compared to
fast SSD
accelerated environments - but I suppose Adaptec's thinking is that it shows
worthwhile speedup results using cheap affordable
Intel SSDs - and without
needing expensive SSD hot-shot tuning.
Like all such tests - the setup
has elements of unreality about it.
In real-life you wouldn't use
Adaptec's product to sit between an 80GB database and a 32GB flash SSD. Instead
you'd put all the data into SSD. And it would give you better results than using
Adaptec's middle-ware.
In deployments with larger databases - a more
typical HDD to SSD ratio (based on economic constraints) might be closer to 10
to 1 rather than 3 to 1.
...Correction:- In a comment
regarding a news story about Adaptec earlier
today, I mistakenly referred to their
MaxIQ
SSD product as "MLC".
Thanks to Scott Cleland,
Director of Marketing at Adaptec who pointed out that this uses SLC.
Scott Cleland also said "All benchmarks have a sense of unreality
to them. We cannot test in live environments so we seek 3rd parties to help
validate our claims. The acceleration that MaxIQ provided to this particular
environment can be duplicated and can be realized in environments with multiple
medium sized data sets that are tagged a "hot" by our I/O path logic."
He continued - "The MaxIQ solution is completely I/O, OS, file
system agnostic. It is designed to bring the benefit of SLC-SSD read
performance to environments that require and can take advantage of higher levels
of I/O performance as well as the cost/GB value proposition of SATA HDDs. it is
a hybrid solution and one-of-a kind at this price point."
WD Ships 2.5" 10K SAS HDDs
Editor:- November
3, 2009 -
Western Digital
announced volume shipments of its 1st
2.5" 10K
RPM SAS hard drive.
The WD S25 provides up to 300 GB of
high-performance storage suitable for both mission-critical enterprise server
and enterprise storage applications, such as high-I/O-driven applications and
configurations, as well as data centers and large data arrays.
"Our entry into the traditional-enterprise market continues the
strategic expansion and diversification of WD's broad market and product
portfolio, and significantly increases our addressable revenue opportunity,"
said John Coyne, president and CEO of WD. "As with our previous market
expansion and diversification efforts, WD will approach the traditional
enterprise space with the same focus on quality, customer service, technology
and value that has earned us strong positions in every market we serve."
Editor's comments:- 15K RPM hard drives are obsolete for new
designs - because if you want acceleration - you get more server bang per buck
using 2.5" SSDs.
But in the 10K area HDDs can still deliver high capacity with tolerable
performance and lower cost than SSDs.
In order to optimize overall economy,
reliability and
performance - the well architected enterprise storage systems of the near term
future will lean towards using more 10K RPM (and slower)
hard drives - for bulk
content - and towards using various levels of SSDs for performance. In the long
term it will all be solid state - but that's still 10 years away.
GUC takes SSD SoC HeadCount to 23
Editor:- November
2, 2009 -
Global Unichip
announced mass-production of its
ARM7-based
GP5080
series SSD SoC
platform for portable consumer electronics products.
There are 2
different models in this series.
GP5080 is optimized for cost sensitive
applications by removing the need for external DRAM cache (skinny SSDs),
while GP5086 supports DRAM cache for (regular SSD)
applications needing extra extended lifetime (write attenuation).
The complete GP5080 design kit includes SoC samples, evaluation board, reference
design. With the GP5080 series solution,
SSD makers or system
providers can provide quality products for customers with substantially reduced
development cost and time-to-market.
GP5080 series solution is a highly integrated SSD SoC, based on
advanced 90nm process technology. Its architecture has been optimized to fully
utilize the maximum data transfer of NAND flash with minimum operating power.
The 4 independent flash channels deliver excellent sequential and random R/W
performance and support all major vendors' SLC/MLC NAND
flash devices. The
SSD data integrity
is guaranteed by the on-chip hardware BCH-ECC engine which can correct up to 16
bit errors per 512 byte data.
The 32-bit ARM7 processor will provide
high computing capability for advanced SSD management firmware such as
Flash
Translation Layer,
Bad Block
Management,
Wear Leveling
Algorithm, Power Fail Recycling, SMART function, Disk Recovery/ROM Disk,
etc. In addition, it supports PATA and
SATA2 dual interface
to provide extra flexibility and wide temperature range from -40°C to 85°C
for industrial grade applications.
See also:-
processors
used in real SSDs
Unigen Signals 2.5" SAS SSD Intent
Editor:-
November 2, 2009 -
Unigen announced
it will manufacture a new range of
flash SSDs using
SSD processors from SandForce.
The 2.5"
SSDs will be available with
SATA or
SAS interfaces.
Foremay Ships Fastest 2.5" SATA SSD
Editor:-
November 2, 2009 -
Foremay
announced it is shipping the
world's fastest 2.5"
SATA flash SSDs.
