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SSD news archive
top SSD companies
what's the state of DWPD?
cloud adapted
memory systems
a winter's tale
of SSD market influences
popular SSD articles
on StorageSearch.com
Capacitor
hold up times in 2.5" military SSDs
where are we
heading with memory intensive systems?
what were
the big SSD memory architecture ideas in 2016?
optimizing
CPUs for use with SSDs in the 3rd Era of SSD Systems |
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SSD market
2016?
and 4 companies which made me stop and think |
Editor:- December 30, 2016 - If you've been
having difficulty finding a common thread which links together all the
apparently disconnected
hot
new technology developments which we have been reading about in 2016 and
which will dominate most of the SSD and memory developments in 2017 then
you're not alone.
But I think I've found it. And it's at the heart of
my new home page blog on StorageSearch.com.
...read
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"While NVMe over PCIe
shaves off about 10 microseconds relative to SAS, NVMf can shave off about 100
microseconds from the roundtrip latency between two hosts relative to protocols
such as iSCSI. It also saves CPU usage from TCP/IP processing.
This
can be particularly beneficial in scale-out systems for transferring data
between hosts. It does require RDMA-capable NICs and DCB-capable switches, so it
will take some time for mass adoption." |
| Umesh Maheshwari,
founder and CTO, Nimble
Storage in his blog -
NVMe
and NVMs - What to Expect (December 28, 2016). | | |
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| Nutanix says Pure's CEO
doesn't understand the disruptive magnitude of hyperconvergence |
Editor:- December 6, 2016 - A new blog -
Pure
CEO disses Nutanix. OK, let's compare numbers - by Steve Kaplan, VP of
Client Strategy - Nutanix
starts out with the idea of comparing the revenue and customer acquisition
metrics of Nutanix to another well known company founded in the same year - Pure Storage -
whose financial reporting periods are the same.
But the blog quickly
repositions to a market analysis of enterprise architecture generations and
customer
segmentation preferences (both of which are often poorly understood in the
industry by senior managers in SSD companies).
Among other things
Steve says...
"Pure Storages CEO, Scott Dietzen isn't the only one
at the storage manufacturer who doesn't grasp the magnitude of the disruption
Nutanix has brought to the datacenter." ...read
the article
related reading:-
- the SSD heresies
- "Nowhere else in computer architecture will you get so many industry
experts disagreeing on such fundamental questions."
- Can
you trust SSD market data? - "These are the 5 reasons why things go
wrong in the SSD market data collection, interpretation, modeling and analysis
business."
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| 3D XPoint - walking back
the original claims |
Editor:- December 6, 2016 -
3D
XPoint: a Guide to the Future of SCM - a recent blog on Tom's Hardware keeps alive the
ongoing story of this preannounced and over stated technology which was unveiled
by Intel and
Micron in
2015 as an
investor oriented reassuring response to competitive announcements in the
DIMM wars
market - which pointed towards a much reduced market long term role for
conventional server DRAM.
I
- like others - stated my doubts about the so-called market readiness hinted at
in the early 3DXPoint razzmatazz. And this year those early doubts have been
salami sliced by successive analysis as more technical information has
emerged or failed to emerge in support of the early bold claims.
This
new blog by Paul Alcorn
includes a nicely judged narrative and brings the story of the successive
pilot show teasers up to date. Among other things Paul says:-
"unfortunately,
the two companies recently began walking the performance claims back."
"...the
companies have yet to explain, beyond ECC tuning, why the endurance
specifications have taken such a drastic plunge."
"The
ultimate goal of the next generation of memory is to have the worlds of storage
and memories collide permanently, with just one medium emerging for both
purposes. 3D XPoint isn't suitable for that role, at least not yet, but it could
help lay the groundwork." ...read
the article
Editor's comments:- this is what I said here in
SSD news - August
2015...
