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| leading the way to the
new storage frontier | |
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SSD endurancethe Top SSD Companies
after AFAs -
what's next?
meet Ken and the SSD
event horizon
how
fast can your SSD run backwards?
decloaking
hidden segments in the enterprise
Exiting the
Astrological Age of Enterprise SSD Pricing
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| revisiting an old new hard
drive idea |
Editor:- August 20, 2014 - From time to time I
get an email from a new (to me) company which really grabs my attention.
Here's one such which arrived this morning.
"We now have the WORM
hard disk you refer to in your article in StorageSearch.com (Introducing WORM Hard Disk
Drives - February 28, 2005).
"It was developed for the Department of Justice, and is now in
use, by GreenTec-USA, Inc. in conjunction with Seagate. Can we send you some
information? Would love to hear from you!" - Bob Waligunda,
VP of Sales at GreenTec-USA.
Editor's
comments:- I haven't spoken to Bob yet - because of the time difference. But
here's some info I got from GreenTec's web site:-
- GreenTec
WORM whitepaper (pdf) - "Organizations today have demanding needs to
ensure that their sensitive data is protected. Considerable damage could be done
if critical or sensitive files are deleted or altered either accidentally or
intentionally"
The interesting thing for me is it shows that
innovation in the hard
drive market hasn't stopped completely. And GreenTec's 3TB (for now) WORM
drives are also available as arrays in micro cloud blocks.
I had almost
forgotten about my 9 year old WORM HDD (market needs this) article. I'll update
it later with this note.
Linking this back to SSDs - there have been
several companies in recent quarters who have announced physical write-disable
switches into embedded SSDs - including:-
See
also:- SSD security,
military SSDs | | |
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| This is now essential
knowledge - says IT Brand Pulse |
Editor:- August 9, 2014 - If it wasn't for
people being seriously interested in mission critical SSD related technologies,
product architectures and being willing to invest their time in (sometimes)
bewildering content about difficult concepts as their best defensive plan to
avoid making big mistakes - I wouldn't have any readers.
But although
I have often commented on these pages how surprised I have been by the high
level of knowledge
and dedication evinced by those readers who contact me from outside the SSD
industry - I hadn't given much thought to what that meant in terms of an
industry trend.
My view (as a
publisher) has
been - my site is for really serious readers - and I don't aim to please
everyone by dumbing down the content.
Quite the opposite in fact -
as a few years ago I decided to pro-actively disengage from user facing content
about the consumer SSD market.
Other publications
do that better.
Despite prioritizing reader quality over raw SSD
reader numbers - my numbers have been doing OK - with some all time record
numbers as recently as in the past 7 days.
I was content knowing that
enough of you were interested in deep enterprise SSD related issues to stick
with plan A - and I hadn't given much thought to how that compared with the
wider market - beyond knowing that my readers are the most influential in the
enterprise SSD markets.
Enter IT Brand Pulse -
who measure many aspects of enterprise user thinking about SSDs (including
perceptions and misperceptions about brand leadership).
I say "misperceptions"
advisedly because sometimes in the past - SSD vendors have been perceived to be
leaders in product categories in which they have no discernibly worthwhile
product offerings. But a good score in
brand projection
(carried over from other markets) provides an opportunity for product marketers
to convert such illusions to realities - because it shows that users would be
willing to buy such products from such companies - if they actually existed.
I
digress. The main point I wanted to make is this.
I was surprised to
see that on page 55 of -
Enterprise SSDs
Who's Adopting Them and Why? - (a pdf based on their presentation earlier
this week at FMS) - on which
page IT Brand Pulse had taken a measure of user willingness to invest time into
looking at the details of
flash memory
characteristics - and their conclusion is...
"This is now
essential knowledge. - Only a little more than 25% of enterprise users
will not deep dive into the technology."
I don't know
about you - but I find that reassuring.
I've focused on just one
page in what is - with pictures - an 80+ page document.
