the
fastest SSDs
the SSD
Bookmarks
the Top
10 SSD Companies
What's the best
/ cheapest PC SSD?
SSD Pricing - where does
all the money go?
Adaptive R/W and
DSP ECC in flash SSD IP
Efficiency - making the
same SSD - with less chips
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Foremay describes secure
erase options for SSDs
Editor:- August 20, 2010 - Foremay's CTO, Jack
Winters presented a paper -
Secure Erase
Options for SSDs (pdf) - at the recent Flash Memory Summit.
The
paper describes the need for
SSD data purge and
the 3 techniques which the company supports in its Avalanche Secure Erase
Suite.
"In a regular
SSD, deleting a file only
removes its name from the directory or file table. User data remains until
overwritten by new data. Even reformatting the SSD leaves data intact,"
said Jack Winters, CTO of Foremay, during the Flash Security workshop. "The
Avalanche Secure Erase Suite employs various technologies to overwrite or
destroy all user data in allocated blocks and file tables, as well as data in
reallocated defective blocks."
...read the
article (pdf)
Editor's comments:- other hardware data
destruction technologies for SSDs are also available from
other vendors.
Overland launches tape library patent suit
Editor:-
August 20, 2010 - Overland
Storage announced it is suing BDT AG
- for alledged
infringement
of tape library related patents.
"We owe it to our
shareholders and our customers to protect the technology investments we have
made throughout the years," said Eric Kelly, President and CEO of Overland
Storage. "We believe our technologies are one of the driving forces behind
the demand for tape storage solutions today. Our patented technologies allow
us and others to bring to market products and solutions that are more reliable,
more secure and more efficient."
Editor's comments:-
Tape library market
revenue has halved in the
past 10 years.
(2000 tape library revenue was $2 billion according to
Freeman Reports .) But
that strengthens the case for defending each remaining slice and crumb.
Fusion-io launches 1.3TB single slot PCIe SSD
Editor:-
August 18, 2010 - Fusion-io
today
announced
the availability of a new high density
PCIe SSD - which
supplies 1.28TB of 3x nanometer MLC capacity on a single card - and also a
new oem distributor - Dell.
When
used in concert with Fusion's recently released ioMemory
Virtual
Storage Layer the ioMemory technology delivers significant performance
enhancements to achieve nearly 300,000 sustained IOPS.
"The 1.28TB ioDrive Duo is a direct response to customer
requests for more capacity from a single device" said Fusion-io's CTO
Neil Carson. "Our
ability to deliver continually greater performance density attests to our
superior architecture's scalability without adding the complexity of embedded
controllers, processors, and external power supplies."
Editor's
comments:- although other companies have previously launched multi-terabyte
PCIe SSDs - those other designs spanned multiple card slots and were power
guzzlers.
Update on the smallest PATA SSD
Editor:- August 18,
2010 - Micross
Components indicated that a future version of its
microSSD
(the world's smallest PATA
SSD - which has a footprint of 14 x 24 x 1.3mm and weighs only 0.8 grams)
may be offered with extended operation upto 105 degrees C.
Objective Analysis predicts 40 million unit SSD market in 2015
Editor:-
August 17, 2010 - Objective Analysis
predicts that in 2015 nearly 40 million SSDs will ship accounting for over
$7 billion in revenues.
"We have followed the same methodology as our earliest forecasts,
basing our projections upon interviews with prospective SSD customers. This led
to projections that should help participants benefit the most from this market,"
said Jim Handy, author of their new report unveiled today. "Although our
early forecasts were the most pessimistic in the industry, they have been the
most accurate."
See also:-
SSD market research
ACARD's new disk duplicators
Editor:- August 17,
2010 - ACARD Technology
today launched
new models of 3 way and 5 way SATA
disk duplicators.
The
data transfer rate for single
HDD is as high as
6GB/min, so when copying 1TB of data only takes less than 3 hours (The actual
speed varies according to the hard drive). SATA hard drives can support the
1.5Gbps, 3Gbps and 6Gbps specifications, and supports various commonly used hard
drive formats such as Windows, Linux and MacOS.
ACS8503H / ACS8505M is easy to operate, and the hard drive insertion
utilizes the no-screw design. After the tray is opened just insert the source
and target hard drives and press the start button to execute; there are no need
for tools. The LCD displays the progress and status, the hard drive status is
easy to read, the user does not require any professional knowledge and can learn
how to operate it in a very short time.
The supported HPA (Hidden Protected Area) function can fully backup
the data stored in the hidden protected segments of the hard drive.
SMART samples 400GB 2.5" SAS eMLC SSD
Editor:-
August 17, 2010 - SMART
entered the crowding SAS
SSD market with the announcement that it is sampling the
XceedIOPS
SAS SSD - a 2.5" 400GB eMLC SSD with 26,000 / 20,000 R/W
IOPS and
250/230 MB/s sustained throughput.
The new XceedIOPS SAS SSD offers
high reliability and data integrity due to extensive error-correction and
detection capabilities, multi-level data-path and code protection, data-fail
recovery, and data-integrity monitoring. Designed to minimize power surges in
SSD arrays the the XceedIOPS SAS SSD supports staggered power-on.