"Much less easy to place within any particular
calendar year and to rate for its significance to future SSD history - however -
due to its distinctly vaporware-like aspects and stunning lack of technical
details - was the stage managed unveiling of a newly branded memory architecture
by Intel and Micron - which (like the emperor's new clothes) may or may not
become significant for enterprise applications in 2016, or 2017 or 2018 -
depending on when we can see it working and depending on what other competitors
are doing at that time."
And in
June 2016 - I
brought reader attention to a thoughtful video -
3D XPoint, reality,
opportunity, competition which looked at boundary capabilities of the
technology from a competing semiconductor point of view. | | |
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| a winter's tale of SSD
market influences - from industrial flash controllers to HPC flash arrays - set
against the tapestry of a single company which divided to face the tempests of
change |
Editor:- November 15, 2016 - Recently I spoke
to AccelStor's
President - Charles Tsai.
We talked about many changing influences in the SSD market. I thought
you might be interested to see some of the things we spoke about in a new blog
on StorageSearch.com -
a winter's
tale of SSD market influences - because it will give you an idea of how
many strategic changes in the SSD market can now influence every business
decision about what new products to create - even when those changing factors
seem at first to be only loosely connected like the flash controller,
industrial SSD, SCM, software and enterprise rackmount SSD markets.
All
those factors entwined the flow of this SSD conversation which really
started 2 years before. ...read the
article | | |
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SSD news - news
December 2016 |
NVMdurance compiles list of flash memory
forecasts
Editor:- December 31, 2016 - How big is the flash market?
One
company with a particular interest in that is NVMdurance whose
light runtime footprint
endurance
expanding firmware technology can be applied to almost any kind of
nand flash as an
alternative (or companion) to more heavy weight
controller derived
adaptation
techniques.
So if you're looking at flash market sizing data take a
look at NVMdurance's new
flash memory
forecasts page which lists headline numbers from an assortment of market
data sources.
Micron comments on 3D nand, RAM cannibalization etc
Editor:-
December 22, 2016 - A useful update on Micron (based on a
recent financial update) appears in this news story -
Micron's
Successful Quarter Reflects 3D NAND Progress by Gary Hilson on EE Times.
Among other things
Gary says... "While it would appear that Micron has a handle on its DRAM
(including its conversion to 1X) and NAND, it didn't provide specifics on its 3D
XPoint technology." ...read the article
See
also:-
Micron's
Q1 2017 - Call Transcript on Seeking
Alpha
Nimbus awarded patent for non blocking backplane technology
Editor:-
December 21, 2016 - Nimbus
Data Systems today
announced
it has been granted a patent -
9,268,501 - for the
non-blocking data fabric architecture which is used in its
petabyte scale SSD
racks.
"Conventional
HDD-centric
architectures employed by the majority of all-flash array vendors trap flash
performance behind legacy shared bus and scale-up designs," said Thomas Isakovich,
CEO and Founder. "Now patented, Nimbus Data's Parallel Memory Architecture
overcomes the limitations of generic off-the-shelf servers, capturing the full
performance potential of all-flash technology."
Editor's
comments:- Nimbus's patent relates to a non blocking
SAS-aware fabric
technology.
Other notable SSD box makers which have gone on the
record to talk about their non blocking matrix switch arrangements to reduce
latency and improved throughput include
Texas Memory
Systems (now IBM's flashsystem) and
Violin Memory (VXM).
Recadata enters rugged M.2 SSD market
Editor:-
December 20, 2016 - The M.2 SSD
form factor was originally designed as a mainstream solution for
consumer SSDs but
in recent years we've seen many new M.2 products appearing in other markets
where size matters too.
Today Recadata - which is
best known for its rugged SSDs aimed at
military systems
launched
an M.2 SSD product line - the
M700 Series M.2 SSD
series.
characterizing 4Gb MRAM
Editor:-
December 19, 2016 - The gap between the capacities offered by MRAM and
DRAM were huge until a year
ago which meant that MRAM applications engineers couldn't simply upcycle
traditional RAM roles into born again
NVDIMM style non
volatility.
