SSD Innovations - new
report from Forward Insights
Editor:- March 31, 2010 - Forward Insights
has announced imminent availability of a new report -
SSD Innovations
($4,499) - which explores key innovations to improve the
performance and
lifetime
of SSDs.
It
focuses on innovative solutions from major industry players such as
FusionIO,
Intel,
Pliant,
Sandforce,
SanDisk and
STEC for improving the
performance,
endurance
and reliability of
SSDs. An exploration of the evolution of application requirements in computing
applications, performance limitations of
flash-based storage
systems, trends and industry innovations is provided. In addition, innovative
SSD architectures
incorporating
new
memory technologies, external power supply and linked chain architectures
are investigated as future SSD development directions.
...Table of
Contents (pdf), SSD
Market Analysts
TDK launches SLC half slim SSDs
Editor:- March 30,
2010 - TDK
launched the
SHG2A series of half slim, encrypted industrial
SATA SLC SSD modules.
The new SSDs, which have a maximum capacity of 32GB, are about 1/2 the size of a
1.8" drive and have
R/W speeds of 95MB/s and of 55MB/s respectively.
ECC is 8 bit/sector
(512 byte) correction (15 bit/sector correction). Endurance is 100,000 write
cycles per block address (6.3 billion writes for a 16GB model). TDK has a life
span assessment tool which enables customers to monitor the life span of these
SSDs in their systems.
Editor's comments:- that brings the
number of oems in the 1"
approx SSD module size up to 32.
Web-Feet publishes flash market share report
Editor:-
March 30, 2010 - Web-Feet
Research has published a report -
Non Volatile
Memory Market Shares (2009) by Vendor ($2,500) - which segments component
shipments by memory type and vendor.
Web-Feet says the
flash memory market in
2009 was worth $20.8 billion, only 2% more than 2008. The
top 5 flash vendors were:- Samsung,
Toshiba,
SanDisk,
Micron and
Hynix.
GreenBytes unveils 1U dedupe ASAP
Editor:- March 29,
2010 - GreenBytes
today
unveiled
the GB-1000 (under $10,000)
a 1U 4TB SSD accelerated
dedupe appliance
which supports simultaneous SAN
and NAS deployments.
Ingest
and restore performance is stated as 0.54TB/hr.
Windows Certification for RamSan-620
Editor:- March
29, 2010 - Texas
Memory Systems today
announced its
RamSan-620 (250K IOPS 2U
SLC SSD) has been certified as interoperable with Microsoft's Windows Server
2008 R2.
Radar buffs get 8GB XMC
Editor:- March 25, 2010 -
Curtiss-Wright
today announced it has
doubled the memory from 4GB to 8GB on its
MM-617
buffer memory XMC card - which is designed to provide volatile, deep storage
for a wide range of military applications including RADAR, signal intelligence,
and image processing.
Editor's comments:- customers always want more memory for
this type of application. In one project I managed in 1991 - we designed a
system which captured radar data and streamed it continuously to 16 x 6U of the
fastest COTS memory cards then available at the maximum operating speed of the
VMEbus. That required weeding out badly designed backplanes and memory cards -
and playing with early generations of
Altera FPGAs.
It was similar projects streaming to hard disk arrays (and analyzing the data
ASAP) where I learned a lot of useful things about storage too.
Adaptec's SSD seed corn came from Microsoft
Editor:-
March 25, 2010 - in yet another simulated benchmark
published
today related to Adaptec's
SSD ASAP caching
technology - which they leverage in their
MaxIQ SSD product - I
learned that the underlying technology was originally developed by
(surprise! surprise!) - Microsoft.
"When
our datacenter team came up with some innovative ideas around using solid state
devices as read caching devices, we determined it made good sense to license
these advances to Adaptec because Microsoft itself doesn't sell these types of
products," said David Kaefer, GM of Intellectual Property Licensing at
Microsoft. "By collaborating through licensing, Adaptec customers benefit
from a product that delivers impressive performance and cost savings over
alternatives in the market."
Editor's comments:- the
whole hard disk array acceleration market will cease to exist in a handful of
years for reasons explained
elsewhere. Maybe
the Microsofties realized it would be better to let someone else run with it -
rather than make users suffer the traditional 5 years waiting for it to
work properly - by which time it would be obsolete anyway.
