Viking's SATA Cube3 DOM MIL
certified
Editor:- March 3, 2010 - Viking Modular Solutions
today
announced
that its SATA Cube3 128GB DOM
(launched in March
2009) has successfully completed tests pursuant to the
MIL-STD-810F
specification.
WD offers faster SLC and affordable MLC for disparate 2.5"
SSD markets
Editor:- March 3, 2010 -
WD Solid State
Storage is shipping a new range of
2.5" 128GB
SATA
SLC
SSDs - for
high reliability
24/7 embedded markets - called the
WD
SiliconDrive N1x.
R/W speeds are upto 240MB/s and 140MB/s
respectively. Write
endurance is
quoted as 701GB/Day - compatible with 5 year limited warranty. And
data integrity
(non-recoverable error rate) is better than 1 in 1015 bits read.
"The
WD SiliconDrive N1x SSDs are the newest addition to our SiliconDrive product
family, which has shipped several million units since the 1st products
were introduced. SiliconDrive SSDs have consistently met critical OEM
application requirements for high reliability, high performance and long product
deployment cycles," said Michael Hajeck, senior VP and general manager of
WD's solid state storage business unit.
The WD SiliconDrive N1x SSDs
feature patented and patent-pending WD technologies combined with NCQ and
Windows 7 TRIM command support for high data integrity, long product life and
sustained performance
levels throughout the drive's service life without the need for an external
refresh utility, media over-provisioning
or forced idle times used by many SSDs available today.
Editor's comments:- today WD also
announced
its entry into the
SSD notebook
market. WD's SiliconEdge
Blue 2.5" MLC SSDs offer capacity upto 256GB (MSRP $999), R/W speeds
of 250MB/s and 170MB/s.
To avoid confusion from the branding point of
view - it looks like WD has retained the 5 year market proven "SiliconDrive"
brand for its enterprise products while introducing "SiliconEdge"
as its consumer / MLC brand. To protect its reputation WD says the new
notebook design has passed over 250,000 hours of testing to prevent the kind
of flaky SSD
problems which have occurred in the past when competing oems shipped
incompletely verified products.
PCIe SSD adoption accelerates Fusion-io's revenue
Editor:-
March 2, 2010 - Fusion-io
disclosed today it has experienced more than 80% quarter-over-quarter sales
growth and more than 300% sales growth year-over-year.
This emerged in an announcement that Silicon Valley veteran Dennis
Wolf has joined the company as senior VP and CFO to help it manage its
rapid growth as it continues to expand into new markets around the globe. Wolf
has led several public and private companies as CFO, COO and CEO. He brings more
than 30 years of leadership experience in high-growth technology companies, with
work in finance and other disciplines. Most recently, he served as executive VP
and CFO at MySQL where he was
integral in MySQL's growth strategy and its ultimate sale to
Sun Microsystems in a
transaction valued at $1 billion.
"In the 20 years I've been working in this industry, I've never
seen a company grow this fast and I believe we are well poised to triple our
growth in 2010," said Jim Dawson, senior VP of worldwide sales for
Fusion-io. "As a young company experiencing such incredible, rapid
expansion, Dennis' financial expertise and broad understanding of the
marketplace will be essential to our continued ability to meet customer demand."
Editor's
comments:- the last time I wrote an article about a bunch of storage
companies with
triple digit
annual revenue growth was in 2004 - and the top 2 out of those 4 were in
the SSD market too.
Although Fusion-io is a privately held company and doesn't disclose financial
details - it's sometimes easy to tell which companies everyone seems to be
talking about.
Super Talent's Cryptic USB3 SSD
Editor:- March 2,
2010 - Super
Talent Technology today
announced
imminent availability of a new
encrypted
USB 3
flash SSD - with
upto 256GB capacity.
When I asked for more technical details I was
told the datasheet isn't ready yet. The USB 3.0 SuperCrypt is a true SSD (with
wear-leveling).
