| 2.5"
SSD news below |
0 to 100 - rear view
mirroring the SATA SSD market
Editor:- September 1, 2010 - if
you're a newcomer to the SSD market you might get the impression that SATA
SSDs ARE the SSD market!
I've updated my
introductory article on
the SATA SSD page to reflect how this segment of the SSD market got from
zero to where it is today - with 100 active oems.
Why the headline "rear
view mirroring"? - As well as being a retrospective article on how we got
here - this month is the
1st anniversary
of PCIe SSD search
volume overtaking that of 2.5"
SSDs.
Imprinting the brain of the SSD - MarketingViews case study
Editor:-
August 26, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article -
Imprinting the brain
of the SSD - which describes how the
SSD market went from:-
what's an SSD controller?
to "SandForce Driven SSDs".
...read the
article
SMART samples 400GB 2.5" SAS eMLC SSD
Editor:-
August 17, 2010 - SMART
entered the crowding SAS
SSD market with the announcement that it is sampling the
XceedIOPS
SAS SSD - a 2.5" 400GB eMLC SSD with 26,000 / 20,000 R/W
IOPS and
250/230 MB/s sustained throughput.
The new XceedIOPS SAS SSD offers
high reliability and data integrity due to extensive error-correction and
detection capabilities, multi-level data-path and code protection, data-fail
recovery, and data-integrity monitoring. Designed to minimize power surges in
SSD arrays the the XceedIOPS SAS SSD supports staggered power-on.
Skinny SSD architecture suits Slim SATA form factor
Editor:-
August 17, 2010 - One of the advantages of
skinny flash SSDs
is the SSD controller
fits into a smaller physical space - because it doesn't need external
RAM chips.
That's
something which SandForce
told me a while ago - and they announced more details about this yesterday -
and what their technology can do for
Slim
SATA SSDs.
"Our customers have been mostly deploying our 1st
generation SSD Processors in traditional
2.5-inch drive form factors
as they are shipping into existing storage sockets with a defined power-density
envelope. Beyond that, we see a growing demand for more cost-effective, smaller
form factor designs that our single-chip SSD Processors optimally address,"
said Steffen Hellmold, VP of Business Development for SandForce. "We are
excited to see a whole new generation of SSDs come to market optimized around
the performance-power-density that only SandForce can enable at price points for
mass-market adoption."
Micron samples SATA 3 SLC SSD
Editor:- August 12,
2010 - Micron Technology
today
announced
it is sampling the
RealSSD
P300 - a 200GB 2.5"
SATA 3 SLC flash SSD with R/W
IOPS of
44,000 and 16,000 respectively.
Editor's comments:- Micron's
new P300 SSD sounds almost exactly the same as the
C300
SSD the company said it was sampling in
December 2009.
The main differences are:- the newer product has lower R/W IOPS, and is
SLC instead of
MLC - which is better for most mission critical apps.
Can you believe the word "reliability" in a 2.5"
SSD ad?
Editor:- August 12, 2010 - One of the most popular
articles published here in recent weeks is -
the cultivation and
nurturing of "reliability" in a 2.5" SSD brand - which I
wrote as a marketing case study.
I didn't think a
marketing views article of this
typet would appeal to many readers - but then I didn't think that
SSDs would
become a mainstream subject
once upon a
time either - which just shows how wrong you can be.
Reliability is an
important factor in many applications which use
SSDs.
But can
you trust an SSD brand just because it claims to be reliable?
As we've
seen in recent years - in the rush for the
SSD market bubble -
many design teams which previously had little or no experience of SSDs were
tasked with designing such products - and the result has been successive waves
of flaky SSDs and
SSDs whose specifications
couldn't be relied on to remain stable and in many products quickly
degraded in customer sites.
As part of an education series for SSD
product marketers - this case study describes how one company - which didn't
have the conventional background to start off with - managed to equate their
brand of SSD with reliability in the minds of designers in the embedded systems
market. ...read
the article
Anobit inside new Hynix SSD
Editor:- August 9, 2010
- Hynix Semiconductor
announced
it has selected Anobit's
SSD controller
technology to operate with its own 20nm class NAND Flash chips for use in a new
SSD design.
