RunCore is now V&G V&G
(formerly known internationally as RunCore) is headquartered in Shanghai,
China. The company has been designing and manufacturing SSDs for industrial and
military markets since 2007. |
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SSD customization
who's who in the SSD
market in China?
this is
not your grandfather's industrial SSD market
2017 - adding new notes
to the music of memory tiering
miscellaneous
consequences of the 2017 memory shortages |
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| what were
the big SSD changes for V&G in 2016? | |
by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - StorageSearch.com
- September 22, 2016
For journalists and
analysts it can be
hard peering in from the outside trying to evaluate the detailed strengths of
SSD companies who do a lot of
custom business
especially when some of those products have
military applications.
So
when I asked Limuel
Yap VP of Global Business Operations - V&G - what were the big SSD changes
for V&G in 2016? - I was glad to get any reply.
Without going into
detail Limuel indicated that many of V&G's efforts in 2016 (upto now)
have been in enhancing previously designed and conceptualized products.
Commenting
on the business ambitions of V&G Limuel said this.
"We
want to be one of the innovators of high technology solid state storage that
will support the rugged and embedded computing market. Since 2012, we already
visualized that this concept will be put into reality come 2015 or 2016. With
our vast knowledge in NAND Flash-based storage and experience in rugged and
embedded-computing industry, we established V&G to bring these
revolutionary products into this target market."
When it comes to
specific SSD products which the company is proud to have brought to market in
the past year (there are too many for me to repeat here) but among the list
Limuel mentioned were these...
"Big storage VPX, XMC and Compact
PCIe". He also said "We are only the supplier offering 8TB 3U VPX
and 3U XMC."
What did other SSD companies say about 2016? -
...click
here to read more |
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RunCore SSD - what's the picture now?
by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - StorageSearch.com - March 18, 2015
RunCore first
appeared on the pages of StorageSearch.com in 2008. At that time there were only
100 companies in the SSD market so it was easy for me to talk to them all.
Nowadays I'm more picky - and ration my time according to priorities
which will I think will work best for my readers. Priorites set by several
factors such as future trends in the market, popularity of articles and (most
important of all) rankings in the visible and private regions of the
Top SSD Companies List.
I hadn't heard from RunCore for a while so when Limuel Yap VP
of Global Business Operations contacted me this month - I used the opportunity
to refresh my understanding of how and where RunCore sees its strengths in
the SSD market now.
Limuel said its strategic strengths were related to
RunCore's strong technical focus and customer history.
RunCore
has successfully adapted to being an important SSD supplier in niche
applications despite there being so many other competitors in the wider
market.
When I asked him to rank the relative importance of all the
markets which RunCore was engaged in - Limuel said - "Right now, Runcore
has gained more business in Embedded, Medical and Military markets."
And he gave me examples of some of the strongest products they had in each of
those markets.
I wasn't surprised to hear that in the
military SSD market -
Runcore's
secure erase, data encryption and physical destruction 2.5" SATA II SSD
has been doing well. (That's a similar story to other vendors in this market.)
In
smaller form factors - Runcore's
rSSD (one-chip SSD) and miniDOM
variants (launched in May
2012) have had some big design wins with good long term prospects in
embedded applications.
And in medical markets - RunCore is continuing to see future
demand for reliable PATA
SSDs which have write protect and secure erase functions. (Other
industrial SSD
companies who also supply that option include
Cactus and
Virtium.) |
|
Who's who in SSD? - by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - June 2013
RunCore - ranked #21 in the
Top SSD Companies List
in Q4 2013 - is
the largest maker and supplier of SSDs in China and in past years has been one
of the world's fastest growing SSD companies.
It was listed in the
2011
Deloitte Technology Fast 50 China List (pdf) - with a revenue growth rate of
over 700%.
RunCore's SSD pedigree started out designing fast military
SSDs. The company developed experience in designing
secure and
reliable SSDs
using its own SSD IP. In recent years the company has also used
SSD controllers from
other companies, including SandForce (LSI) and more recently
BiTMICRO.
RunCore
offers products in a broad range of markets including:-
military SSDs,
industrial SSDs,
PCIe SSDs,
notebook SSDs
market,
2.5" SSDs and
SSDs on a chip.
For
more info about RunCore take a look at the links above and
RunCore
editor mentions on StorageSearch.com
I currently talk to more
than 300 makers of SSDs and another 100 or so companies which are
closely enmeshed around the SSD ecosphere - which are all profiled here on
the mouse site.