The
SC199 Cheetah Y-Series has R/W speeds up to 290/280 MB/s in
2.5" and
3.5" SATA form
factors - which approaches the theoretical speed limit of the SATA-II protocol.
It also delivers impressive R/W IOPS of up to 50,000/45,000 respectively.
"It is Avalanche technology that makes the SC199 Cheetah Y-Series
the world's fastest SSD drives with SATA interfaces," stated Jack Winters,
Foremay's Co-founder and CTO. "Avalanche is not a single technology
breakthrough; rather it is a novel technology platform that integrates various
patented and proprietary SSD technologies from hardware to firmware and design
to manufacturing process, along with engineering synergy from suppliers,
partners and customers."
New Report on MLC in the Enterprise
Editor:- November
2, 2009 -
Forward
Insights publishes a new market report this month -
SSDs: Enabling MLC
Technology in the Enterprise (price is $6,499).
The report's author
- Gregory Wong
- says "Due to demanding performance workloads, SLC technology has been the
technology of choice for SSDs in enterprise computing environments. Therefore,
it came as a surprise when in August of this year,
STEC, a leading
enterprise SSD vendor, announced that it will offer MLC based enterprise SSDs."
Are
these products aimed at niche applications or do they suggest the beginnings of
broader adoption of MLC technology in SSDs in the enterprise space? This report
provides analysis of SSD usage models and what applications could conceivably
be addressed by MLC technology. ...more
info (pdf)
See also:-
SSDs - market
analysts , Are
MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Apps?,
Hybrid Storage
Drives
SSD Data Recovery Company Secures $18 million series C funding
Editor:-
November 2, 2009 -
Link_A_Media Devices
has secured $18 million series C funding - enabling it to bring its products
to market sooner.
Lightspeed Venture Partners, a new investor in the company, led the
funding round. Other key investors are ITOCHU Technology Ventures, Keynote
Ventures, SunAmerica Ventures and several strategic partners.
"I
am very pleased with Link_A_Media's ability to attract new and previous
investors to this round. The interest we generated from the
investment community
is a direct reflection of the huge opportunity for the company in the storage
markets based on our technology leadership," said Dr. Hemant Thapar, CEO
and chairman of Link_A_Media. "Over the past 2 years, we have begun
deploying our leading technologies into custom
SoC products for our
customers to enable their next generation products. Strong customer interest in
our technology is validating the imminent transitions in
data recovery
technology trends for peripheral storage devices, both
HDDs and
SSDs."
SSD Guide Popularity Grows 127%
Editor:- November 2,
2009 - StorageSearch.com
disclosed that pageviews of the
Solid State Disks
Buyers Guide increased 127% in September 2009 compared to a year
ago.
The SSD Guide - the #1 most popular article with our readers - is
a useful digest of the
SSD market - especially for
readers who don't have time to read the hundreds of other in-depth articles and
analysis here on the mouse site.
Pageviews for the top 5 articles
(all on the theme of SSDs) increased an average of 73%. |
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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 and comprehending the
factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating
process... |
 |
...which is not made any
easier when market prices for apparently identical capacity SSDs can vary more
than 100x to 1!
Why is that? ...read the article to
find out | | | |
| . |
New SSD Features - coming soon
Editor:-
November 4, 2009 -
StorageSearch.com will
publish 3 new major feature articles on the
SSD market in the next 30
days.
- the
Problem with SSD Write IOPS.
Flash SSD random write IOPS are
now similar to read IOPS in many fast SSDs. So why are they such a poor
predictor of application performance? And why are users still buying
RAM SSDs which cost 9x
more than SLC? - even when the IOPS specs look similar. We'll tell you why the
specs got faster - but the application didn't.
- Experienced
SSD Buyer Seeks Trustworthy Partner.
We'll be looking ahead
at the key issues in the SSD market in 2010. Over 80% of SSD business
could be decided by power SSD specifiers who are no longer SSD virgins.
How
was it for you?
For many it was a rite of passage - and when they
choose products for their next projects they'll be looking for more caring,
trustworthy partners - not just suppliers who
look good in the disco
lights. Much of that SSD reputation - good or bad - is already in the
public domain. But some is not. |
 |
The new article will also look at key
technology and market developments which can be expected in the 2010 timeframe -
some obvious (like faster products) - some not. And if you thought that 2009
was the Year of SSD
Confusion - next year will be... find out and see. | | | |
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| SSD Data Recovery
Concepts & Methodologies |
| It's hard enough understanding the design
of any single SSD. And there are so many different designs in the market. |
 |
If you've ever wondered what it looks like at
the other end of the SSD supply chain - when a user has a damaged SSD which
contains priceless data with no usable backup - this article - written by
Jeremy Brock, President, A+ Perfect Computers
- who is one of a rare new breed of
SSD recovery
experts will give you some idea. read the article | | | |
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