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SSD news - January
2012 - 3rd week |
Server Side Caching article
Editor:-
January 20, 2012 - "What can a CIO do to improve VMware performance
without forklift upgrades?" - is a question posed by Woody Hutsell ,
Sr. Director of Product Management at Fusion-io in his new
blog about -Server Side
Caching.
Micron follows SSD software acquisition trend
Editor:-
January 20, 2012 - Micron
today
announced
it has acquired the assets of UK based Virtensys which marketed
rackmount SSDs stuffed
with Micron's PCIe SSDs and supported by a patented multi-server sharing
virtualization interface.
Editor's comments:- if buying an
SSD software company
was a good idea for leading
PCIe SSD makers
Fusion-io and
OCZ - then Micron has to
follow suit or get out of the game.
Chipmakers generally dislike
buying "systems" software companies - because they don't understand
systems and risk alienating their oem customers. But Micron's reputation won't
be dented if they can't leverage the Virtensys software. Everyone knows how hard
it is to get real value out of a software acquisition. And in the next few weeks
more people will take another look at Micron's
Micron's SSD pages.
So it's paid for itself already.
WhipTail gets more funding
Editor:- January 17, 2012
- WhipTail
today
announced
it has secured a Series B funding round led by RRE
Ventures, with Ignition Partners
and Spring Mountain Capital
also participating.
The new funds will be used to increase resources in
sales and marketing.
WhipTail says over 100 customers have installed
its enterprise SSD arrays and over 1/3 of the company's revenue comes from
repeat business.
See also:-
rackmount SSDs
and VCs in SSDs
STEC prospecting for more enterprise SSD business
Editor:-
January 17, 2012 - STEC
announced that industry veteran Vaughn Miller has joined the company's
Systems and Software Group as VP of Business Development.
Mr. Miller
is responsible for developing business opportunities with OEMs and ISVs that
focus on enterprise
applications.
During the past 16 years, Mr. Miller held various key
management positions in business development for
Cisco Systems,
NeoPath Networks,
Acopia
Networks (acquired by F5 Networks, Inc.),
NetApp and
Auspex Systems. Prior to
his roles in business development, Mr. Miller served as an engineer for
Landmark
Graphics (a Halliburton company) and
Modcomp.
Editor's
comments:- if you're unfamiliar with the earlier companies in this virtual
cv - before we get to the storage companies - the themes are "real-time"
and "big data analysis", the world's first
NAS company (Auspex) and "virtualization".
I've said for years that STEC didn't put enough effort into
enterprise business development. The company lost market share in the
enterprise SSD market in
2011.
Better late than never to grab a map and shovel in
this year of the
Enterprise SSD Goldrush.
BiTMICRO's new SSD controller design
Editor:-
January 17, 2012 - BiTMICRO
has named its new SSD
controller - which has just gone through
tape-out.
It's called TALINO-DE
- Translation and Linking of I/O Nodes -Device Edition. - Not very catchy - but
all the best SSD
names have gone.
The multi-core TALINO-DE is
big SSD
architecture (manages hundreds of flash chips) and includes full data path
protection, end-to-end
data integrity,
embedded AES engines for data
security, embedded XOR engines for delivering faster transaction processing
in RAID configurations,
power
management, and other resource optimization.
Editor's
comments:- the new controller appears to be in a similar conceptual class
to those which have been shipping in some
PCIe SSDs from
TMS and
Virident for
example - although these in turn are very different - starting at the
RAM cache
basics (TMS designs range from regular to fat, whereas Virident is skinny.)
If
the new BiTMICRO controller lives up to its promise - and if it's marketed as a
merchant chip set - it could lead to a commoditization of PCIe and rackmount
SSDs similar to the effect
SandForce had on the
enterprise 2.5" SSD
market.
..Much later comments:- That didn't happen. One reason
is that BiTMICRO's early controllers didn't support adaptive DSP - and were
therefore only able to work with more expensive memories - which made such
products very uncompetitive.
Other reasons were marketing and
financial weaknesses by BiTMICRO compared to a growing number of exdtremely
competent SSD competitors. | |
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The most significant emerging technology in 2012 was
adaptive
R/W DSP ECC flash management.
Although this had been around for over 2 years - 2012 was the first
time that the number of SSD makers using adaptive DSP hit double digits.
This fact surprised many of the leading companies withn this
technology segment when I told them they weren't as alone as they had imagined
at the start of this year.
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SSD news
SSD market
history
the Top
SSD Companies
can you
trust SSD market data?
A to Z directory of SSD
articles
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I work at a financial
institution which has started to cover the storage market - and in particular
enterprise flash.
I'm trying to estimate:-
• how big
will the SSD market will be when SSDs replace hard drives?
• when will it happen? and
• what will be the
revenue of the SSD market at that time?
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| impacts of the
enterprise SSD software event horizon | | | |