I learn about new SSD companies every day, including
many in stealth mode. If you're interested in the growing
big picture of
the SSD market canvass - StorageSearch will help you along the way. Many
SSD company CEOs read our site too - and say they value our thought leading SSD
content - even when we say something that's not always comfortable to hear. I
hope you'll find it it useful too. |
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In
December 2008
-
RunCore announced
1.8" PATA SSDs aimed
at the notebook upgrade market. Available with capacity upto 128GB (retail
price $389.99 ) an inbuilt slave
USB port enables users to
easily clone their internal hard
drive using Acronis
True Image (or similar) software. The SSD can then be installed in the notebook
typically giving a 4x speedup. RunCore also launched its Hyper Speed - a
2.5"
SATA SSD with 256GB
with RW speeds of 230MB/s and 150MB/s respectively priced under $700
.In
February 2009
- RunCore launched a
mini PCI-e form factor, SATA interface compatible flash SSD with 16GB to 128GB
capacity. R/W speeds are 125MB/s and 90MB/s respectively.
In
May 2009
- RunCore's Pro IV 2.5"
MLC SSDs was reviewed in an
article
in TweakTown.com - which concluded...
"All things
considered, the RunCore Pro IV is a hell of a drive that is able to cross over
into several market segments; consumer, prosumer and enterprise. The Pro IV is
fast, one of the fastest on the market, but that speed comes at a cost and that
is really where our only issue sits."
In July 2009 -
RunCore was listed #5
in the 9th quarterly edition of the -
Top 10 SSD Companies.
(Same as before.)
In November 2009 -
RunCore announced
availability of the Runcore Pro IV Light mini-SATA 50mm PCI-e SSD - a
regular flash SSD
design and small form factor - which is designed to accelerate
netbooks.
Capacity options include:- 16GB (32MB cache), 32GB and 64GB (64MB cache) with
smaller capacity drives for oems available on request. Sustained R/W speeds
are 125MB/s and 80MB/s. Random R/W speeds (4K blocks) are 18MB/s read and 5
MB/s respectively. RunCore says it's compatible with all major OSes and
installs easily via its USB
slave port.
Mobile computing blogger
JKKmobile.com has created many
videos about upgrading notebook PCs with SSDs -
here's
an example with an earlier model from RunCore.
In January
2010 -
RunCore started
shipments of the 1st SSDs aimed at the
PXI Express market (a standard
which brings PCIe performance and functionality into the robust modular form
factor popular in automated instrumentation
test systems). RunCore's
3U
CPCIe\PXIe SSD card provides upto 768GB
MLC or 384GB SLC
capacity and has sustained R/W speeds upto 400MB/s. Available with industrial
operating temperature range and MIL-STD-810F processing, the module provides a
fast purge rate of
5GB/s.
Also in January 2010 - a benchmark
review
article in TweakTown.com concluded that RunCore's upcoming Pro V
2.5" SSD - which
uses SandForce's
SF-1500
SoC is the fastest SATA
2 SSD they have tested.
In March 2010 -
RunCore unveiled a new
security feature for a consumer notebook SSD at
CeBIT 2010. If your notebook is stolen
you send a (cell-phone) text message to it - and it destroys the data. There's
a
video
interview of RunCore's SSDs done by hexus tv here. It's very boring at the
start - and I was just about to turn it off (even though RunCore is a customer
of mine) - when I started to hear a lot of very significant stuff about their
rugged and military technology and how some of that expertise was trickling
down into consumer
SSDs - like a waterproof SSD.
In April 2010 -
RunCore's Pro-V SSD
(which uses a SandForce
SF1200 SoC) was reviewed in an article in
BenchmarkReviews.com.
Their
conclusion
- "The 200GB RunCore Pro-V SSD delivered 286/277 MBps peak read and writes
speeds using ATTO Disk Benchmark and trailed by 253/248 MBps in Everest, making
this one the fastest SATA-3GBps MLC SSDs we've tested."
In May 2010 -
RunCore started
sampling 2.5"
and 3.5"
SAS flash SSDs for the
enterprise server market. The Kylin II product line, available with
MLC, EMLC or SLC
flash, has R/W speeds upto 270MB/s and 260MB/s respectively, R/W
IOPS of
30,000 and 25,000, upto 400GB capacity and 3 years warranty.
In September 2010
- RunCore
announced significant price reductions on its
ProV
2.5" SATA SSDs - which have SandForce's SF1200
controllers inside.
