Pliant Samples
Fast 2.5" 3.5" SAS SSDs
Editor:- September 14, 2009 -
Pliant Technology
started sampling its
Lightning
family of 2.5"
(150GB) and 3.5"
(300GB) skinny
flash SAS SSDs.
The SLC drives deliver R/W rates upto 525/340MB/s and 160,000
IOPS (for a
90% R, 10% W mix).
"The exceptional performance and reliability
features of Lightning Enterprise Flash Drives allow IT managers to address the
most significant challenges they're facing today, namely, keeping up with
continually increasing storage demands with fixed budgets, limited data center
floor space and the ever growing cost of power," said Amyl Ahola, CEO of
Pliant Technology.
Editor's comments:- the realistically
addressable market for
native SAS SSDs in disk form factors looks a lot smaller today than 3 years
ago when Pliant was founded. That's because SAS SSD opportunities have been
shunted aside by PCIe SSDs
and squeezed from below by fast
SATA SSDs.
The
result has been that SSD vendors have been reluctant to enter this part of
market. But the good news for the handful of companies actually shipping such
products is they don't have to worry about dozens of competitors going for every
design slot. That means higher margins for the forseeable future.
See
also:- Pliant
Technology's - SSD Bookmarks suggested by Greg Goelz - VP of
Marketing.
Intel Walks the SSD Notebook Talk
Editor:- September
14, 2009 - Intel
has published a case study about the productivity benefits of using
SSDs
instead of hard drives in business notebooks.
Following an
internal evaluation Intel says it will deploy up to 10,000
SSD notebooks
this year to its own employees.
- Benefits to users include:- increased productivity, reduced data loss and
drive-related errors, and lower thermal footprint for more comfortable use.
- Benefits to IT include:- faster malware scans, better performance with less
RAM, and extended battery life cycle.
Despite the higher cost of SSDs -
Intel concluded that the case for replacing notebook HDDs (which averaged 4.9%
annual failure rate according to its own experience) - was "compelling".
...read
the article (pdf)
3D Memory Market Reality Check
Editor:- September 13,
2009 - How is the 3D memory chip market stacking up? - An article in Semiconductor
International reviews the market's progress.
Author Philip
Garrou says - "3D memory surely will happen, just not that quickly"
- and reminds readers that a few years ago
analysts were
predicting it would be an established market by 2010. ...read
the article
Toshiba Sources Flash Controllers from ITE Tech?
Editor:-
September 11, 2009 - A report today in DIGITIMES
said that Toshiba
has ordered flash memory card controllers from ITE Tech to diversify its
supplier base. SSD
Controllers / IP
Sonnet Launches Camera to Hard Drive R/W Module
Editor:-
September 10, 2009 -
Sonnet Technologies
today announced the
Qio
professional universal media reader/writer.
It's a convenient
high speed alternative to stand-alone card readers,
SATA controllers and
various adapters, combining their functionality in a compact rugged case, and
fulfilling the data handling needs of videographers with multiple cameras using
different memory card formats.
We talked to many customers who had combinations of Sony, Panasonic
and Red cameras who wanted some way to transfer the data from any of them at
full speed to hard drives,
needed drive-to-drive copy capability, and desired a compact, portable, rugged,
and battery-operable package," said Robert Farnsworth, CEO of Sonnet
Technologies. "The Qio does this and more!." Removable Storage
ATTO Demos 6,400MB/s HBA at IBC
Editor:- September
10, 2009 - ATTO
Technology is
demonstrating
its 6Gb/s SAS HBAs
and 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs this week at IBC
in Amsterdam .
Demos include a quad-channel card that delivers the
fastest available Fibre
Channel data transfer rate of 6,400MB/s. Storage Events,
Record Breaking
Storage
Adaptec Enters the SSD Market
Editor:- September 9,
2009 - Adaptec
announced a new platform for integrators building
hybrid storage
pools using SSDs (ASAPs).
Its
MaxIQ
SSD Cache Performance Kit (which operates with upto 4x customized 32GB
Intel SSDs) includes
software that identifies frequently (hot) read data blocks and optimizes
subsequent "reads" by moving "hot" data directly into the
SSD cache for lower latencies and higher system performance.
Adaptec
president and CEO Sundi Sundaresh said that the new product "Underscores
the potential that we see for significant future management and conditioning of
data through the I/O path, which is central to our new ... strategy."
Comparing Enterprise flash SSDs
Editor:- September 9,
2009 - a recent article published in InformationWeek includes a
useful table listing
prices
and R/W IOPS for several leading enterprise flash SSDs.
The
article's author Howard Marks
runs a product testing and editorial services company called
DeepStorage.net
What I think
is missing from the article is an additional column for comparing
StorageSearch.com's SSD accelerator magic numbers.
That's - dollars
per write IOPs per terabyte.
As these products are aimed at
solving performance bottlenecks, it's the random write IOPS which matters most,
and the read IOPS is almost irrelevant (because it's always a good number
relative to the interface available).
If you perform this calculation
for the products named in the article you'll see
Fusion-io is best,
closely followed (18% behind) by
Texas Memory Systems,
and then way behind (approx 6x worse) is
Intel, which in turn is
about 2x better value than
STEC.
So why
doesn't everyone just buy according to the SSD magic number?
It's a
good way for assessing value for money for products in the same class. But when
it comes to any given real application - you have to consider other factors
too.
- How well does it fit your budget? That depends on the competitive
ecosystem for your application. If you've hit a hard brick wall with a big
server budget your entry level SSD products are beefier than if you've hit a
soft haystack with an embedded blade server app.
- And just as important:- how comfortable do you feel with doing business
with that company based on its support and services?
See also:- SSD
historic price trends
TMS Acquires SAN IP from Incipient
Editor:- September
8, 2009 - Texas Memory Systems
has expanded its IP base with the
acquisition of data
management patents and source code from Incipient.
"The
patents and software provide Texas Memory Systems with a new set of tools for
virtualisation and storage management that complement our solid state storage
systems," said Woody
Hutsell, President at Texas Memory Systems. "The newly-acquired
technology will accelerate our development of new high-performance storage that
meets the demanding and complex needs of our enterprise customers."
Texas Memory Systems has not acquired any interest in Incipient, Inc. Both
companies remain independent.
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