Internally the module (95 x 34 x 15.4 mm) is a
SATA SSD with a USB
bridge chip.
FalconStor tunes Violin's SSD
Editor:- March 2,
2010 - FalconStor
today announced
technical
and VAR channel support for Violin Memory's 2U
rackmount FC flash SSD
- the Violin 1010 .
Although
the headline specs of this very fast flash SSD are substantially the same as
when it was launched in
November 2008
the 2 important things which have changed are:-
- the price point
- $32,000 for the 500GB (lite capacity) version, and
- the availability of SSD
ASAP-like features implemented by FalconStor's SafeCache and HotZone
software.
STMicroelectronics samples dual port RFID EEPROM
Editor:-
March 2, 2010 - STMicroelectronics
is sampling a pioneering new family of dual technology access EEPROMs -
which add a standard RFID interface to the conventional serial interface. |
 |
No power is required to
operate the M24LR64 (64k bit capacity) in RF mode. The
chip
gathers both the energy and the data from the RF system.
"This
highly innovative ability to program or read a memory wirelessly, as well as
electrically, will provide tremendous added-value to our customers, enabling
highly flexible supply-chain management and also stimulating new types of
products with powerful features and capabilities," said Benoit Rodrigues,
General Manager, Memories Division, STMicroelectronics. |
|
STEC samples slim SSDs with
deep roots
Editor:- March 2, 2010 -STEC has started
sampling a new family of
SlimSATA and SATA-CF
32GB/64GB flash SSDs for use in embedded markets.
Performance is
15,000 / 6,000 R/W
IOPS and R/W transfer rates are up to 135MB/s and 130MB/s respectively.
Editor's comments:- in a way this is STEC going back to its
roots. In the server
market - where it is better publicly known - STEC is dependent on the success of
partners like EMC whose
secret ingredient in the SSD cola experience is bottling the water.
STEC is also vulnerable to being substituted out for other
2.5" SSDs (or
sideswiped by PCIe SSDs)
at any time.
But STEC knows how to market to designers in embedded
markets. These are currently much smaller than the other segments in the classic
SSD market
penetration model. Nevertheless it's a way of boosting revenue.
And
here's something else to think about... which links together the oldest
segments in the flash SSD market with the newest one for
SSD backup - which is still
at the birth stage.
The important feature in these new products is
the ratio of sleep mode power to operating mode power - which is 10 to
1. That's not too far off the ideal ratio (100 to 1) it needs to reach in the
next 5 years to support the concept of putting petabytes of SSD archive storage
into 2U racks. More about that later... In the meantime experience gained in the
unsexy (but reliability
obsessed) embedded SSD
modules market can be viewed as a long term investment in what will be
the biggest market for SSD shipments long after the
current SSD market
bubble.
Front Porch Digital Bucks Broadcast Equipment Trends
Editor:-
March 1, 2010 - Front
Porch Digital today announced that the company's 2009 sales bookings
were the best in its 11-year history, representing a gain of more than 30%
over 2008.
Front Porch Digital's success is more striking, according to
Mike Knaisch, the company's president and CEO, because a recent
industry research
study indicates some 97% of
broadcast
vendors experienced declining sales in 2009.
hyperI/O captures TRIM metrics
Editor:- March 1,
2010 - hyperI/O
announced
that its hIOmon software supports the collection of Microsoft "TRIM"
related SSD metrics - which can be captured during normal, everyday
application use and without any OS, file system, file, or application changes
required.
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RunCore's new Express Card
SSD / USB 3.0 adapter
Editor:- March 1, 2010 - Among the many
SSDs which RunCore
will show at CeBIT 2010
this week is an Express
Card flash SSD designed for
notebooks.
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| As well as providing upto 64GB
capacity (R/W speeds 120MB/s and 90MB/s) - the Express 34 module also
provides 2x USB 3.0 ports
with connectors for linking the notebook to external devices. See also:-
events. | |
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