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Samsung Electronics

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies with 2012 consolidated sales of US$247 billion.
.... Samsung logo - click for more info

See also:- Samsung - editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com, Samsung's SSD page
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Who's who in SSD? - by Zsolt Kerekes, editor - February 2013

Samsung was the first multi-billion dollar revenue company to recognize the strategic importance of SSDs and in 2005 publicly declared its ambition to become the world's largest supplier of SSDs.

But for the next 5 years (2005 to 2010 Samsung's SSD product were merely "me-too" - lagging severely behind in performance and intended for use in notebook PCs which had originally been designed for hard drives. Samsung wasn't the only large scale corporate to under perform with its early SSDs.

Samsung was't alone in this respect.

StorageSearch.com believes that a common factor which led Samsung, Intel, Seagate and EMC to misjudge the needs of SSD users for many years - was that their corporate management at all levels didn't understand SSDs - due to preconceived notions that we sum up as the distorting market lenses of "SSDs are similar to". This was coupled with having to make product decisions in a fast changing disruptive market when many traditional sources of market data were unhelpful in offering any better insights as to what was going on - or were poorly positioned to deliver reliable SSD market.

Despite those years of thrashing around in the SSD market and apparently getting nowhere - lessons were being learned.

Samsung improved its SSD offerings in December 2010 - when the company started sampling its first credible 2.5" SSDs for use in enterprise SATA arrays.

And more recently - in 2012 - Samsung demonstrated that it could leverage its memory technologies within leading edge tiny embedded SSDs which were aimed at vertical markets which Samsung well understood - like phones and tablets.

The SSD market is complicated and no single company has the talent to develop leading IP for more than a small fraction of SSD segments. Therefore to satisfy its strategic ambitions and to make the transitions from being a leading memory memory maker in an HDD world to a leading SSD company in an SSD storage world - the only realistic business option for Samsung is be acquire SSD companies.

This is a strategy it started in 2008 when it tried to acquire SanDisk (but failed).

Realistically Samsung needs to buy at least 5 SSD companies.
  1. a high IOPS flash SSD specialist for the enterprise acceleration market - PCIe SSDs
  2. a high reliability medium perfomance flash SSD specialist for the bulk storage / cloud market
  3. a TLC specialist with adaptive R/W DSP for the phone and consumer markets (that was the thinking behind trying to buy SanDisk)
  4. a RAM SSD systems maker or RAM SSD DIMM module enabling IP company
  5. an SSD software company - such as the company's acquisition in 2012 of NVELO
  6. and maybe an extra one for luck - just in case one of the others goes wrong - or still leaves big gaps.
In a couple more years there will be 2x as many SSD companies in the market as there are in 2012. There will be more choice and the question of who to buy and why will become clearer.

Samsung has invested in a lot of SSD companies - and that's another way Samsung can get an idea of where the hot SSD growth prospects are.

If you're looking seriously at Samsung SSDs then you can find alternative competing manufacturers in these directories too:- 1.8" SSDs, 2.5" SSDs, 3.5" SSDs, SATA SSDs, notebook SSDs.
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Recent Samsung SSD milestones from SSD Market History

In August 2009 - Samsung Electronics announced it is targeting the PC gaming industry with its 256GB SSD. This seems to confirm the consumer-led focus of the company's business strategy. Earlier StorageSearch.com had said it doesn't think Samsung's SSD product marketing is good enough to achieve success in the enterprise server market.

In September 2009 - Samsung announced that HP was offering its SSDs as an option in ProLiant servers.

Also in September 2009 - Samsung announced it has begun producing 512Mb PRAM memory. PRAM combines the speed of RAM for processing functions with the non-volatile characteristics of flash memory for storage. This has been a Problematic RAM technology. Samsung originally announced a working prototype of the 512Mb PRAM 3 years earlier - in September 2006.

In October 2009 - Samsung announced it has invested in Fusion-io.

Iin January 2010 - Rambus and Samsung announced that they have agreed a $900 million settlement for all claims between them - and they have agreed a perpetual fully paid-up license to certain DRAM products.

In March 2010 - a video from Samsung was featured in a new directory of SSD videos - here on StorageSearch.com

In April 2010 - Samsung dropped out of StorageSearch.com's top 10 SSD oems list - and got its lowest ever ranking.

June 2010 - to save power in notebooks Samsung announced imminent volume production of a 512GB SATA SSD - the 1st to use toggle-mode DDR NAND which enables sequential R/W speeds upto 250MB/s and 220MB/s respectively while using about half the power of a regular flash SSD of the same capacity.

In August 2010 - Samsung and Seagate announced they will jointly develop SSD controller technologies to operate with Samsung's 30nm-class MLC NAND. The jointly developed controller will be used in Seagate's enterprise-class SSDs.

In October 2010 - Samsung said it is shipping 200GB 3.5" SATA SLC SSDs to EMC. Sequential R/W speeds are 260MB/s and 245MB/s respectively. R/W IOPS are 47,000 and 29,000. The new Samsung SSDs have an 'end-to-end data integrity' function and encryption.

In December 2010 - Samsung announced it is sampling 400GB 2.5" SATA MLC SSDs for use as the primary storage in enterprise storage systems (instead of hard drives). The new SSDs can process random read commands at 43,000 IOPS and random writes at 11,000 IOPS. In addition, they have an 'end-to-end data protection' function with advanced data encryption algorithm to assure reliability and security for the drive.

