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see also:-
WD
Solid State Storage - editor mentions on StorageSearch.com
- editor's comments:- WD Solid State Storage is different to most other
flash SSD oems in
focusing on the high reliability
part of the storage market (rather than the high performance segment). It aims
at oems who traditionally have designed
hard drives into
embedded products. Its value proposition is that for long life products in
difficult to access locations - the longer operating life of its SiliconDrives
(compared to HDDs and other SSDs) - makes them a lower cost solution overall
when you take into account service calls, replacement drives etc. I described
that as a "type #4" application in my
SSD market
adoption model.
In pursuance of those reliability goals WD Solid
State Storage is an advocate of "skinny" flash SSDs. To see what I
mean by this - and how this approach compares to the rest of the market take a
look at the article -
RAM Cache Ratios
in flash SSDs.
In May 2008 - California based
SiliconSystems
opened its first office in the People's Republic of China. And its founder and
CEO, Michael Hajeck, was selected as a regional finalist for the Ernst &
Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the 2nd consecutive year.
In
August 2008 - SiliconSystems doubled the capacity of its miniature
embedded USB SiliconDrives.
In September 2008 - SiliconSystems
announced faster versions of its 2.5" SATA / PATA SiliconDrives - with upto
50MB/s read / write speeds and the company became a founding member of the
SNIA's Solid State
Storage Initiative.
In October 2008 -
SiliconSystems
contributed its SiliconDrive II Blade specification to the
Small Form Factor Special Interest Group for
the purpose of creating an official governing standard.
In December
2008 - SiliconSystems published a significant whitepaper -
NAND
Evolution and its Effects on SSD Useable Life (pdf). Starting with a tour
of the state of the art in the flash SSD market the paper introduces several
new concepts (including write amplification and wear leveling efficiency) to
help systems designers understand why current wear usage models don't give a
complete picture.
In -
January 2009 - SiliconSystems announced that its
SiliconDrive Blade
has been selected as a "2008 Best
Electronic Design" technology of the year winner in the embedded small
form factor category. The awards are chosen by the editorial staff of
Electronic Design magazine from
announcements they have received during the year. Editor
Bill Wong
cited SiliconDrive Blade's innovative design as a necessary development in
accelerating wide-spread adoption of
SSDs in embedded systems.
In March 2009 - SiliconSystems' VP of Product Planning, Gary
Drossel - shared his
SSD Bookmarks
with readers of
StorageSearch.com. And the
company also announced it has shipped over 4 million SiliconDrives
integrated with its
SiSMART
technology. SiliconSystems also said it will ship faster versions of its 2.5"
and 1.8" SiliconDrives in the next quarter - with R/W speeds up to 100MB/s
and 80MB/s respectively, and (SLC) capacity upto 128GB.
Also in in
March 2009 - Western
Digital entered the SSD market by acquiring
SiliconSystems
for $65 million. Integration into WD begins immediately, with SiliconSystems now
becoming known as the WD Solid-State Storage business unit, complementing WD's
existing Branded Products, Client Storage, Consumer Storage and Enterprise
Storage business units. WD has published a
FAQs page about
this acquisition.
From the time when SiliconSystems first appeared on
our SSD pages in 2004 it was clear that the company was talking in a different
way to the rest of the market. Of the 4 main market segments which I identified
for
SSD market
penetration (published 2005) - I mentioned SiliconSystems as the pioneer in
"High Reliability DAS".
Quoting from that article - "The
customer value proposition of the High Reliability DAS SSD is that the interval
between server failures will be extended by several years compared to HDD
technology."
In recent years the company has avoided being sucked
along the alternative currents of the small form factor SSD market and stuck to
its mission of designing SSDs which are sustainable for customers to own - as
reliable
replacements for hard
drives. The company's acquisition by WD demonstrates that those principles
are valued where it counts - in the eyes of the world's fastest growing hard
disk maker.
In June 2009 -
Western Digital
Solid State Storage announced that it has begun shipping its new
SiliconDrive III
SSD product family which includes 2.5" SATA and PATA and 1.8" Micro
SATA products with target read speeds up to 100MB/s and write speeds to 80MB/s
in capacities up to 120 GB.
|
| the Top 10 SSD OEMs -
in 2009 Q3 - extracted from main article |
WD Solid State Storage
was ranked
#5 - up 5 places since the last quarter.
This is the
highest rank which WD has achieved in these tables and is 2 places higher than
the previous best for SiliconSystems - which WD acquired in March 2009. This
indicates a positive market reaction to the strongly rebranded SiliconDrive
product family. | |
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