NVELO launches notebook SSD ASAP
Editor:- August 17,
2010 - NVELO
launched
Dataplex - a software product
aimed at PC oems - which provides
SSD ASAP
functionality inside a
notebook.
Since Dataplex works with off-the-shelf storage devices, PC OEMs and
consumers have complete freedom to choose any SSD and any HDD, from any vendor.
"Consumers love the idea of SSD performance, but there is still a
huge (price) gap
between HDDs at $0.20/GB and SSDs at $2.00/GB; as an HDD replacement, the
economics simply don't work for all but a very small percentage of the market,"
said David Lin, VP of product management at NVELO. "With Dataplex, we are
making SSD performance economically feasible for a much larger market by using
the strengths of SSD and HDD technology together. And we're not talking about
simply installing the OS and whatever applications can fit onto a small SSD.
Dataplex learns user behavior, and intelligently caches all important data and
applications in an SSD device while maintaining the full capacity of the HDD for
storage."
Dataplex will begin shipping from select Tier 1 PC OEMs
in 2011. NVELO is currently in discussions with leading
HDD and
SSD vendors to enable
aftermarket sales and bundling options for Dataplex, and has begun development
of an enterprise version of Dataplex for server systems.
Editor's
comments:- if successful - NVELO's product will render obsolete most
hybrid drives
aimed at the notebook market. In the server ASAP market - it's a direct
competitor to the unloved
MaxIQ
SSD Cache Performance Kit created by
Microsoft, taken to
market by
Adaptec - and now owned
by PMC-Sierra.
Skinny SSD architecture suits Slim SATA form factor
Editor:-
August 17, 2010 - One of the advantages of
skinny flash SSDs
is the SSD controller
fits into a smaller physical space - because it doesn't need external
RAM chips.
That's
something which SandForce
told me a while ago - and they announced more details about this yesterday -
and what their technology can do for
Slim
SATA SSDs.
"Our customers have been mostly deploying our 1st
generation SSD Processors in traditional
2.5-inch drive form factors
as they are shipping into existing storage sockets with a defined power-density
envelope. Beyond that, we see a growing demand for more cost-effective, smaller
form factor designs that our single-chip SSD Processors optimally address,"
said Steffen Hellmold, VP of Business Development for SandForce. "We are
excited to see a whole new generation of SSDs come to market optimized around
the performance-power-density that only SandForce can enable at price points for
mass-market adoption."
STEC unveils enterprise MLC SSD technologies
Editor:-
August 16, 2010 - STEC
announced
details
of 2 technologies the company is using to improve
data integrity
and reliability in
its enterprise market MLC flash SSDs.
These are called CellCare and
S.A.F.E.
STEC's CellCare
uses adaptive
flash access, signal processing, data management algorithms and ECC to
improve the
endurance of
MLC flash components enabling them to handle write intensive workloads for
over 5 years without limiting performance.
As technology nodes gets smaller, the failure rates associated
with MLC flash components has increased. STEC's S.A.F.E. technology drastically
reduces component-level failures.
Editor's comments:-
competition from merchant market
SSD controller companies
is forcing those SSD oems
who design their own controllers to reveal more about the internal
architecture in their products.
Viking samples slim SATA SSD
Editor:- August 16,
2010 - Viking Modular
Solutions is sampling its
Slim SATA SSD
- which provides upto 120GB capacity and 260MB/s R/W speeds in less than
half the size of a 2.5"
SSD.
"With this optimized small form factor SSD,
communications and embedded applications can realize the performance associated
with full size SSDs," said Adrian Proctor, VP of marketing at Viking
Modular. "Now, system designers can take advantage of an ideal combination
of performance, capacity, power, size and cost." See also:-
1 inch SSDs
Linux kernel will support RamSan SSDs
Editor:-
August 16, 2010 - Texas
Memory Systems has
joined the
Linux Foundation to help
ensure that its SSDs are supported in the mainline kernel.
"Linux
is key to our long-term success," said Jamon Bowen, Director of Sales
Engineering at Texas Memory Systems.
SSD Bookmarks - suggested by Dataram
Editor:-
August 16, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published
SSD Bookmarks
- suggested by Jason
Caulkins, Chief Technologist Dataram.
A
year ago Dataram was at the forefront of a wave of companies creating a new
market for what I called "SSD ASAPs". It's
still unclear which type of approach will be most successful in this emerging
market. But you can learn about the issues that impinge on Dataram's technology
thinking by reading
the articles suggested. |
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popular SSD articles |
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| SSDs - the big picture |
| Editor:-
StorageSearch.com was the
world's 1st publication to provide continuous editorial coverage and analysis
of SSDs (in 1998) and in the 12 years which have followed we've led the market
through many interesting and confusing times. |
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If you often find yourself
explaining to your VC, lawyer or non technical BBQ guests why you spend so
much time immersed in SSD web pages - and need a single, simple, non very
technical reference to suggest - this may be the link they need. | | | |
| . |
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| . |
 |
.. |
| Can you trust market
reports and the handed down wisdom from analysts, bloggers and so-called "industry
experts" any more than you can trust SSD benchmarks to tell you which
product is best?
|
| heck no! -
whatever gave you that silly idea? | | | |