IT Brand
Pulse's paper provides an entertaining and informative tour of the recent 2-3
years in the enterprise SSD market. And if you want the numeric data to scale
the graphs shown in their paper - it only costs $495 - contact
cheryl.parker@itbrandpulse.com to order. ...read the article
(pdf)
See also:-
storage market research,
SSD endurance,
Enterprise
SSDs - the Survive and Thrive Guide,
SSD history | | |
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Many factors at play in
enterprise SSD market behavior still don't appear as explicit assumptions in SSD
product marketing plans.
A contributory cause for gaps in segmental understanding has been the
continuing pace of disruptive innovation in enterprise SSD-land - which has
meant there hasn't been a stable market template for vendors to follow. |
| Decloaking
hidden segments in the enterprise for rackmount SSDs | | |
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| I think that 2014 will be
seen as the start of a new phase of creativity in the enterprise SSD market on
the subject of pricing and affordability. As evidence for that - I'm going to
mention 3 companies at the end of this article - whose recent activities - while
different in detail - were swirling around in my head this week. |
| Exiting the
Astrological Age of Enterprise SSD Pricing | | |
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storage
history
what
changed in SSD year 2014?
a
not so simple list of military SSD companies
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Samsung in volume
production of 3D DDR4 RDIMMs
Editor:- August 27, 2014 - Although
the main interest in DDR4 RDIMMs - from an SSD market perspective - will be
in how that interface opportunity gets leveraged in
future memory
channel flash SSDs - let's not forget that the motherboard slots - which
will enable that market - have been designed for
DRAM. So the DRAMs will
come first and are an important part of the countdown to the new DDR4 flash DIMM
ecosystem.
In that context I'd like to mention that Samsung is today
celebrating "a new milestone in the history of memory technology" with
the announcement that the company is in volume production of the
industry's first 64GB DDR4
RDIMMs (DRAM) that use 3D "through silicon via" (TSV) stacked die
package technology and 20nm class die geometries.
Samsung says that
the new 64GB TSV module performs 2x as fast as a 64GB module that uses
conventional wire bonding packaging, while consuming approximately 1/2 the
power.
Editor's comments:- Samsung describes this announcement as "historic"
and I was content to include that positioning statement in the news above -
because much of what Samsung has done in the past has indeed had historic
significance. For more examples - see "Samsung
historic" which gives you search results from the
StorageSearch.com
news archives.
consumer SSD compression software seeks partners
Editor:-
August 26, 2014 - When it comes to the question of
cost per SSD terabyte
users in the enterprise market have many competing options for stretching
their SSD budgets and balancing cost and performance. And I have known of a
small number of companies doing similar things in the
consumer SSD market.
Today
I was contacted by Simon King - the founder of a new (to me) company -
ZIPmagic Software (based in
Australia) which is offering its Windows compatible whole disk compression
technologies (which was originally developed for the HDD market) for licensing
to SSD oems.
Here's what Simon said.
Dear Zsolt,
My company has built a product for transparent disk compression.
Unlike traditional compression tools, transparent disk compression increases the
total storage capacity of a disk without requiring data to be decompressed
before it can be used by apps or users.
With the advent of fast but
expensive SSDs, fixed storage tablets, and (private virtual) servers which are
expensive to upgrade or relocate; there is a new market niche for disk
compression solutions.
I have attached some product briefs on my company's disk compression
solutions. Our price point is competitive with traditional compression tools
such as WinZip. Our product also meets and exceeds the capabilities of
traditional compression tools across the board.
SSD manufacturers can
safely advertise double the disk capacity using our software-only solution, and
reduce their cost per gigabyte for their expensive products – resulting in
a win-win scenario for both consumers and the manufacturers themselves. Our
software is very safe, secure, and scalable; based on Microsoft technologies,
but extending the capabilities of those technologies with our compression and
convenience enhancements.
Editor's comments:- Simon sent me
pdfs related to 3 diffrerent product variations. I haven't included them here
but they looked interesting. For more info about oem licensing inquiries look
at this
features overview or email
Simon@zipmagic.co
Maxta invests in Intel
Editor:- August 19, 2014 - In
May 2014 we
learned that Intel
had invested in Maxta.
And this week we learned that Maxta has reciprocated that favor by investing in
Intel.
