WD Reports Results
Editor:-
January 21, 2010 - Western
Digital today
reported
financial results for the quarter ended January 1, 2010 - revenue of $2.6
billion up 44% compared to a year ago and up 18% compared to
$2.2
billion, in the same quarter 2 years ago.
I said - a few days
ago in the case of Seagate - that you get a better comparison by comparing
revenue with the peak year for the HDD market - rather than the worst quarter
affected by the Credit Crunch.
Doing that - by summing the results for
the 2 biggest hard drive companies - shows zero revenue growth for the
hard disk market compared to 2 years ago.
Most revenue shifts
in this market in 2010 will in my view be due to shifts in market share - and
effects due to other companies which have exited the HDD market - rather than
organic growth in overall hard disk revenue. It will be easy for hard disk oems
to continue reporting double digit percentage revenue growth compared to a
year ago - because that was dip in the market.
Viking Enters 2.5" 6Gbps SAS SSD Market
Editor:-
January 21, 2010 - Viking
Modular Solutions today
announced
it is sampling a range of SAS
and SATA compatible
SSDs using
controllers from SandForce.
Form
factors will include:- 1.8",
2.5" and
innovative "non-HDD-like"
solutions for space constrained and/or rugged applications.
"Today's
announcement represents the results of collaboration between Viking Modular
Solutions and SandForce for current and future high performance SSD products
that target enterprise, storage and multiple other applications requiring
superior performance and security," stated Hamid Shokrgozar, President of
Viking Modular Solutions. "This joint effort clearly highlights our
commitment as an industry leader by continuing to deliver innovative products at
practical costs to our customer base."
Interpreting Seagate's Results
Editor:- January 20,
2010 - Seagate
today
reported
financial results for the quarter ended January 1, 2010 - revenue of $3.03
billion up 32% compared to a year ago but down 11% compared to
$3.4
billion in the same quarter 2 years ago.
Seagate is positioning
these results as a strong recovery for the
hard drive market -
because they shipped a record 49.9 million drives in the quarter.
However, another way to view it is simply a rebound from the lowest point of the
Credit Crunch quarter - back to a position which is not as good as it was
before.
IDC Tallies SSD Shipments
Editor:- January 20, 2010
- IDC
says that
SSD shipments in
2009 exceeded
11 million units, an increase of 14% year over year.
Looking forward, IDC says it expects SSD adoption will continue to experience
tangible growth in 2010 and beyond, with shipments expected to achieve a
compound annual growth rate of 54% over the 2008-2013 forecast period.
Solid State
Drives - market research & analysts
Samsung Agrees $900 million Settlement with Rambus
Editor:-
January 19, 2010 - Rambus
and Samsung
today announced
that they have reached agreement settling all claims between them and licensing
Rambus' patent portfolio covering all Samsung semiconductor products including a
perpetual fully paid-up license to certain current
DRAM products.
As
part of the overall agreement, Samsung will invest $200 million in Rambus stock.
Other consideration to Rambus includes an initial payment of $200 million and a
quarterly payment of about $25 million for the next 5 years. In addition the
companies have signed a memorandum of understanding relating to a new
generation of memory technologies and interfaces.
See also:-
how will Memory
Channel SSDs impact PCIe SSDs?
New Integrity Tool for Old Tape Archives
Editor:-
January 18, 2010 - Crossroads
Systems today
announced
details of ArchiveVerify - a new monitoring option for its
ReadVerify Appliance
that safeguards the future readability of data
backed up on
tape.
"In our experience, the Achilles' heel of a data recovery
strategy is often the uncertainty of the data's readability, and this single
point of failure can render then entire restore process useless," adds
Bernd Krieger, Managing Director, at Crossroads Europe.
Editor's comments:- Crossroads was originally a specialist in
the SAN router business.
In recent years it has done a lot of work in the area of
storage reliability.
I've read lots of their whitepapers which describe their research and products
addressing data integrity. Although there has been a historic trend for users
to migrate away from
tape to disk backup - many super users of huge
tape libraries (with the
biggest archives) will be the last to migrate away - due to logistics and cost.
It's those kind of users who can benefit most from automated tools or services
which increase the data integrity they achieve and cut down media waste and
unrecoverable events.
WEDC Launches Secure PATA SSD in PBGA
Editor:-
January 18, 2010 - White
Electronic Designs has
introduced a
4GB secure PATA SLC
SSD in a 22mm x 27mm
PBGA for embedded military applications. |
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It's designed for applications
in aircraft, communications and missiles. A hardware and software triggered
fast purge can
eliminate all data in less than 10 seconds and device options include
sanitization
compliant with various government agency specifications.
New Error Technologies Required to Scale MLC SSDs
Editor:-
January 18, 2010 - Forward Insights
publishes a new market report this month -
ECC and Signal
Processing Technology for SSDs and Multi-bit per cell NAND Flash Memories.
Bit
errors are becoming more severe as NAND flash memory scales below 40nm process
technology and transitions to 3-bit and 4-bit per cell architectures.
Increased ECC
requirements will be required, however, traditional error correction codes
such as BCH, RS and Hamming code suffer from increased overhead in terms of
coding redundancy and read latency as the number of errors corrected increases.
In addition, the number of electrons stored in the memory cell is decreasing
with each generation of flash memory resulting in reduced signal/noise requiring
enhanced sensing techniques.
Digital signal processing technology has been employed in the magnetic
recording industry since the early 1990's when partial-response
maximum-likelihood technology (PRML) was commercialized. DSP technology is now
being deployed in 3-bit per cell and 4-bit per cell NAND flash memories and a
concerted effort is being made by NAND flash manufacturers and a variety of
startups to employ digital signal processing technology to improve the endurance
and performance of next generation NAND flash memories and SSDs. Signal
processing technology will be essential for the continued scaling of NAND flash
memories.
This research report examines the current state of ECC methods and
explores the technology, roadmap, market, cost and competitive landscape in the
flash signal processing space.
See also:-
adaptive R/W
flash management and DSP ECC
New Directory for AoE Storage
Editor:- January 15,
2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new directory for
AoE (ATA-over-Ethernet NAS
Storage).
Although this
NAS mode first hit our news
pages in 2003 -
support for it has been miniscule and compatible products are only available
from a handful of vendors. Will 2010 be the year that it all changes? Maybe.
SSDs could play a part -
because less latency is wasted in this low level network storage interface. |
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| Bad block
management in flash SSDs |
This is an introduction to the thinking behind
one of the many vital functions inside a flash
SSD controller.
Native
media defect quality in new flash memory chips has grown steadily worse in the
past 10 years as geometries have shrunk. |
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This article enumerates
the scale of the problem and explains how intrinsically dodgy flash memory
is transformed into dependable flash SSDs which you can entrust with your data.
...read the
article | | | |
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| There
are
hundreds
of articles about SSDs on StorageSearch.com |
Here, below, are some
examples.
- RAM Cache
Ratios in flash SSDs - it's important to know the underlying RAM cache
architecture - even if you're happy with the R/W and IOPS performance.
- 2010 - 1st Fizz
in the SSD Bubble? - even the dogs in the street know this is going to be a
multibillion dollar market. Greed will play as big a part as technology in
shaping the
SSD year ahead.
- the pros and cons of
using SSD ASAPs - auto tuning SSD appliances are a new category of SSD
which entered the market in the 2nd half of 2009 to accelerate servers without
needing human tune-ups. How can you tell if they are right for you? And how
well do they work?
- the Problem
with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs - long established as a useful performance
modeling metric - this article explains why some specs are exaggerated when
applied to flash SSDs - or predict the wrong results for many common
applications.
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