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Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in
semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence
technologies with 2008 consolidated sales of US$96 billion. Employing
approximately 164,600 people in 179 offices in 61 countries, the company
consists of four main business units: Digital Media Business, LCD Business,
Semiconductor Business, and Telecommunication Business. Recognized as one of the
fastest growing global brands, Samsung Electronics is a leading producer of
digital TVs, memory chips, mobile phones and TFT-LCDs. For more information,
please visit www.samsung.com
see also:-
Samsung
- editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com
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Editor's comments:-
re Samsung and SSDs
One of the world's top 10 storage
companies by revenue - Samsung stated its aim as long ago as
2005 -
to become the world's largest supplier of
flash SSDs. That
made Samsung the first storage company (of its size) to recognize the
strategic importance of SSDs.
But there was a huge gap between
Samsung's stated aspiration and its (then) available SSD IP and marketing
competence which the company had to fix. Samsung's first few generations of
SSDs were such slow performers that this encouraged many small start ups to
enter the market and show how it could be done better. But Samsung didn't give
up. Gradually its SSD products got closer to the best in class.
Unlike
most other SSD manufacturers -
Samsung makes its own
flash memory. In earlier
phases of the SSD market that would have given it a big competitive advantage
- because memory was a large part of the cost of an SSD. But in today's markets
- and particularly in the high end server market - the
SSD controller plays a
much more significant part in the SSD market selling price equation.
At the top end - this can count for more than the sum of the flash
memory in the product. Samsung has been facing the risk that it could be
relegated to role of supplying SSDs in low margin consumer markets (where the
controller design is easier) or as a commodity supplier to high value server SSD
makers. That's why it has been trying to forge closer links with other SSD
companies who really understand the server markets better than it does. And also
why it tried to acquire SanDisk
in 2008. Popular restaurants make more money than farmers.
Recent
Samsung SSD milestones from
SSD Market
History
In January 2009 -
Samsung announced
details of a new 100GB 2.5" SLC flash SSD that will ship this quarter. For
the 1st time Samsung disclosed IOPS data - 25k random read IOPS and 6k write
IOPS. R/W throughput is 230MB/s and 180MB/s respectively.
In April
2009 - Samsung returned to its highest ranking position in the 8th
quarterly edition of the -
Top 10 SSD Companies.
In
June 2009 - Samsung
announced it is sampling a SATA mini-card SSD for use in the expanding
netbook
marketplace with these key parameters:-
- footprint:- 30mm by 51mm by 3.75mm
- weight:- 8.5g
- capacity options:- 16GB, 32GB and 64GB
- R/W speeds:- 200MB/s and 100MB/s respectively
- power:- 0.3W
"The market is beginning to embrace a
smaller SSD for the
nascent netbook sector," said Jim Elliott, vp, memory marketing, Samsung
Semiconductor.
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. |
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| the Problem with
Write IOPS - in flash SSDs |
Repeating write
operations in some apps
and some flash SSDs can take orders of
magnitude longer than predicted
by IOPS
benchmarks and latency specs.
Time goes by - in the "play
it again Sam"
scene intrinsic to databases - discrediting
long
established performance modeling metrics. | |
| There
are
hundreds
of articles about SSDs on StorageSearch.com |
Here, below, are some
examples.
- RAM Cache
Ratios in flash SSDs - it's important to know the underlying RAM cache
architecture - even if you're happy with the R/W and IOPS performance.
- 2010 - 1st Fizz
in the SSD Bubble? - even the dogs in the street know this is going to be a
multibillion dollar market. Greed will play as big a part as technology in
shaping the
SSD year ahead.
- the pros and cons of
using SSD ASAPs - auto tuning SSD appliances are a new category of SSD
which entered the market in the 2nd half of 2009 to accelerate servers without
needing human tune-ups. How can you tell if they are right for you? And how
well do they work?
- the Problem
with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs - long established as a useful performance
modeling metric - this article explains why some specs are exaggerated when
applied to flash SSDs - or predict the wrong results for many common
applications.
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