More strategically than with mere money - Maxta's
investment -
announced
yesterday - is in the form of a reference architecture - cored on Maxta's
MxSP software (SSD ASAP software)
which provides an easy to support set of solutions preconfigured for Intel
servers and Intel SSDs.
Maxta says its MaxDeploy Reference Architecture
offers the framework of a repeatable and standard deployment model - which
provides its customers "ease of ordering and predictability" - and
which mitigates the risk of hardware or software compatibility issues, while
simplifying and shortening deployment time and training.
The new
solution set will be demonstrated next week at
VMworld, San
Francisco.
Skyera's Rado Danilak to spend more time focused on technology
Editor:-
August 18, 2014 - Skyera
today
announced
that current investors from its previous $51.6 million funding round have
provided additional capital to the company as it prepares to scale its sales and
manufacturing cycles to meet increased demand. Financial terms were not
disclosed.
Additionally Skyera has promoted Frankie
Roohparvar to the position of CEO while Dr. Rado Danilak,
co-founder of Skyera, becomes CTO of the company.
"The additional funding raised from our existing strategic
investors reinforces the company's leadership in all-flash array technology,
including our approach to key storage selection criteria of size, weight, power,
performance, plug-n-play and price," said Roohparvar.
"While
that approach remains unchanged, we have decided to leverage this investment to
realign our executive team to better capitalize on the product vision that Rado
brings to our team. His move to CTO allows him to spend time contributing his
technical genius to furthering the design, development and integration of
Skyera's system-wide approach to solid-state storage. We believe that these
changes and the additional investment positions us for success in both the near
and long terms."
Avago completes acquisition of PLX
Editor:- August
12, 2014 -Avago Technologies
today
announced
that it has effectively completed the acquisition of PLX Technology.
Super Talent joins M.2 PCIe SSD market
Editor:-
August 11, 2014 - Super Talent
Technology today
announced
that it has added an
M.2 form factor SSD to its
NGFF
family of SSDs.
Super Talent's
PCIe
DX1 has a PCIe gen 2 interface, R/W speeds upto 480/400MB/s respectively,
capacity upto 256GB MLC and comes with a 128MB DDR3 DRAM cache.
Samsung ships 10nm SAS SSDs
Editor:- August 8, 2014
- Samsung today
announced it is producing
SAS SSDs with
10nm nand flash.
The
SM1623 has R/W
IOPS upto 120K/26K respectively. But
DWPD isn't that great -
Samsung says it's about 1 (which is restrictive).
Editor's
comments:- When it comes to COTS storage arrays (just a bunch of SSDs with
some RAID) SAS is the
new SATA. While SATAe and
NVMe
(2.5" PCIe SSDs
and
M.2 PCIe SSDs) will be the
new SAS.
This is a significant milestone in the
10 year history
of enterprise flash - and portends lower
pricing for entry
level SSD storage arrays.
But it's not at simple as 10nm based arrays
always being cheaper for all apps.
The ability to do more writes and
work faster (with more expensive memory and
software) creates its
own competitive
efficiencies.
So it's more likely that in the next few years
we'll see 10nm being used as one of several memory geometries in different roles
- even inside the same boxes. Just as we're seeing multiple generations of flash
in enterprise and embedded markets today.
Diablo unveils DDR-4 flash DIMM SSDs
Editor:- August
7, 2014 - Diablo
yesterday announced details of a new 2nd generation
memory channel
SSD - low latency flash SSD accelerators in DDR-4 sockets - which will
sample to oems in the first half of 2015.
Along with the new hardware
technology there will be an improved software platform - with features like
NanoCommit - which Diable says will enable hundreds of millions of
transactions per second, with nanosecond latency.
"Memory Channel
Storage DDR4 solutions represent the next evolution of Server Acceleration
technology," said Riccardo
Badalone, CEO and Co-founder of Diablo Technologies. "In addition
to supporting a faster memory interface, the Carbon2 platform delivers
unprecedented levels of hardware acceleration for new software innovations like
NanoCommit. Converged Memory, where the best of Flash and DRAM are combined,
will rely on this type of technology to give applications the ability to
transparently persist updates to main memory."
