| 2.5"
SSD news - selected from all
SSD news......................................... |
reaching for the petabyte
SSD
Editor:- March 16, 2010 - previewing the final chapters in
the long running SSD
vs HDD wars - StorageSearch.com
today published an industry changing new article -
SSDs - reaching for
the Petabyte.
What will the PB SSD look like? When will it appear?
What technology problems do
SSD designers have to
solve to get there? What about the
storage architecture
that the PB SSD fits into? How much electrical power will it consume? And...
you may be curious - how much will it cost?
All these questions and
more - are discussed and answered in this article which - I anticipate -
will inspire product managers and company founders to create completely new
types of SSDs. ...read
the article
new directory - SSD videos
Editor:- March 11, 2010 -
whenever I'm asked -"What do you do for a living?" - the cutest
answer I come up with is - "I waste my time so my readers don't have to
waste theirs."
Few things are so time-wasting on the web - in my
opinion - as videos which talk about the
SSD market. In 99.9% of
cases the same points have already been made - earlier, better, and about 30x
quicker on static webpages.
It's several years since a reader asked -
"Why isn't there a directory of
SSD videos on
StorageSearch.com?"
Well
- there is now. I datamined and filtered it from the tens of thousands of hours
I've spent reading and writing about SSDs. It's the smallest list of links
in any directory page I've created since the web started - and at this rate of
progress will struggle to reach double digits by the time the SSD market
ends. Less is better - when it comes to wasting your time. ...read the article
$100? - too much to pay for a 32GB MLC SSD - says OCZ
Editor:-
March 10, 2010 - OCZ
today announced
it's shipping a 32GB 2.5"
MLC
SSD for under $100.
R/W speeds
are unremarkable - at a mere 125MB/s and 70MB/s respectively - but the main
point of this launch - according to OCZ's CEO, Ryan Petersen - is to
publicize the price point and show what the company is doing "to make SSDs
more affordable to end-users."
Editor's comments:- You get
exactly what you pay for in
SSD pricing. The
big problem is knowing what you want. OCZ's new
Onyx
is a very low capacity, slowish
notebook SSD
which is unsuitable
for server apps. But it does appear to be a good price today according
to
this
comparison. (It may not look so good later.)
faster SLC and affordable MLC
for disparate 2.5" SSD
markets - from WD
Editor:- March 3, 2010 -
WD Solid State
Storage is shipping a new range of
2.5" 128GB
SATA
SLC
SSDs - for
high reliability
24/7 embedded markets - called the
WD
SiliconDrive N1x.
R/W speeds are upto 240MB/s and 140MB/s
respectively. Write
endurance is
quoted as 701GB/Day - compatible with 5 year limited warranty. And
data integrity
(non-recoverable error rate) is better than 1 in 1015 bits read.
"The
WD SiliconDrive N1x SSDs are the newest addition to our SiliconDrive product
family, which has shipped several million units since the 1st products
were introduced. SiliconDrive SSDs have consistently met critical OEM
application requirements for high reliability, high performance and long product
deployment cycles," said Michael Hajeck, senior VP and general manager of
WD's solid state storage business unit.
The WD SiliconDrive N1x SSDs
feature patented and patent-pending WD technologies combined with NCQ and
Windows 7 TRIM command support for high data integrity, long product life and
sustained performance
levels throughout the drive's service life without the need for an external
refresh utility, media over-provisioning
or forced idle times used by many SSDs available today.
Editor's comments:- today WD also
announced
its entry into the
SSD notebook
market. WD's SiliconEdge
Blue 2.5" MLC SSDs offer capacity upto 256GB (MSRP $999), R/W speeds
of 250MB/s and 170MB/s.
To avoid confusion from the branding point of
view - it looks like WD has retained the 5 year market proven "SiliconDrive"
brand for its enterprise products while introducing "SiliconEdge"
as its consumer / MLC brand. To protect its reputation WD says the new
notebook design has passed over 250,000 hours of testing to prevent the kind
of flaky SSD
problems which have occurred in the past when competing oems shipped
incompletely verified products.