MRAM was a memory which sounded interesting but only for
those with very low storage capacity applications which could tolerate a high
cost per gigabyte. And in this role MRAM has been just one of many new nvms
seeking design slots in a crowding multi-latency tiered memory market dominated
by flash.
In
this competitive context any talk of "higher capacity" chips may
change the balance of interest for design engineers between "dismiss
entirely" and "maybe keep an eye on it" for future applications.
Everspin
narrowed the gigabit gap in
April 2016 with
the shipments of 256MB ST-MRAM and the promise of Gb sampling to come later.
Now a roadmap for more broadly usable MRAM begins to sound more
credible with a
report
in Nikkei Technology
that 4GB ST-MRAM prototypes are being characterized by SK Hynix and Toshiba. ...read the
article
DSSD update from the gravity well of Dell EMC by the Register
Editor:-
December 15, 2016 - Despite having written about more than
500 acquisitions of
storage companies before the
modern era of SSDs
I always find it interesting to see what happens to SSD companies after
they get acquired
(my curiosity being understandable because over half the acquisitions which
have ever occured in
SSD history
also involved active customers of mine at the time).
After such
acquisitions we see a variety of outcomes:- some headline product lines get
retained, others get EOLed.
And sometimes it's not clear to see what happened because it can be years before
the technology and patents re-emerge in future products rather than
continuing as a single product strand.
A recent blog -
DSSD
President quits Dell EMC - by Chris Mellor at
The Register includes this
observation about the DSSD product line which was acquired by EMC in
May 2014.
Chris
says - "We have been told that there have been around a dozen DSSD sales
totalling less than $6 million. Dell EMC has spent about $1.3 billion on DSSD,
with $1 billion in the acquisition in May 2014, and there are more than 200 DSSD
employees. We understand that Dell EMC may need to decide in the next six
months whether to keep investing for growth in DSSD or to decide to view it as a
niche product and resize the DSSD team to fit that niche dimensions." ...read
the article
Violin seeks buyer in January
Editor:- December 14,
2016 - Violin Memory
today
announced
it has filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under chapter 11 of the
U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, and
is seeking to hold an auction in early January for the business.
Kevin A. DeNuccio,
Violin Memory's President and CEO said - "...Violin intends to continue
to sell solutions to customers and prospects as well as service and support
customers during this restructuring."
Corsair enters M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD market
Editor:-
December 13, 2016 - Corsair
today
announced
its entry into the M.2 SSD
market with a new PCIe Gen. 3 x4 product aimed at the
consumer upgrade
market. The
Force
MP500 is Corsair's fastest SSD and uses a
controller from
Phison.
Virtium announces 64GB very low profile industrial DDR4 RAM
Editor:-
December 13, 2016 - Rated at industrial temperatures Virtium today
announced
the imminent availability (in January) of 64GB DRAM modules - VLP RDIMM and
Mini-RDIMM - which have been developed to provide high-performance memory to
height-restricted servers.
See also:-
DRAM news
tiering between memory systems layers - blog by Enmotus
Editor:-
December 8, 2016 - A new blog -
Flash
Tiering: the Future of Hyper Converged - by Adam Zagorski,
Marketing at Enmotus
- discusses how hyper-converged infrastructure has evolved along with the
associated impacts from data path latency and CPU overhead. Among other things
Adam notes that...
"Very
soon we'll have HCI clusters with several tiers of storage. In-memory databases,
NVDIMM memory extensions and NVRamdisks, primary NVMe ultrafast SSD storage and
secondary bulk storage (initially HDD but giving way beginning in 2017 to SSDs)
will all be shareable across nodes. Auto-tiering needs a good auto-tiering
approach to be efficient, or else the overhead will eat up performance."
...read
the article
See also:-
SSD ASAPs
(Auto-tuning SSD Accelerated Pools of storage)
Nantero has amassed over $110 million funding for NRAM
Editor:-
December 8, 2016 - Nantero
today
announced
the closing of an over $21 million financing round bringing the total
invested in the company to over $110 million.
