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SMART Modular Technologies is a leading provider of memory
products, offering more than 500 standard and custom products to top-tier OEMs
in the computer, industrial, networking, and telecommunications sectors. Taking
innovations from the design stage through manufacturing and delivery, SMART has
developed a comprehensive memory product line that includes DRAM, SRAM, and
Flash in various form factors.
Through its subsidiary,
Adtron, SMART offers
high performance, high capacity solid
state drives for enterprise, defense/aerospace, industrial automation,
medical, and transportation markets. SMART's Display Products Group designs,
manufactures and sells thin film transistors (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD)
solutions to customers developing casino gaming systems as well as embedded
applications such as kiosk, ATM, point-of-service, and industrial control
systems. SMART's presence in the US, Europe, Asia, and Latin America enables it
to provide its customers with proven expertise in international logistics, asset
management, and supply-chain management worldwide. More information on SMART can
be obtained at www.smartm.com.
see also:-
SMART
- editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com
- editor's notes:- in August 2008 -
SMART announced 6
new SSDs which will sample in Q3. These include faster 2.5" and
1.8" models. The SMART
2.5" XceedUltra2 SATA SSD delivers sustained read/write performance of
up to 135MB/s and 105MB/s, respectively, while requiring fewer than 2 watts in
active mode. The SMART 1.8" XceedLite SATA SSD operates at 72MB/s read
and 55MB/s sustained write speeds and uses under 1 watt of power in active
mode.
In October 2008 -
SMART started
shipping the Xcel-10 SSD - a 2.5" SLC flash SSD with upto 128GB capacity.
Sustained read speed is 115MB/s, and write speed is 125MB/s. (It really is
faster than the read speed). It delivers 5,580 IOPS at 100% read or 980 IOPS at
67% read, 33% write, for random I/O using 4K block size.
In February
2009 - SMART
announced new 3.5"
parallel SCSI SSDs with
upto 128GB and faster secure erase for industrial, defense, and other embedded
applications that require extremely rugged storage devices and legacy
interfaces.
In June 2009 -
SMART Modular
Technologies disclosed it had used
Marvell's SSD
controller in SMART's new
XceedIOPS
PCIe SSD which offers
upto 400GB capacity and 140,000 random IOPS performance. |
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After
SSDs... What Next?...................... |
Editor:- February 25, 2009 -
I'm often asked - "What do you think is going to be the next big issue
in the storage market?"
Something
that's similar in market impact to
SSDs - but which might only
start to take off after this recession? |
I did a 7 year
storage market forecast 4
years ago so I thought I'd dust the cobwebs off the scrolls and see how
that prognostication is holding up today.
The nature of such long
range predictions is that most people don't know what issues they will be
grappling with the day after tomorrow - or even if they will still have a job.
So they only get picked up by a few lonely visionaries - who like editors -
have nothing better to do than stare in their crystal balls - while someone else
makes sure that the cash register is still
ringing (and
connected).
When I enthusiastically start to expound on "Storage
Reliability" with normal people - I get the same reaction as I did when I
was talking about
SSDs in 1998,
or RISC processors
back in 1988 or microprocessors back in 1977. Their eyes glaze over - and they
say politely - "I can't understand why anyone would be interested in this."
Especially
- reliability!
"Yes, yes" they say (trying to shut me up) "I agree
it's a good thing. Much much better than unreliability. Now can we change the
subject... What more is there to say?"
I wouldn't be surprised if
most of you too - thought the same way.
After all - there are 3 more
years to go till 2012. And the recession and SSDs are going to dominate the
storage news pages
during most of that time. So there's no need to start worrying about reliability
- just yet. Maybe.
There are many things I could say about
Storage Reliability
- and I have collected together a lot of articles and news stories for those
who are interested.
And for the majority of you (who have better things
to be worrying about right now) I'm sure that when the time is right for you -
you'll come back to this subject.
If your own eyes are still unglazedly
focused in this direction...
One way of thinking about reliability
- is that it works like compound interest. A double digit or triple digit
percentage difference sustained over many years soon starts to mount up to a
substantial saving in resources. That's also why I said it's
green.
Although unlike
quality
- it's not free.
Post Recession Thinking - 2012 to 2013?
One
effect of the recession is that users - looking back with the benefit of
hindsight - will realize that a lot of resources (today) got wasted - and a
lot of data was trashed - simply because of doing things the way they have
always been done - without questioning the thinking or assumptions behind any
of it.
A whole load of convenient incremental steps can take you to
a place that's a long way from a rational destination. When the spending tap
closes shut - every drip, drip starts to look more interesting and gets
scrutinized more intensely. Happy days will be
here again - but
wiser ones too. ...Storage
Reliability articles & news | |