Despite EMC Hiccup...
STEC anticipates continuing upflows in
SSD Market Bubble
Editor:- February 23, 2010 -
STEC today
reported that its
revenue
for full-year 2009 grew 55% to $354 million.
"During
2009 we achieved the highest revenue, gross profit margin and earnings per share
in our company's nearly 20-year history," said Manouch Moshayedi, STEC's
Chairman and CEO. "We believe that the first half of 2010 will be a trough
period for our business due to an inventory carryover by our largest customer (EMC). Although, we believe the
marketing programs that we implemented last quarter have had a positive effect
on the sell-through of SSDs, based on our best estimates we now anticipate this
inventory carryover to continue to negatively impact our sales to this customer
during the first half of 2010, as we do not expect any meaningful production
orders from this customer during that time.
"We have been working diligently to increase SSD sales to other
major customers by introducing new marketing incentive programs for 2010. We
expect to start experiencing the benefits of these efforts during the 2nd half
of this year. "We firmly believe that we are still in the beginning
stages of the adoption
of SSDs by the Enterprise markets. Despite the near-term challenges, we
believe that as the benefits of SSDs
become more widely understood, and the growth curve of SSD adoption accelerates,
we will be in an ideal position to take full advantage and make significant
gains."
Editor's comments:- I totally agree with STEC's
long term view about the long term upside potential for the SSD enterprise
market.
Recently as I've been looking in more detail at my own market
adoption models going out to 2015 - I've revised the total available market size
for SSDs considerably upwards compared to my earlier TAM estimates (which were
originally projected in 2003/5). There's a lot of painful learning to be
done by vendors and customers alike - including new applications for SSD types
which don't exist yet. If you want to get a range of other views see
Solid State Drives -
market research & analysts.
Solid State Storage Backup - new directory for a new market
Editor:-
February 16, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
launched a new directory today for -
Solid State Storage Backup.
Although
these are still early days for the S3B market - the new page will help you
filter out news, articles and messages from the S3B pioneers which otherwise
might get lost in the clamor of the
SSD market bubble.
"In
the early days of the
disk to disk backup market the old
tape vendors scoffed at
the idea that hard disks
might one day steal their market. Now most of those old tape dinosaurs are gone
and the hard disk backup market reigns supreme" said editor, Zsolt Kerekes.
"Despite that - I expect that most vendors in the
D2d / VTL market today
will not even be dreaming about the possibility that
SSDs will one day
transform their own cozy market too. But they urgently need to start having
fresh ideas about what backup and recovery are really for? The
S3B page will chronicle the
news from the nascent Solid State Storage Backup market - and help to accelerate
those changes."
SSD Market Projections - from Denali & Gartner
Editor:-
February 9, 2010 - Denali
Software published an article -
the
Evolving Enterprise SSD - which comments on detailed SSD market size
predictions from Gartner
related to SSD form factors and interfaces.
If you look at the curves
related to form factors - you can infer that StorageSearch.com's readers are
about 3 to 4 years ahead of the market in their search volume.
Another
way of looking at it is that our readers have always been ahead of the SSD
market adoption curve - and have been
historically
and statistically significant in shaping the SSD market penetration curves by
their actions in either designing SSDs or buying them.
Viking Enters 2.5" SSD Market
Editor:- January
21, 2010 - Viking
Modular Solutions today
announced
it is sampling a range of SAS
and SATA compatible
SSDs using
controllers from SandForce.
Form
factors will include:- 1.8",
2.5" and
innovative "non-HDD-like"
solutions for space constrained and/or rugged applications.
"Today's
announcement represents the results of collaboration between Viking Modular
Solutions and SandForce for current and future high performance SSD products
that target enterprise, storage and multiple other applications requiring
superior performance and security," stated Hamid Shokrgozar, President of
Viking Modular Solutions. "This joint effort clearly highlights our
commitment as an industry leader by continuing to deliver innovative products at
practical costs to our customer base."