Toshiba samples TB 2.5" HDD
Editor:- March 24,
2010 - Toshiba
today announced
it is sampling its highest capacity
2.5"
hard drives - with 1TB in a 12.5mm high package spinning at 5,400 RPM.
Hard
disk capacities in the 2.5" size have doubled in less than 2 years. You can
see how HDD and
SSD capacities have grown
in the past decade in this
article.
Infortrend reduces NAS costs with SSDs
Editor:-
March 24, 2010 - Infortrend
today
announced
it has added an SSD
acceleration layer to its
EonNAS
product line.
The company says that by using a judicious combination
of SATA
HDDs and
SSDs the overall
ASAP has the same
performance as if it used 15K RPM SAS HDD arrays - but at 75% lower
cost per GB.
OCZ gets funds to boost growth
Editor:- March 24,
2010 - OCZ today
disclosed it
has closed $15
million in funding to support its growing SSD business.
OCZ's President and CEO, Ryan Petersen said "This round of
funding will enable OCZ to continue its growth in SSDs and accelerate the
development of next-generation solutions."
WD's new video hard drive
Editor:- March 24, 2010 -
Western Digital
today announced availability of the
WD AV-25
- a 2.5" SATA
5,400 RPM HDD for 24x7
video
surveillance
and
DVR
applications with upto 320GB capacity (MSRP $80) and quiet operation.
WD
says audio noise from the new drive is less than
one
sone - "the threshold of human hearing."
Coraid expands AoE rackmount catalog
Editor:- March
23, 2010 - Coraid
today
announced
new models in its AoE
compatible NAS line
including a 2U 24 drive (2.5") model - EtherDrive SRX3500 - with 6
10GbE ports.
The company says its
SRX-Series appliances
can deliver more than 500MB/s throughput in virtualization environments. OS
support includes Windows, Solaris, and Linux.
1 Million iSCSI IOPS - is that fast? - or about what you'd
expect?
Editor:- March 23, 2010 - Gestalt IT published an article today -
which asks -
How
Did Microsoft and Intel Get 1 Million iSCSI IOPS?
If the author Stephen
Foskett only posed the question, without giving an answer, I wouldn't of
course have mentioned it here.
Looking back at
storage history
- in 2005 -iVivity
published a record breaking benchmark of 400,000 IOPS on iSCSI. So maybe
the recent benchmark is not quite so impressive after all. Phone numbers before
the word IOPS
need to be prefixed by international dial codes to impress the
SSD mouse.
PCIe vs 2.5" SSDs Snapshot
Editor:- March 23,
2010 - pageviews of
PCIe SSDs this month
on StorageSearch.com are
running 35% ahead of those for
2.5" SSDs.
Watching
the race between these 2 leading SSD form factors to compete for reader
attention has been interesting for me to watch as I try to divine what it may
mean for the future of
the SSD market.
I created a separate news page for the emerging
PCIe SSD market 2 years ago - (in
April 2008) -
which was the same month, incidentally, that
Seagate tried to stem
the growing 2.5" SSD threat coming from
STEC by launching a
patent lawsuit - which turned out to be a damp squib. It's surprising how much
our view of what is normal in the SSD market has changed in just a few years. To
see recent SSD market timelines click here:-
2008,
2009,
2010.
Digitiliti Launches Virtual Corporate Library
Editor:-
March 22, 2010 - Digitiliti
today
announced
availability of its
DigiLIBE
a multi-functional continuous VTL,
dedupe,
compression, ediscovery appliance which automatically captures and archives
new data from the time it is created and
sanitizes it at
the end of its policy mandated life.
Pricing starts at about $20,000
for a 3TB information director and $3 per GB archived after dedupe and
compression, plus $100 per client.
SAS / SATA drive array tester reviewed by Demartek
Editor:-
March 22, 2010 - Quarch
Technology announced that
Demartek
had published a report (pdf) which reviews the usability and benefits of
its SAS/SATA disk array test system.
It's useful for integrators
qualifying components and modules for use in new
RAID systems. |
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