Editor's
comments:- After FMS - Diablo sent me
more info (pdf)
about their FMS
presentation (pdf) from which I have extracted these key features.
- Diablo's converged memory architecture (flash tiered with DRAM) is planned
to support 700 million random cachelines / sec.
- Latency of each cacheline is about 48 nanoseconds.
- Diablo's NanoCommit supports byte addressable small writes to flash with
high transaction rates and the ability to mirror the DRAM contents to
persistent storage.
- The combination of technologies would enable something like a 1U server
with 25TB of converged memory.
Plextor's M.2 PCIe SSD wins award at FMS
Editor:-
August 7, 2014 - Plextor
today announced
that its
M6e
- an M.2 PCIe SSD - has
won Best of Show for most Innovative flash memory technology at the Flash Memory Summit.
The
M6e SSD combines a multi-core
Marvell PCIe 9183
controller and Toshiba
toggle NAND flash with firmware developed by Plextor's in-house team.
As
part of the design verification - Plextor says that 400 units were subjected to
500 hours of extreme tests without error or failure.
eASIC supports Mobiveil's NVMe platform
Editor:-
August 6, 2014 - eASIC
today
announced
announced support for Mobiveil's
NVMe platform (pdf)
implemented in eASIC devices.
The platform includes PCI Express, NVM
Express, DDR3 and NAND flash controllers, IP that is optimized to take advantage
of the unique eASIC Single Mask Adaptable ASIC technology.
"eASIC
is enabling the rapid deployment of SSD technology at substantially lower cost
and up to 70% lower power than alternative solutions", said Jasbinder Bhoot,
VP of Worldwide Marketing at eASIC. "By working with Mobiveil, customers
will have access to a complete NVMe solution running in cost, power and
performance optimized eASIC devices."
See also:- Shorten Time to Market
for NVM Express based storage solutions (pdf by Mobiveil)
AgigA Tech samples 1st DDR4 NVDIMM
Editor:- August
6, 2014 - AgigA Tech
today announced that it is now sampling the industry's first DDR4 Nonvolatile
DIMM (NVDIMM) to key OEMs and development partners.
See also:-
hybrid DIMMs
say hello to Shannon Systems
Editor:- August 6, 2014
- I hadn't heard of Shannon
Systems before. But I got a nice email this morning from Xueshi Yang,
CEO and co-founder who said he has been reading StorageSearch.com "for
quite a number of years now" and also said that his company is showing
their products at Flash Memory
Summit.
Among other things - Xueshi Yang said - "Shannon
System is a startup I co-founded in 2011 in China after I left
Marvell.
"The
company is dedicated to the enterprise flash storage market. Currently, we focus
on the high performance PCIe market with our proprietary controllers and
software systems. In April this year, we
announced
the industry first 6.4TB PCIe SSD with a single controller, which boasts 67us
read access latency and 9 us write access latency (all in 4KB, random). While in
June, we introduced a PCIe SSD with SFF-8639 interface, which is hot-pluggable.
We currently serve over 100 customers in China, including Tier 1 internet
companies, as well as other named customers such as China Mobile, China Telecomm
etc."
Silicon Motion samples controller for TLC SATA SSDs
Editor:-
August 5, 2014 - Silicon
Motion today
announced
that it is sampling the SM2256, the world's first complete merchant
ASIC/firmware SATA 6Gb/s SSD
controller solution supporting 1x/1y/1z nm triple-level cell (TLC) NAND from
all major NAND suppliers.
"We expect TLC SSDs to account for more
than 40% of all client SSD shipments in 2015," said Michael Yang,
Senior Principal analyst at IHS
iSuppli. "The combination of cost effective TLC NAND and new
controllers like Silicon Motion's SM2256 will help drive this level of adoption."
Tanisys enters SSD ATE market
Editor:- August 5, 2014
- Tanisys Technology
today
announced
details of a new SSD ATE test system which will be shown at the Flash Memory Summit.
The
Tanisys's SX3-OGT test
system (which includes benchmarking and validation suites from
OakGate Technology,
supports popular SSD interfaces including
PCIe,
SAS and
SATA.