TweakTown Tests RunCore's "SandForce inside" SSD
Editor:-
January 7, 2010 - a benchmark
review
article in TweakTown.com concludes that RunCore's upcoming Pro
V 2.5" SSD - which
uses SandForce's
SF-1500
SoC is the fastest SATA
2 SSD they have tested.
SMART Samples "SandForce inside" SSDs
Editor:-
January 5, 2010 - SMART
is sampling the
XceedIOPS
SATA - SLC and "enterprise grade" MLC flash SSDs in
1.8" and
2.5" form factors
- based on the SF-1500 processor from SandForce.
Performance
is upto 30K IOPS
random read/write. SMART uses a combination of
write attenuation
technologies to attain a 5-year projected lifetime for its 400GB MLC
XceedIOPS SATA model ($2,900 oem qty price) in an environment that demands
250MB/s sustained write and a 40% duty cycle.
"The enterprise SSD market appears to be entering a period of
impressive growth. Well-positioned to satisfy the requirements of enterprise
deployments, we expect our XceedIOPS SATA SSDs will provide low cost, superior
performance, low power, and high capacity flexibility," said Alan
Gulachenski, SMART's VP and General Manager, Enterprise Solid State Storage.
2.5" SSD Market Fights Back
Editor:- January 4,
2010 - StorageSearch.com disclosed today that the gap in search volume
between
PCIe SSDs (most
popular form factor) and 2.5"
SSDs (#2 form factor) narrowed in December 2009 - rather than widened.
The
imminent availability of consumer priced 6Gbps SATA SSDs coupled with growing
competition in the 2.5" SAS SSD market has boosted the acceleration ceiling
in traditional disk form factors. That provides more reasons for customers to
look again at the 2.5" form factor. Reader pageviews for PCIe SSDs were
nearly 4x higher than a year ago.
Solid State Drives -
market research & analysts
A-DATA Joins "SandForce Inside" SSD List
Editor:-
December 15, 2009 - A-DATA
announced today it has joined the growing roster of
SSD makers using
SSD SoCs from SandForce.
A-DATA
says products are now in the final testing stage and will be previewed at
CES next month.
Editor's comments:- I had earlier commented on A-DATA's
weaknesses in the enterprise SSD product space. This collaboration with
SandForce is intended to fill product gaps in this strategic market.
A-DATA Ships New 2.5" Gamer SSDs
Editor:-
December 9, 2009 -A-DATA
announced volume shipments of its 2.5" XPG range SATA MLC SSDs
optimized for use with Windows 7 TRIM.
Models include:-
SX95
(R/W = 230MB/s and 178MB/s) and
S592
(R/W = 230MB/s and 170MB/s).
Seagate's 1st SSD - Finally a Real Product
Editor:-
December 8, 2009 - Seagate
announced details of its
Pulsar SSD
- a 2.5"
SATA
SLC
SSD with 200GB capacity.
Sequential
R/W rate is upto 240MB/s and 220MB/s respectively, R/W IOPS are 30,000 and
25,000 respectively. Aimed at the server market the
BER is quoted as
1 sector per 10E16. Seagate says it has been sampling the new drive - its 1st
SSD - since September 2009.
Editor's comments:- the remarkable
thing about Seagate's 1st SSD is that it took the company so many years to enter
the market. Technically - it's unremarkable.
Will it succeed in the
market? In my view it would be unrealistic to assume that Seagate's long
running dominance in the hard
disk market will translate to dominance in SSDs too - because nearly all
its potential oem customers have already been evaluating or using SSDs from
other sources for
upto 4 years.
And
even if Seagate's new product succeeds in filling holes in design slots in
2010 - its oem customers can always replace this product with their own designs
leveraging the merchant market for
SSD controllers & IP.
To succeed in the SSD market - Seagate will have to demonstrateunique
mastery in some aspect of SSD technology which customers value. The most
attractive area will probably be in the area of
reliability.
In
recent quarters we've seen a spate of
flaky SSDs get to
market. This tendency will rise in 2010 as many storage oems decide that
shipping untried products is a lower risk to their businesses than losing out on
customer mind share. Each bad news story helps companies who have a clean
reputation. But as a newcomer to the SSD market Seagate may have to wait years
to establish its own reputation.
