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Zsolt Kerekes,
editor StorageSearch.com
According
to SSD market
history the earliest 2.5" SSDs were shipped in 1991. But throughout
the whole 1990s the number of concurrent SSD companies (in all form factors)
only just crept over 10 companies.
In 2006 SSD awareness expanded
considerably as companies began to emerge from their embedded and enterprise
bat caves tempted by the early promise of the notebook market.
But
even by mid 2007 there were only 55 SSD companies (in all form factors) in the
market - which is 10x less than we have today.
Hundreds of companies
now design and sell 2.5" SSDs. You can scroll down this page to see who
they are below.
So
where do you begin?
One simple way to divide the market is -
it's those with SandForce
controllers inside - and then everyone else.
But that would be
too simplistic.
what
about speed?
OK another way is to narrow things down is to look at
speed.
If you need the
fastest SSDs in the
2.5" form factor - take a look at
SAS SSDs and
2.5" PCIe SSDs.
what
about rugged?
Do you mean rugged
industrial or
rugged for true military
deployments with fast secure data purge?
what about a 2.5"
SSD for notebooks?
The
notebook SSD
market has got more size options than that.
what about a 2.5"
SSD with a particular interface?
Did you mean
PATA SSDs?
SATA SSDs?
SAS SSDs?
parallel SCSI SSDs?
(yup new designs are still available to plug into legacy hard disk slots) and
- I almost forgot to mention them because they are going out of fashion -
fibre-channel SSDs. And
since the idea was first demonstrated in
2011 -
PCIe has been creeping
off cards and modules and into new models of
2.5" PCIe SSDs.
what
about that old SLC versus MLC thing?
It still matters
in some cases -
but not in all.
What about cheap? - who makes the cheapest
SSDs?
Here's an
article which shows how
prices have dropped in the past 10 years - and why I can't answer that
question. "SSD" is not enough enough information. What's in and what's
left out of the design - makes a big difference to the price. And you can't
trust consumer SSD
makers to make these decisions for you for a
variety of reasons.
who
are the top SSD companies which really matter?
I thought you were
never going to ask that. Here's what
millions of other SSD
readers think.
why does the SSD market look so complicated?
Because
it is
complicated.
I've only been talking about 2.5" SSDs here. If you
include all the other sizes - I currently track over 300 SSD makers - and that
could rise to
over 1,000 in a
handful of years time...
It's all about the size of the market
opportunity and how
the market will grow in the future.
Leading
SSD companies genuinely
disagree about the best way to design SSDs and where to put them.
The
market will get more complicated before it gets any
simpler.
what
about custom SSDs?
If you like what you see in 2.5" SSDs and
need something very similar to a standard product but with differences - then
customizing SSDs is
a well established way to get the products and features you want. | |
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