see also:-
RunCore
- editor mentions on StorageSearch.com
Who's who in SSD? - by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor
January 2012 - RunCore is 1 of more than 50
companies in the
military SSD market,
1 of more than 50 companies in the industrial SSD market,
1 of over 40 companies in the
PCIe SSD market, 1
of countless companies in the
notebook SSD
market and 1 of more than 100 companies in the
2.5" SSD market.
RunCore
has also had frequent appearances in the
Top SSD Companies List.
RunCore
is one of the world's fastest growing SSD companies. It was recently listed in
the
2011
Deloitte Technology Fast 50 China List (pdf) - with a revenue growth rate of
over 700%.
Another unusual thing about RunCore - compared to SSD
companies founded in the US - is that the company is involved in both the
military and consumer markets. This is a difficult act to pull off successfully
- because the design and manufacturing processes for military SSDs are an order
of magnitude more complex and stringent than those for consumer SSDs - where to
put it bluntly - the more things you leave out of the design and testing - the
more likely you are to get the product to market at a low enough price to be
competitive. These 2 distinct markets involve product management pulls in
opposite directions.
One of the ways in which RunCore has tried to
differentiate its consumer SSDs in recent years - is to incorporate design
elements from the military and industrial side to create in effect innovative
added value consumer SSDs.
A new example - which will be shown this
coming week at the Consumer
Electronics Show (booth 37015) is the
Xapear SSD -
aimed at the mobile phone market - which protects data regions in the SSD by
means of an RFID tag - which can also be used to control
fast erase.
A
more conventional consumer product - also due to be shown at the show - is a 7mm
high 2.5" SATA SSD for ultrabooks - with 540/500 MB/s R/W speeds.
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. |
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| "In this quarter
RunCore announced it is building the biggest SSD factory in China to
enable the company to cope with the increasing international demand for its
products..." |
| ...Editor:- from the
2011 Q edition of
the Top SSD Companies. | | |
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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 - which barely rates a mention in most SSD datasheets and press releases
- 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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| Why isn't "rugged"
good enough for MIL? |
The need for fast and
secure data erase - in which vital parts of a flash SSD or its data are
destroyed in seconds - has always been a requirement in military projects.
 Although
many industrial SSD
vendors offer products with extended "rugged" operating
environment capabilities - and even notebooks SSDs come with encryption -
it's the availability of fast destructive data purge which differentiates
"truly secure"
SSDs which can be deployed in sensitive applications. Which vendors make
these SSDs? How do they work? And what are the characteristics and limitations
of the various methods used? Click on the link above to find out more in my
special article / directoryabout fast purge SSDs. | | |
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| Are MLC SSDs Safe
in Enterprise Apps? |
Are MLC SSDs Safe? - is a very
popular article which looks at the risks posed by MLC Nand Flash SSDs which
- having hatched from their breeeding ground as
chip modules in
cellphones - have in the past 4 years morphed and crept into many (but
not all) enterprise SSDs.
In a
notebook
(where you aren't exactly expecting a 5 nines uptime quality data
experience) MLC SSDs can be a good thing from the
reliability and
cost point of view.
But how about in the
datacenter?
Some leading vendors support MLC in enterprise and
industrial grade
SSDs - others don't. Ever wondered why? There's a lot more to the MLC vs SLC
in SSDs debate than simply endurance. |
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This classic article explains the technical
differences. It also includes recent updates and comments from industry leaders
to show you why in some cases MLC is a viable solution - but in other cases
it's still not. (No matter how clever the
controller.) ...read the article | | | |
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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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