It's tempting to compare Seagate's
entry to the SSD market with
Western Digital. But
the 2 cases are completely different. When WD acquired
SiliconSystems
in March 2009 - it got a business which had started marketing SSDs in August
2004. That gives WD's product marketers 5 years of market experience they can
talk to customers about - compared to 3 months for Seagate. Nevertheless - being
late is better than never.
Micron Samples SATA 3.0 SSDs
Editor:- December 2,
2009 - Micron
announced it is sampling
6Gbps
SATA MLC SSDs in 1.8"
and 2.5" form
factors.
Micron's C300 SSD can achieve a read throughput speed of up
to 355MB/s and a write throughput up to 215MB/s.
Editor's
comments:- Long anticipated in StorageSearch.com's
flash SSD Roadmap -
it was inevitable that we would be seeing 6Gbps
SATA SSDs soon,
because several companies have already sampled 6Gbps
SAS SSDs which use the
same physical interface. It was simply a question of when vendors would judge
the market conditions right. (Or pre-announce them first.)
2.5" SSD Market Maintains Growth
Editor:-
December 2, 2009 - 2.5" SSD pageviews on StorageSearch.com increased 85%
in November compared to the year ago period.
But that wasn't enough
for this subject to regain the #1 slot for "most viewed SSD form factor"
by our readers.
The #1 subject was again -
PCIe SSDs. Proof - if
it were needed - that once SSD buyers have bought into the idea of application
acceleration - they are prepared to cast aside ties to historic interfaces and
form factors and look at the best value for money when considering new
projects.
And that leads us to a simple rule of thumb for deciding
which are the best types of SSDs to look at first.
- pre-existing application box (server or notebook) - traditional SSD form
factors (2.5",
1.8"and
3.5").
When
it comes to rackmount
SSDs - the market
trends show a much more complex picture.
OCZ Promises "SandForce inside" SAS SSDs
Editor:-
November 10, 2009 - OCZ
today
announced
it will launch a new SAS
SSD family based on SSD
SoCs from SandForce
which will probably be previewed at CES
in January 2010.
Editor's comments:- for more examples of who
else has already announced SandForce based SSDs (and in some cases is already
shipping them) see the article -
3 Easy Ways to Enter
the SSD Market.
Foremay Ships Fastest 2.5" SATA SSD
Editor:-
November 2, 2009 -
Foremay
announced it is shipping the
world's fastest 2.5"
SATA flash SSDs.
The
SC199 Cheetah Y-Series has R/W speeds up to 290/280 MB/s in
2.5" and
3.5" SATA form
factors - which approaches the theoretical speed limit of the SATA-II protocol.
It also delivers impressive R/W IOPS of up to 50,000/45,000 respectively.
"It is Avalanche technology that makes the SC199 Cheetah Y-Series
the world's fastest SSD drives with SATA interfaces," stated Jack Winters,
Foremay's Co-founder and CTO. "Avalanche is not a single technology
breakthrough; rather it is a novel technology platform that integrates various
patented and proprietary SSD technologies from hardware to firmware and design
to manufacturing process, along with engineering synergy from suppliers,
partners and customers."
Intel Offers Tool to Retro-Fix Missing Active Garbage Collection
Editor:-
October 26, 2009 - Intel
joined the growing roster of SSD
companies who have
announced
support for Trim functions.
These benefit
flash SSDs which
don't have internal fast active
garbage collection.
The company recommends users install the firmware update and toolbox, and run
the Trim function daily to ensure best performance.
pureSilicon Unveils New Military SSDs
Editor:-
October 26, 2009 - pureSilicon
says it will start shipping its Renegade R2 Series 2.5" SATA SLC flash
SSDs later this week.
Sequential R/W speeds are 255MB/s and 180MB/s
respectively. IOPS performance is:- 18,000 IOPS random read: (4K) and ; random
write: 1,200 IOPS @ 4K) and proprietary SiPher™ data security technology.
