 SiliconSystems - 2004 to 2009
SiliconSystems designs, manufactures and markets a
comprehensive line of solid-state storage solutions engineered and optimized for
the unique requirements of the enterprise system OEM market.
The
company's patented and patent-pending SiliconDrive™ technology meets the
rigorous demands of applications in the netcom, military, industrial,
interactive kiosk, medical, and mobile computing markets.
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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 March 2005 -
SiliconSystems
announced that Bell
Microproducts would distribute its SSD products in North America. This would
greatly simplify the access to this technology for thousands of systems
integrators and oems.
In April 2005 -
SiliconSystems
published (what turned out to be) a classic white paper -
Increasing Flash
SSD Reliability.
In January 2006 -
SiliconSystems
announced a new technology called SiSMART built into the company's
entire SiliconDrive product line. By monitoring read/write activity, SiSMART
technology enabled designers of SSD systems to collect raw data from
which to extrapolate flash wear out effects and predict application specific
SSD operating life.
In June 2006 -
SiliconSystems
launched its SiliconDrive Secure family which included the widest range of
available storage
security features in a solid state disk.
In June 2007 -
SiliconSystems
said that it had received an additional patent for its PowerArmor voltage
detection and regulation technology. PowerArmor, used in the company's
SiliconDrives protects critical operating system files and application data
from corruption due to
power
disturbances.
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
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.
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| Companies which use
industrial SSDs for use in equipment and embedded systems need to be confident
that they can continue obtaining these products during the lifetime of their
programs - which are typically 3 to 5 - but can also be more than 7 years.
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| the changing face of
the industrial SSD market | | |
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| Fast Purge SSDs -
when "Rugged"
won't do |
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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.
Take a look at the
Fast purge / secure erase
SSDs directory on StorageSearch.com | | | |
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A reader contacted me to
say he was worried about the viability and reliability of large arrays of SSDs
as used in enterprises.
His email included detailed calculations about FITs (failures in time)
related in specialized components in the SSD power management circuits. |
| FITs, reliability and
abstraction levels in SSDs | | |
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