Pliant nabs Dot Hill's VP software engineering
Editor:-
August 3, 2010 - Pliant
Technology today
announced
the appointment of Mark
Delsman as VP of engineering.
In his new role, Delsman will manage the software, hardware and
ASIC development
organizations to expand Pliant's position in the enterprise storage market for
solid state based
technologies. See also:-
Storage People
Popular storage searches in July
Editor:- August 3,
2010 - StorageSearch.com
disclosed that overall SSD searches in July 2010 were 20% higher than
a year ago.
Pageviews of the SSD Buyers Guide
grew 14%.
PCIe
SSDs retained the #1 popularity slot for the 11th consecutive month. 2.5"
SSDs were the 2nd most popular SSD destinations.
3.5" SSDs rebounded
in popularity - with pageviews overtaking those of
1.8" SSDs.
The
top 30 subjects and articles (out of thousands on this site) are listed on the
home page. The most
popular individual
SSDs viewed in the past several years can be seen here.
Foremay ships TB 2.5" SSDs
Editor:- July 26,
2010 -
Foremay announced it is
shipping 2TB 3.5"
and 1TB 2.5"
SATA flash SSDs in its EC188 M-series model V product range.
R/W
speeds are up to 200MB/s.
ECC is 24-bit.
The SSDs are bootable and support all major operating systems.
Editor's
comments:- BiTMICRO
was the 1st company to announce a terabyte class 3.5" SSD (announced in
November 2007).
But this unit was a non standard height.
pureSilicon was the 1st
company to sample a terabyte
2.5" SSD in a
9.5mm high form factor (in
January 2009).
The
price of these
early TB SSDs meant they were only useful in niche applications. The lower
cost of flash today means that this class of product can be economic in
providing acceleration in legacy server designs - which combine high capacity
and concurrency. Foremay says application examples include - IPTV and VOD
servers.
How can SSDs change your life? - the movie
Editor:-
July 19, 2010 - as an alternative to
SSD market research
- which is hard to digest, and those long powerpoints and complicated
spreadsheets can send you to sleep - Kingston's SSD
marketers have launched a
competition to learn how users might really benefit from using their SSDs.
It
involves uploading a video with the theme "How Can a Kingston® SSDNow
Drive Change Your Life?". 1st prize is $7,500. If your video wins - they
might use it promotions (but you won't get any royalties. See also:-
SSD videos -
StorageSearch.com's pick of the best on the web.
Memoright announces new US distributor
Editor:- July
16, 2010 - Memoright
this week announced a new authorized distributor for their SSDs in the US -
First Commercial Technologies
based in Beverly Hills, CA.
Editor's comments:- distributing
2.5" SSDs has
been a risky business because consumer SSD
fashions and
prices have changed
really fast. But knowledgeable SSD
resellers can be a
useful source of advice for SOHOs and SMBs.
There's not much on FCT's
new website at the moment. But Jonny Brownleader at FCT - who sent me this news
- had previously been selling flash SSDs for a couple of years at
RocketDisk.
SSD Bookmarks - from SandForce's CEO
Editor:-
July 14, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published
SSD Bookmarks
- suggested by Michael Raam,
CEO SandForce.
It
seems like nearly everyone in the
SSD industry wants to know
what SandForce is doing and thinking.
Michael Raam's suggestions
include some great SSD resources which I had never seen before - which is why
the SSD Bookmarks
Series was created.
Do you want to understand more about the
issues that drive SandForce's thinking? If so - read the article |
| click here for all SSD news
(not just snapshots from the 2.5" form factor) | |
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| SSD Pricing -
where does all the money go? |
SSDs are among the most
expensive computer hardware products you will ever buy.
Understanding
the factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating
process... |
 |
...not made any easier when
market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more than 100x to 1!
Why is that? ...read
the article | | | | |
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