The drives are available immediately in a wide range of densities
(4GB, 8GB, 16 GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB) in a low profile (9.5mm height)
2.5" form factor
and -40°C to +85°C operating temperature.
256GB, PATA,
1.8", and encryption
versions will start shipping in Q1 2010.
"pureSilicon is dedicated to providing high-performance, rugged
storage solutions to the defense, military, industrial, and government markets,"
said Jason Breakstone, founder and CEO of pureSilicon. "While many SSD
manufacturers are focusing their efforts on the mass consumer markets,
pureSilicon is committed to designing and delivering technologies that will
provide significant benefits to our customers such as full-disk encryption and
data declassification
methods. Renegade R2 is designed to operate in the harshest conditions."
pureSilicon says the specs it publishes are "steady-state
performance" results. These are achieved by performing proper
preconditioning, which prepares the drive for real-world usage scenarios and
yields realistic performance benchmarks. Other SSD manufacturers claim 'clean'
(new) drive performance specifications on a new drive, and users should expect
to see performance
reductions in real world use as a clean drive settles into its stabilized
(steady) state — once the drive is nearing capacity and is consistently
performing garbage
collection, wear leveling, and bad-block management.
SMART SSDs Selected for Avionics Servers
Editor:-
October 20, 2009 - SMART
today announced that it has been
selected
by Harris Corp to provide SSDs for use in its Mass Storage Unit
program.
The new MSU, which is part of a larger F/A-18 program, is the
first of a new family of avionics file servers.
Harris selected SMART's
XceedSecure
2.5" SATA SLC flash SSD for the in-flight file server application.
XceedSecure high-performance SSDs range in capacity from 32GB to 256GB and
include EraSure® technology, which provides
secure erase features
that comply with current military data-elimination standards.
Foremay Ships TRIM Compliant SSDs
Editor:- October
15, 2009 -
Foremay today
announced that its PC166 Leopard W-Series SSDs - designed and tested for
compliance with Windows 7 SSD TRIM - are shipping in volume.
With the
TRIM function enabled, the SSD can significantly improve sustainable writing
speed, as well as prevent writing performance degradation when an SSD is at
greater than 50% capacity. "One of the key features of Windows 7 is its
support of the TRIM command," stated Jack Winters, Co-founder and CTO of
Foremay. "Without this support, we had to implement our proprietary active
garbage collection
algorithm in our high end solid state drives that are listed as the
Fastest SSD. Now I
am glad to see that Windows 7 supports TRIM so that we can implement more
cost-effective passive garbage collection techniques into the PC166 Leopard
WSeries and other Foremay SSDs."
Editor's comments:- all good fast enterprise flash SSDs
already had "active garbage collection" - so TRIM makes no difference
to those. But (if it works) Microsoft's TRIM - means oems can use slower and
cheaper controllers in their PC SSDs - and let the OS do the job.
Data Integrity Challenges in 2.5" flash SSD Design
Editor:-
October 12, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article called -
Data Integrity
Challenges in flash SSD Design - written by Kent Smith Senior
Director, Product Marketing, SandForce.
A
common theme you will hear from all
fast SSD companies
is that the faster you make an SSD go - the more effort you have to put into
understanding and engineering data integrity to eliminate the risk of "silent
errors." ...read
the article
Foremay Launches SSDs Designed for Mac Market
Editor:-
October 6, 2009 -
Foremay
launched its EC188
Jaguar Series flash SSDs optimized for the Mac market.
PCIe SSDs Snatch #1 Storage Search Crown
Editor:-
September 24, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
disclosed today that search volumes for
PCIe form factor SSDs
have surpassed that for
2.5" SSDs for
the 1st time.
"This is a tsunami warning event for SSD vendors
addressing the enterprise server acceleration market" said Zsolt Kerekes,
editor of StorageSearch.com.
"In the 25 years that I've been
involved in the enterprise storage - there were just 3 great waves of user
mass adoption for new disk form factors - starting with 8.5", moving
onto 5.25", then 3.5" and finally 2.5".
