Tom's Hardware
Reviews an SSD Dozen
Editor:- September 7, 2009 -Tom's Hardware has published a
performance
review of a dozen disk-form-factor (1.8" &
2.5") flash SSDs.
Most exceeded 200MB/s R/W throughput. No unpleasant surprises were
reported.
The link, above, takes you to the end of the article -
which contains the useful summary. Alternatively you can
read
the article (from the beginning)
You'll find nearly a dozen
dozen SSD companies listed on our
classic SSD page. That's a "gross"
(144.)
PCIe SSD Searches 6x Higher
Editor:- September 6,
2009 - StorageSearch.com
revealed that in August 2008 reader pageviews for
PCIe SSDs were
approximately 6x the level of a year ago.
This demonstrates
that users are seriously exploring the idea that bus based SSDs provide a
viable alternative to 2.5"
DAS SSDs for internal enterprise server acceleration.
"I
wouldn't be surprised to see PCIe SSDs cross over and overtake
2.5" SSDs in
reader pageviews by January 2010" says editor, Zsolt Kerekes. "It's a
big 1st step buying into SSD server acceleration and devoting time to it. But
once you've made the commitment and start looking deeper into application
bottlenecks and the cost benefits - there are many new applications for which
it makes no sense to be hogtied by traditional rotating disk interfaces and
form factors for this type of upgrade."
...Later:- It
happened much sooner than that. In fact at the
end of this very
month of September 2009.
Innovative Silicon to Discuss Future of DRAM
Editor:-
September 3, 2009 -
Innovative Silicon today
announced its
co-founder and chief scientist, Dr. Serguei Okhonin, is participating in
a tutorial at next week's 2009 ESSDERC
conference (in Athens, Greece) titled "Disruptive
Technologies for More Moore."
Dr. Okhonin has long recognized
that DRAM, which was first
released by Intel in 1970, is running out of steam. The basic DRAM memory cell,
consisting of a transistor and complex capacitor element, is becoming
increasingly difficult to scale to smaller process geometries. While the DRAM
industry has achieved miraculous results over the years by packing more and more
memory bits onto ever smaller silicon die and selling it for cents, this is no
longer feasible. Dr. Okhonin will cover the next frontier of memory
technologies: floating body memories.
Dr. Okhonin will talk about
the memory advancements that must be adopted to enable semiconductor
technologies to effectively scale to sub-45nm process geometries.
See
also:- storage market
research
Verbatim Acquires Freecom
Editor:- September 3, 2009
- Verbatim's
parent company (Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd) has
acquired Freecom Technologies.
The
Freecom acquisition represents yet another investment made by the MKM/Verbatim
group aimed at the growing external
hard disk drive market. The asset acquisition of
SmartDisk, made in
June 2007, has proved successful in establishing MKM/Verbatim in both the
portable and desktop external HDD markets on a global basis.
Editor's
comments:- Although virtually unknown outside Europe, Freecom was founded 20
years ago in 1989. Its acquisition is sandwiched between FolderShare and
FreeDiskSpace.com in our list of 499
gone-away storage
companies. Who will be the 500th? It's probably happening as you read this.
Chip Market Poised for Recovery - Says Databeans
Editor:-
September 3, 2009 -
Databeans has
revised its worldwide semiconductor revenue forecast in its
newsletter
published today.
Databeans says - "Now 8 months into the year, the
"sound of momentum" can clearly be heard. Some scoffed at a "V"
shaped recovery... but it appears that this is the case. Further, we are not
expecting a double-dip scenario in the chip industry." ...read
the article (pdf), market
research
EMC Acquires Kazeon
Editor:- September 1, 2009 -
EMC today
announced it has
signed a definitive agreement to
acquire privately-held
Kazeon Systems.
Core to Kazeon's
eDiscovery
attractiveness is its ability to handle data that resides anywhere in the
enterprise environment - including content on laptops, desktops, content
management repositories, email archives and file shares.
HDS will Remarket InMage's Appshot
Editor:- September
1, 2009 - Hitachi Data
Systems will co-brand and resell InMage's
Appshot
replication technology the 2 companies
announced
today.
InMage supports rapid, reliable recovery for various key
enterprise applications including Microsoft Exchange, SQL and SharePoint as well
as Oracle, MySQL, BlackBerry Server, SAP, and any Windows, Linux or UNIX file
system.
WD Starts Volume Shipments of 2TB Enterprise Hard Drives
Editor:-
September 1, 2009 - Western
Digital announced that it's
shipping
3.5" 7,200 RPM 2TB hard drives and is qualifying with OEMs
enterprise-class
hard drives based on WD's 500GB per-platter technology.
The new
drives use dual actuator technology. A head positioning system with 2 actuators
that improves positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator
provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator
principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the
head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy.
Editor's comments:- 2TB enterprise hard drives (available
from multiple sources)
will rapidly become the new building blocks for enterprise bulk storage.
Dot Hill announced back
in July it had
qualified
the new 2TB WD drive. Many other
RAID systems companies
this month will follow suit and start shipments of 2TB populated arrays.
Report on Intel's Motherboard SSD Strategy
Editor:-
September 1, 2009 - Objective Analysis
has published a new 50 page report about the SSD market -
Intel's
Braidwood: Death to SSDs? - (price $5,000).
Jim Handy, the
report's author says "Although this isn't the first time that Intel has
tried to bring NAND into the PC, the earlier Turbo Memory product failed for a
number of reasons."
PC purchasers who were considering an SSD upgrade will find NAND on
the motherboard to be a cheaper alternative with nearly all the same benefits.
The report projects how the move to NAND in PCs will boost the NAND market,
soften the SSD and DRAM markets, and pose problems for those NAND makers who are
not poised to produce ONFi NAND flash. Solid State Drives -
market research & analysts |
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| Fast Purge flash SSDs
when "Rugged SSDs"
won't do |
| The need for fast and
secure data erase - in which vital parts of a flash SSD or its data are
destroyed in seconds - has always been a requirement in military projects.
|
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Although many industrial
SSD vendors offer products with extended "rugged" operating
environment capabilities - and even
notebooks SSDs come
with encryption - it's the availability of fast data purge which
differentiates "truly secure" SSDs which can be deployed in
sensitive applications.
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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... |
 |
...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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