In December
2010 -
RunCore unveiled a
3.5" SATA 3 flash SSD with 1TB capacity. Internally the SSD includes 2
drives, each with its own
SandForce 1200 controller,
which can be configured as separate drives or in a simple RAID 0 configuration.
The product will be demonstrated at CeBIT
in March 2011.
In July 2011 -
RunCore has opened its
first international sales office outside its its original roots in China.
The new office - which will handle sales and distribution is in San Jose,
California. The company also
launched a
6Gbps mSATA SSD based on the
SandForce SF-2281
controller - with R/W rates upto 550 MB/s and 470 MB/s respectively and upto
120GB capacity.
In August 2011 -
RunCore
announced it
is preparing to build the biggest SSD factory in China to enable the company to
cope with the increasing international demand for its products. The new factory
and test facility - based in Jinzhou Development Zone in Changsha city - is
expected to be complete in early 2012.
In September 2011
-
RunCore started
sampling a low power SATA SSD chip - in a BGA micro-chip package for embedded
apps like mobile phones and tablet PCs. The rSSD T100 will be available in
industrial
temperature versions - and includes SMART commands to monitor the life
expectancy of the product.
In October 2011 -
SSD
Flash Drive Reviews published initial results of Windows 7 benchmark
tests for RunCore's
Pro V 2.5"
SATA III SSD.
In November 2011 -
RunCore
announced it
has been ranked #14 in the new Deloitte
Technology Fast 50 China Program of 2011 - which ranks companies based on
revenue growth over the past 3 years.
In January 2012 -
RunCore announced it is
shipping a 7mm
high, Sandforce-based,
2.5" SATA 3 SSD for the high performance Ultrabook market.
In
May 2012
- RunCore
offered its SATA SSD on a chip - the
rSSD - on
3 different
plug-in MiniDOMs.
In January 2013 -
RunCore was the 1st
external company to announce a
BiTMICRO OnBoard SSD
products - the Kylin III MAX family (fast
PCIe SSDs).
In
March 2013
-
RunCore announced
it has closed $10 million in Series B funding led by OFC. |
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| RunCore SSDs and
StorageSearch.com |
memories from
SSD market
history
Jack
Wu (who at that time was) CMO of RunCore
first contacted me about getting a listing for their SSDs here on
StorageSearch.com in August 2008.
2008 was
another one of those exciting years in the SSD market where it seemed that
anything was possible. And by the end of that year - the number of oems actively
marketing SSDs and listed on this site passed 100 companies.
Despite
the number of competitors in the market - enough of our readers understood the
merits of what they were doing to propel the company into the
Top 10 SSD Companies
List in Q1 2009.
As there was so much affinity with our readers'
interests and RunCore's SSDs - RunCore began advertising here 6 months after
we published those results. By that time (Q3 2009) we had already been
running SSD ads here for 10 years - so it was a safe choice for any seriously
minded SSD company.
Below is an example of a RunCore banner ad which
ran here in 2010.
In all we ran 9 different designs of SSD banner
ads and about 5 other types of SSD ads here during 2009 to 2012 which were seen
by over 1 million of our SSD readers. |
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| V&G
releases Kylin compatible rugged VPX SSDs |
| Editor:- May 10, 2017 - If rugged 6U SSD cards
for military radar and flight recorder applications is your thing then you
may be interested in 2 new products released by V&G |
 6U SRIO VPX (pdf)
8TB MLC / 4TB SLC with 2 lanes of RapidIO host interface, approx 3GB/s
sequential R/W, fast secure erase. |
 6U PCIe VPX (pdf)
16TB MLC / 8TB SLC with PCIe 3 x 8 host interface, upto 5GB/s read, 4GB/s write,
and random R/W IOPS (4K) 200K / 160K respectively. |
Other OSes supported include VxWorks, Solaris,
Linux etc.
Editor's comments:- for a few years now I've had
interesting conversations with Limuel Yap , VP - Global
Business Operations - V&G about the various aspects of the
custom SSD market
and especially the ways in which SSD companies which have a strong
focus
on the military market create product lines which can be just as interesting as
the standard products for publicly known applications that we read so much about
on the web.
The ingenuity and problem solving of these companies
largely remains unknown for good reasons.
Following up on the new
products above Limuel told me this.
"Developing these products
will separate us from other SSD suppliers that only have the standard SSD. This
marks down our capabilities to offer all kinds of memory storage most specially
for military and data recorders users." | | |
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is remanence in
NVDIMMs a new risk factor?
