|
GreenBytes launches its
first pure SSD rack
Editor:- February 21, 2012 - GreenBytes
announced imminent availability of its first pure SSD based storage array.
The
Solidarity is a
high availability
iSCSI 3U rackmount SSD
with real-time dedupe and
compression with upto 13.5TB raw / 60TB effective capacity ($75K) and
120,000 4K IOPS performance.
WhipTail recruits CMO
Editor:- February 21, 2012 -
WhipTail today
announced
that Maxwell K. Riggsbee
Jr. has joined WhipTail as VP and chief marketing officer.
Editor's
comments:- in the multi-faceted technology and user value proposition
blender which is flavoring today's enterprise SSD market - marketing is the
secret ingredient which can lift vendors above the heap with
labels and
signposts
that potential customers can recognize.
Users have been working
work hard to understand
what enterprise SSDs can do for them - but vendors have to invest more effort
too - to explain why their type of product is better in particular roles.
STT secures $36 million A round for OST-MRAM
Editor:-
February 15, 2012 - Spin
Transfer Technologies today
announced
it has secured $36 million in Series A funding - led by its parent company,
Allied Minds and
Invesco Asset Management -
to accelerate development of STT's patented orthogonal spin transfer
magneto resistive random access memory technology (OST-MRAM).
STT says
"the company is poised to create the next generation of memory
applications combining the non-volatility of flash with the read and write
performance of DRAM and SRAM into one, seamless product."
See
also:- VCs & SSDs,
flash and other NVM,
storage glue chips.
SanDisk acquires FlashSoft
Editor:- February 15,
2012 - SanDisk
today
announced
it has acquired FlashSoft
- one of the leading independent software vendors in the
SSD ASAPs market.
SanDisk intends to sell FlashSoft's products as standalone software, as well as
offer these software products in combination with SanDisk's growing portfolio of
SAS, PCIe and SATA enterprise solutions.
Editor's comments:- I'm not surprised that someone has
acquired FlashSoft - because they were an obvious target sitting so high in the
Top SSD companies list.
This
means that SanDisk now joins an impressive roster of enterprise SSD makers who
have acquired auto acceleration / virtualization software companies in the
past year.
The
only stumbling block is that acquiring enterprise SSD assets isn't the same as
being able to do anything useful with them afterwards from the business point
of view. Especially when they're software companies.
I still remain
unconvinced that SanDisk has achieved as much as it should have done from its
earlier acquisition of enterprise SSD controller maker
Pliant.
(Although Pliant made SSDs - they had virtually no market share - so their main
value to SDK was as a sounrce of enterprise controller IP.)
I
don't think SanDisk understands the enterprise SSD market in the same way as
the other companies with which it competes. It's not the same as marketing
consumer products.
VIA chooses Tensilica core for new SSD controller
Editor:-
February 15, 2012 - Tensilica
today
announced
that VIA has
selected Tensilica's Xtensa dataplane processors (DPUs) for a new design of SSD
controllers.
After conducting a technical evaluation, VIA determined
that Tensilica's DPUs provide over 4x the performance of competing processors on
key algorithms used to benchmark competitive alternatives.
With conventional processors, increasing the clock speed is the
common way to increase SSD IOPS. However this increases energy consumption
and die size, especially as speeds increase so much that designers are forced to
move to more complex multi-core solutions.
Tensilica says its DPUs
allow designers to customize the IP core, mix both control and signal
processing, and add high-bandwidth connectivity to increase performance without
increasing the clock speed.
For example, designers can use
single-cycle bit field manipulation and arithmetic instructions along with
multiple simultaneous single-cycle table lookups to achieve over 10x the
efficiency of other processors. This not only increases IOPS, but also
significantly reduces the energy consumed and the complexity of the SOC design
itself.
Editor's comments:- There's a good precedent for
this. When SandForce
came to market in April
2009 - their CEO (at that time) Alex Naqvi
told me their controller
used the dataplane processors from Tensilica. |
. |
|

| |
.... |
|
|
... |
|
|
|
..... |
|
 |
|
..... |
|
 |
|
..... |
|
How big was the
thinking in this SSD's design? |
Does size really does matter in SSD
design?
By that I mean how big was the mental map? - not how many
inches wide is the SSD. |
 |
For designers, integrators,
end users and investors alike - understanding what follows from these simple
choices predicts a lot of important consequences. ...read the article | | | |
|
..... |
|
 |
|
|
|
. |
|
|
|
. |
|
| |