"In
contrast, after
3 decades of
sleepy stealth mode development the SSD market is now streaming ahead on
SSD time. Users have woken up to what the SSD market can do for their servers -
and for new systems they don't want to plow through their data fields dragged
down by the clutter and dead weight baggage of the
rotating disk peddlers.
A year ago interest in 2.5" SSDs was an order of magnitude higher than
PCIe SSDs. Both have grown in search volume - but PCIe SSDs seem to have
captured the imagination of this market to a degree which only its most
optimistic supporters would have predicted." | |
Welcome to the 2.5"
zone in the SSD market
bubble
In recent years - and upto September 2009
(when search volume for
PCIe SSDs surpassed
that for 2.5" SSDs) - the 2.5 inch form factor has been hottest part of
the
solid state disk market -
with new oems entering the market every month. At stake are multibillion
dollar market segments for 3 of the 4 primary applications described in detail
in our
SSD Market
Adoption Model. These will add up to a $10 billion / year SSD market within
a few years.
The 2.5" form factor is the only size which
straddles the wide range of SSD application slots.
The technical
characteristics of the ideal 2.5" SSD product varies considerably from
design slot to design slot (sometimes
raw speed,
othertimes capacity,
reliability, the
ability to recover
data, or the converse,
TCO, initial price
or power consumption and even weight). These are often conflicting parameters
and cannot be met by any single product. However, the overlap of capability and
technology between some high volume applications and the sheer number of oems
guarantees a very competitive market - from which users will benefit much
sooner than predicted by out of date graph theory projections proposed by
classical
storage analysts.
Fastest
/ Highest Capacity 2.5" SSDs?
The fastest 2.5" SSD
is the 6Gb/s SAS
compatible ZeusIOPS now sampling from
STEC. With R/W speeds of
550MB/s and 300MB/s respectively you'll have to wait for a new generation
of SATA-3 SSDs or
8Gb/s FC SSDs to get
anywhere close to that speed in this form factor using other interfaces.
The
highest capacity 2.5" SSD is 1TB - from
pureSilicon. | |
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SSD Bookmarks
suggested
by - Kevin T Crow, NAND Solutions Group, Intel |
Here's an article written by or
about Intel
Enterprise-wide
Deployment of Notebook PCs with Solid-State Drives
Kevin says he
chose this article because "It will give the reader an overview of the
benefits experienced by the enterprise after deploying notebooks with solid
state drives."
The article is a case study about the productivity benefits of using
SSD based notebooks instead of hard drive notebooks inside an enterprise
(Intel). Following an internal evaluation Intel found the benefits so "compelling"
that it decided to deploy up to 10,000 SSD notebooks to its own employees.
Other SSD article suggestions...
The SSD
Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD - published by
AnandTech
Kevin says "This
is the latest in a long series of
reviews
that compare solid state drives and discusses the technology behind them.
Overall the series does a very good job educating the reader on what they need
to know when making a solid state drive purchase decision."
Editor:-
thanks Kevin for sharing your SSD links.
see also:-
Intel
- editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com | | |
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the Fastest Solid State
Disks
Speed isn't everything, and comes at a price. |
But if
you do need the speediest
SSD then wading through the web sites of over 140 current
SSD oems to find a suitable
candidate slows you down.
And the SSD search problem will get even
worse. |
 | |
| I've done the research for you
to save you time. And this page is updated daily from
storage news and direct
inputs from oems. ...read
the article, | |
| . |
Z's Laws
Predicting
Future Flash SSD Performance |
A reader asked me a
very good question.
"Is there an industry roadmap for future
flash SSD
performance?"
That prompted other questions like...
- How fast are flash SSDs going to be in 2009?, 2010? or 2012?
- What are the technology factors which relate to flash SSD throughput and
IOPS?
- How close will flash SSDs get to
RAM SSD performance?
There wasn't a simple answer I could give at the time. Clues lay
scattered all across this web site
and in my many one on one discussions with readers about the market... |
 |
But I agreed there should be
a single place on the web where these answers could be found.
Forget
Moore's
Law. That gives you the wrong answer, and this article explains why. ...read the article | | | |