EOL and the unknown original "standard
SSD" datasheet
why's
it so hard to compile a simple list of military SSD companies? |
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| V&G'snew
MIL-STD-461E/F EMI filtered NAS JBOD SSD |
Editor:- August 24, 2016 - I found it
interesting to see the level of detail available in the datasheet for a new
rugged 8TB NAS JBOD SSD box (8.66 in (L) x 7.61 in (W) x 4.65 in (H)) from V&G because often
such vital info is missing unless you sign up to get it. Among other things -
the RVAS3400
(pdf) has these features and options:-
 256-bit
AES encryption utilizing NIST, CSE, and FIPS140-2 certified encryption chips.
Encryption keys can be loaded over ethernet or stored on the system's
controller. The controller has a TPM security device for secure storage of the
encryption keys.
The RVAS3400 supports zeroization (SSD erase) procedures,
meeting both DOD NISPOM 5220.22 and NSA/CSS 9-12 specifications.
The
time to erase using ATA Secure Erase is approximately 5 seconds, using NSA Erase
it is approximately 16 minutes, and using DOD Erase it is approximately 48
minutes. (Erase times do not vary based on the amount of storage.)
- Internal holdup:- 100ms @ 70W.
- Integrated support for MIL-STD-704 28 VDC.
- Weight:- less than 12 lbs.
See also:-
military SSDs,
the business of SSD
customization | | |
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| RunCore brand completes
transitions to V&G |
Editor:- April 2, 2016 - Last year the branding
picture for RunCore
was confusing because they were using different brand names for the company in
different geographical regions - with upto 3 names being used concurrently on
different web sites.
The situation has now clarified with the
announcement
that the definitive name from April 1 is V&G (which in English you can think
of as "Vision and Goal" and in Chinese is Wei Gu.
V&G
is in effect the new name for RunCore. The company's leadership is the same as
before - the CEO is Jack
Wu who founded RunCore in 2007. And the company says the SSD product
lines are 100% technically identical - apart from the change in branding. | | |
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| As military requirements
are so well defined it should be easy to compile a simple no-frills list of
military SSD companies right? |
| not
so simple | | |
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| RunCore's new SSD HQ |
| Editor:- June 24, 2013 - RunCore today
announced it has
completed the first phase of building its new headquarters and SSD
manufacturing complex in Hunan province, China which by the end of this year
will have the capacity to produce 1 million SSDs / month. |
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| RunCore closes $10 million
funding round |
Editor:- March 29, 2013 - RunCore today
announced it
has closed $10 million in Series B funding led by OFC (Oriental Fortune
Capital).
"The global solid state storage market is booming, so
we believe that now is the best time to take on board strategic investors to
more rapidly achieve our globalization plans" said Jack Wu, CEO -
RunCore. | | |
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Where are we now
with SSD software?
How fast can your SSD
run backwards?
Enterprise
SSDs - the Survive and Thrive Guide
Efficiency - making the
same SSD using less flash |
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| the 3 fastest flash
PCIe SSDs - list / lists |
Are you tied up in
knots trying to shortlist flash SSD accelerators ranked according to
published comparative benchmarks?
You know the sort of thing I mean -
where a magazine compares 10 SSDs or a blogger compares 2 SSDs against each
other. It would be nice to have a shortlist so that you don't have to waste too
much of your own valuable time testing unsuitable candidates wouldn't it?
StorageSearch's long running
fastest SSDs directory
typically indicates 1 main product in each form factor category but those
examples may not be compatible with your own ecosystem.
If so a
new article -
the 3 fastest PCIe
SSDs list (or is it really lists?) may help you cut that Gordian
knot. Hmm... you may be thinking that StorageSearch's editor never gives easy
answers to SSD questions if more complicated ones are available.
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But in this case you'd be
wrong. (I didn't say you'd like the answers, though.) ...read the article | | | |
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the consumer SSDs guide
Notebook SSDs
overview
What's the best PC
/ notebook SSD?
Data recovery prospects
and services for SSDs |
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| Surviving SSD
sudden power loss |
Why should you care
what happens in an SSD when the power goes down?
This important design
feature has a strong impact on
SSD data integrity
and operational
reliability.
This article will help you understand why some
SSDs which (work perfectly well in one type of application) might fail in
others... even when the changes in the operational environment appear to be
negligible. |
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