The
SX3-OGT also supports fast emerging protocols such as NVMe and AHCI. The SX3-OGT
is available in bench top configuration for engineering applications and with
multiple burn-in chambers for production.
See also:-
SSD testers and analyers
HGST rekindles concept of a PCM based PCIe SSD
Editor:-
August 4, 2014 - HGST
today
announced
it will demonstrate a PCM PCIe SSD concept at the Flash Memory Summit. HGST says
the demonstration model delivers 3 million random read IOPS (512 Bytes) and
a random read access latency of 1.5 microseconds.
Editor's
comments:- Micron
funded the world's first enterprise PCM PCIe SSD demo 3 years ago (in
June 2011). The
storage density of PCM resulted in an SSD which had pitifully low capacity
compared to flash memory at that time - and earlier this year (in January 2014)
there were
reports
that Micron had temporarily abandoned this idea.
Is HGST really
going to wander into memory space where even the memory makers don't want to go?
Or is this just a market signal that HGST isn't just looking at short term SSD
product concepts?
A3CUBE will use military connectors in datacenter fabric
Editor:-
August 4, 2014 - A3CUBE today
announced that its emerging
PCIe compatible
distributed shared memory architecture - the
RONNIEE Express -
is supported by a military grade rugged connector technology. A3CUBE teamed
with a specialist connector manufacturer AirBorn
Inc on this aspect of the implemenetation.
A3CUBE says that
RONNIE RIO is the first network adapter card designed with carrier-grade and
military-grade reliability and is designed to bring mission-critical features to
the standard data center interconnection network and data plane.
See
also:- military SSDs,
HA SSDs
And the best buy SSDs shall be the worst (if you change your
workloads)
Editor:- August 2, 2014 - An applications optimized
SSD system can be the cheapest buy - if you always use it for the original
purpose - but it can be a poor choice if you throw the wrong type of
applications at it. Enter - the good ole general purpose fast SSD array.
The
conflicts are examined in a new blog -
Real
Flash Storage Systems multi-task! written by Woody Hutsell,
IBM who among
other things says - "It just so happens that flash appliances with
built-in deduplication are the worst choices for database acceleration."
...read
the article
The idea that an SSD which is best for one type
of use may have the worst characteristics for another - was also examined from
an architectural point of view in my classic article -
how fast can your
SSD run backwards? | |
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SSD news
SSD market
history - all |
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Michelangelo was looking for David.
Megabyte
was looking for the inner SSD.
SSD news icon on StorageSearch.com since
1998 |
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"Our past work
showed that application-unaware design of memory controllers, and in particular
memory scheduling algorithms, leads to uncontrolled interference of applications
in the memory system.
"Such uncontrolled interference can lead to
denial of service to some applications, low system performance, and an inability
to satisfy performance requirements, which makes the system uncontrollable and
unpredictable" - said Onur Mutlu, Assistant Professor Electrical and
Computer Engineering - Carnegie Mellon University. |
| Are you ready to
rethink RAM? | | |
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Hi Zsolt
I work
at a financial institution which has started to cover the storage market - and
in particular enterprise SSDs. I'm trying to estimate:-
- how big will the SSD market will be when SSDs replace hard drives?
- what will be the revenue of the SSD market at that time
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| meet Ken - and the
enterprise SSD software event horizon | | |
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PCIe SSDs - news etc
PCIe SSDs versus
memory channel SSDs
don't all PCIe SSDs
look pretty much the same?
Enterprise
SSDs - the Survive and Thrive Guide
an SSD
conversation with PLX about PCIe fabric etc |
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2.5" PCIe SSDs,
NVMe, SATAe etc
SAS SSDs - directory and
market timeline
DWPD
- in industry leading enterprise SSDs
what's in an SSDserver
rank number? - for SAS - add 1 |
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"M.2 will become the next
popular form factor for industrial applications.
SATAe is designed for
desktop PCs now, and industrial designers may use it in the near future."
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| C.C. Wu, Embedded
Flash VP of Innodisk-
in his paper -
PCIe
in Industrial Application (pdf) (August 6, 2014) - which among other things
includes an authoratative timeline of form factors and interfaces used in the
industrial SSD
market in past decades. | | | |