Nantero currently has
more than a dozen partners and customers in the consumer electronics, enterprise
systems, and semiconductor industries actively working on NRAM. The new funding
will enable the company to support these partners in bringing multiple products
into the market, while also enabling new customers to begin development.
A
later blog -
NRAM
set to spark a 'holy war' among memory technologies (January 12, 2017 on
ComputerWorld) discusses the 16
years history of NRAM and quotes a
report
from BCC which said that NRAM now
has the potential for mass customization.
Primary Data contributes enhancements to Parallel NFS
Editor:-
December 7, 2016 - Primary
Data today
announced
that its open standards Parallel NFS (pNFS) contributions developed to
seamlessly orchestrate data across different types of storage have been accepted
into the NFS 4.2 standard.
Among
other
things the company's contributions to NFS 4.2 include enhancements to the
pNFS Flex File layout to allow clients to provide statistics on how data is
being used, and the performance provided by the storage resources serving the
data.
NVMe and the FlashSystem 900?
Editor:- December 7,
2016 - NVMe was one of the
big
SSD ideas of the year which was mentioned by several contributors.
Hold
onto that thought.
"The only thing better than an improved
protocol like NVMe, is no protocol" - says Woody Hutsell,
Technologist, Evangelist - IBM in his new blog -
Stop
waiting on NVMe all flash arrays.
Among other things Woody says -
"There is no storage protocol inside the IBM FlashSystem 900. Once the
data hits the interface controller it ceases to be SCSI or PCI or NVMe. The
only thing better than an improved protocol like NVMe, is no protocol. The
FlashSystem 900, like many prior generations of FlashSystem solutions treats the
flash inside the system like memory. The result is unmatched latency
characteristics." ...read
the article
Latency was the central theme of Woody's
SSD bookmarks for
StorageSearch.com readers earlier this year too.
Woody has been
extolling the virtues of low latency enterprise SSD storage to me and my
readers for over 15 years.
I always relax when reading Woody's
writings about solid state storage as I can be secure in the knowledge that
everything he says is reliable.
U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs uses RAID Inc. in 5PB SDS
Editor:-
December 7, 2016 - A customer news story from RAID Inc. -
Department
of Veterans Affairs Selects RAID Inc. for Multi-Petabyte Microsoft Storage
Spaces Deployment
- includes the useful ratio metric that "400TB of flash-accelerated
hot tier storage" were used to support 5PB of cold tier data in an
InfiniBand attached
fault tolerant array which supports over 460,000 devices in more than 280
sites.
WDC samples its fastest ever SAS and NVMe SSDs
Editor:-
December 6, 2016 - Western
Digital today
announced
it is sampling faster new models in its range of enterprise SSDs.
WDC says that these are the fastest NVMe PCIe
SSDs and SAS SSDs which they have offered to date.
Fujitsu says in-memory dedupe before writes to flash can double
best write speed
Editor:-
December 5, 2016 - Fujitsu
today
announced
the development of a high-speed in-memory data deduplication technology for
use in all-flash arrays. The method decides if there is enough time to
search for duplicates in the flash array while retaining the data in cache
(low load condition). If so then writes to the flash array are only performed
after dedupe. Fujitsu says that for some workloads where there are many
duplications such as virtual desktops this can improve the user experience.
See also:-
inline
dedupe. | |
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| What happened before?
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| seeking the inner SSD
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| "Tier 0" is not a
term I've ever knowingly used in editorial - which you may find strange for a
storage publication which talks so much about SSDs and storage architecture. |
| Why I Tire of "Tier
Zero Storage" | | |
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| in-situ SSD company enters
Top 5 SSD Companies List in Q3 2016 |
| Editor:- November 24, 2016 - NxGn achieved its highest
ever ranking in the new
Q3 2016 edition of
the Top SSD Companies
published today. | | |
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| I think it's not too strong
to say that the enterprise PCIe SSD market (as we once knew it) has exploded and
fragmented into many different directions. |
| what's changed in enterprise
PCIe SSD? | | |
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