In April 2011 - Samsung announced it is exiting the hard disk market. Seagate has agreed to acquire Samsung's HDD assets for $1.375 billion.

In August 2011 - Samsung acquired Grandis - an nv RAM company which has been developing spin transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM).

In January 2012 - Samsung entered the fast purge SSD market - which currently numbers about 25 companies. The company says that models of its PM810 2.5" SATA SSD family with its Crypto Erase technology deletes targeted data in a couple of seconds regardless of the overall volume of data or the capacity of the SSD. These models have been validated for compliance to NIST FIPS 140-2

In October 2012 - Samsung entered the dual port SAS SSD market.

In November 2012 - Samsung began production of 64GB eMMC SSDs which use 10nm flash geometry. Aimed at the phone and tablet market - R/W IOPS performance is 5,000 and 2,000 respectively. R/W throughput is 260MB/s and 50MB/s.

In December 2012 - Samsung acquired NVELO - an SSD software company - with caching products for the notebook SSD market.
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SSD Pricing - where does all the money go?
SSDs are among the most expensive computer hardware products you will ever buy.

Understanding the factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating process...
Clarifying SSD Pricing - where does all the money go? - click to read the article ...not made any easier when market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more than 100x to 1! Why is that? ...read the article
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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.
image shows Megabyte's hot air balloon - click to read the article SSD power down architectures and acharacteristics If you thought endurance was the end of the SSD reliability story - think again. ...read the article

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let's hear it again for Samsung's 10nm TLC
Editor:- April 10, 2013 - the difference between "production" and "mass production" wouldn't normally be enough to rate a 2nd mention on my SSD news page - even after an interval of 5 months by which time most editors will have forgotten the earlier news instance.

But a worthy exception to this little editorial rule of mine is Samsung's 10nm, x3 MLC, 128Gb nand flash which the company reannounced today.

Which way round did the transition go?

That would be a valid question if you knew nothing at all about the dynamics of the SSD market today.

And at some time in the distant future the flash fab taps may indeed be turning down the flow.

But just to reassure you - in case you have any doubt - it was the transition from "production" to "mass production" which the company noted today. No need to change the memory investment portfolio just yet.
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Samsung allocates $1 billion to clarify forward visibility in big data
Editor:- February 4, 2013 - Samsung today announced it has allocated over $1 billion to invest in big data related business ventures.

Editor's comments:- to you and me - $1 billion sounds like a lot of money - but for Samsung? - really it's small change.

From my past conversations with people in the company who think about acquisitions and strategic stuff - I'm left with the impression of a company which invests a lot of talent - trying to understand what's going on out there and - to analyze what macro market factors and changes will impact its semiconductor fabs.

Samsung was actually the first multi-billion dollar scale company to publicly recognize the strategic importance of the SSD market (2005). But replacing past memory business with new SSD business for many years was a problem on the scale of bailing out water from the Titanic with bathtub size pots.

Like other big interested entities - Samsung could do little more than satisfice its engagements in SSD while waiting for the whole SSD market to get bigger, and the trends to get clearer.

Along the way it has invested in some SSD IP companies - such as Fusion-io, acquired others like NVELO, and tried but failed to acquire SanDisk (2008).

Rather than simply being seen as traditional return on investments - this type of activity by Samsung and other semico companies like Intel - is a way of ensuring strategic forward visibility into new seedlings in the ecosystems which surround their core businesses.
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Samsung acquires NVELO
Editor:- December 14, 2012 - Samsung today announced that it has acquired NVELO whose SSD ASAPs (caching) technology is designed for the notebook SSD market.

SSD software sells more SSDs. And that idea has been behind many of the SSD company acquisitions in the past year.
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Samsung does fast phone 64GB SSDs on 10nm
Editor:- November 15, 2012 - Samsung today announced they've started production of 64GB eMMC SSDs which use 10nm flash geometry.

Aimed at the phone and tablet market - R/W IOPS performance is 5,000 and 2,000 respectively. R/W throughput is 260MB/s and 50MB/s.

Editor's comments:- this shows that when Samsung sees a huge enough market opportunity for a specific range of SSDs their engineers are clever enough to design and make it. See also:- tiny SSDs
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Samsung enters dual port SAS SSD market
Editor:- October 31, 2012 - Samsung today announced its belated entry into the serious end of the SAS SSD market with the launch of its 1st dual port SAS SSD - the SM1625 (2Xnm flash) has upto 800GB capacity and upto 101,000 / 23,000 R/W IOPS (when using both ports. It also includes sudden power loss data protection.

Samsung also launched today new models of fast-enough SATA SSDs - the SM843 - with endurance rated at 1064TBW (terabytes written) - which doesn't sound that great to me - but is (according to their own press release) 17x better than what they had before.

"Samsung will aggressively produce its new line-up of SSDs beginning this month to accelerate SSDs' move into not only the server but also the storage marketplace, as we continue to affirm our leadership in the SSD market." said Myungho Kim VP of SSD marketing at Samsung.

Editor's comments:- if you compare this with the recent 19nm announcement from SMART - you can see what the advantages are of having better controller technology.

SMART is able to use smaller geometry flash memory while still delivering superior endurance. Nevertheless the anticipated growth in adoption of SAS SSDs will easily sustain the growth aspirations of most of the 20 or so companies who actually make them.
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