news about all types of solid state disks from over 140 manufacturers
SSD news ..
the fastest SSDs - click to read article
the fastest SSDs
Clarifying SSD Pricing - where does all the money go? - click to read the article
SSD pricing ..
top 10 SSD oems in 2009 Q3
top 10 SSD oems
the problem with flash SSD  write IOPS
problematic write IOPS
Notebook SSDs
Notebook SSDs ..
storage search
11 years - "leading the way to the new storage frontier"
SSD chips 1.0" SSDs 1.8" SSDs 2.5" SSDs 3.5" SSDs FC SSDs flash SSDs InfiniBand PATA SSDs PCIe SSDs RAM SSDs SAS SSDs SATA SSDs rackmount SSDs

Solid State Disks Buyers Guide - #1 article on storagesearch.com

153 SSD manufacturers listed by interface, form factor, technology and price guide - February 8, 2010 - by Zsolt Kerekes editor

the SSD Buyers Guide
Megabyte had found an unallocated
budget to pay for his first enterprise SSD
Foremay samples 200K IOPS class PCIe SSD Cards........
Editor:- February 8, 2010 Foremay is sampling its EC188 D-series 2nd generation fast PCIe SSDs with capacity upto 4TB (MLC) and 1TB (SLC).

Sequential R/W speeds are up to 1.6 GB/s and 1.5 GB/s respectively, and R/W IOPS up to 200K/180K.

Editor's comments:- Foremay's new PCIe SSDs aim at the same kind of customers who currently buy from Fusion-io and Texas Memory Systems. Customer qualification by OS and application type is a prerequisite to sales in this part of the market. Foremay will have to be aggressive on price.
...
SiliconDrives from Western Digital
2.5" SiliconDrives
from Western Digital
What's an SSD?
the Fastest SSDs
Clarifying SSD Prices
Year of the SSD bubble
the Top 10 SSD Companies
flash SSD Jargon Explained
the pros and cons of using SSD ASAPs
Storage Market Outlook 2010 to 2015
Are MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Apps?
SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
the Problem with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs
SSDs and Sun-Oracle - past failures - future challenges - new
This is the 8th annual series of this popular guide. Pageviews of this SSD Guide in January 2010 were 94% higher than a year ago. Pageviews for the top 5 SSD articles increased an average of 68%. Overall site readership for StorageSearch.com increased 26% year on year (all subjects - not just SSDs). In a fast growing market like SSDs - how do you spot the most significant trends? In my view the 2 most significant changes in the past 12 months have been:-
  • The astonishing rise in vendors marketing PCI Express SSDs and reader interest in this subject.

    In September 2009 search volume for PCIe form factor SSDs on StorageSearch.com surpassed that for 2.5" SSDs for the 1st time. That was a historic milestone for the SSD market. And that leadership by PCIe SSDs was maintained in January 2010 too - although the gap has narrowed rather widened. One explanation may be that the announced availability of 600MB/s capable SATA 3 and SAS SSDs in 2.5" form factors. This extends the capability of traditional disk slots and is good enough for many applications which don't need the ultimate in performance.
  • The breakdown of technology barriers needed to design your own flash SSD.

    More than 20 chipmakers now market SSD controller technology and related IP. As these companies don't market to end-users you might be forgiven for not having been caught in the blast wave of their marketing communications. That's not the style of this market - which likes to keep its successes quiet. Thousands of designers in hundreds of companies worldwide are now investigating this option. (Confirmed by our pageviews for SSD chip IP content.) It means that if big computer oems are successful in the SSD market they will turn their attention to designing future SSDs in-house rather than buying commercial off the shelf products. This gives tremendous advantages - which include the ability to tweak performance, reliability or power characteristics to match your application footprint better. It also reduces risk - because when you control the internals of the SSD - you are less likely to get nasty surprises from new product iterations.
StorageSearch.com is the leading publication covering the SSD market and we have regular contact with most vendors, including many in stealth mode.
What are the Main Changes in the SSD Market in the past 12 months? - from the article:- Charting the 30 Year Rise of the Solid State Disk Market
.
March 2009........... STEC announced that its revenue in 2008 had grown 20% year on year to $227.4 million.

EMC announced it has qualified higher capacity 400GB flash SSDs for use in its storage systems.

Western Digital entered the SSD market by acquiring SiliconSystems for $65 million in a cash transaction.

OCZ Technology Group unveiled a PCIe SSD at CeBIT. The Z Drive uses MLC flash and has 1TB capacity.

4DS announced additional funding as part of a multi-million dollar equity investment to port its RRAM technology to existing semiconductor fabs.

LSI announced better support for flash SSDs in the latest update to its MegaRAID SAS adapters. LSI calls this new feature SSD Guard - which can anticipate some types of flash SSD failures in RAID 0 configurations and starts rebuilding data on a spare unit.

Texas Memory Systems unveiled a PCIe SSD that will ship in Q2 2009. The RamSan-20 has 450GB of RAID protected SLC flash with 80 microseconds latency. R/W bandwidth is 700MB/s and 500MB/s respectively. Sustained IOPS are:- 120,000 random read, and 50,000 random write. Endurance is rated at 12 years (assuming 25% continuous writes). List price is about $18,000.

Hagiwara Sys-Com extended its range of 1" SSDs - with the launch of the CFast Storage Card which will ship in Q2. These industrial grade SSDs are form factor compatible with CF cards, but have a SATA interface. Capacities range from 2GB to 16GB. See also:- CFast - Evolution (pdf)

Pillar Data Systems launched the Axiom SSD Brick, a storage module with upto 12 Intel SSDs which is compatible with Pillar's distributed RAID systems. Pillar's application aware QoS software dynamically chooses storage types (SSD, FC-HDD, or SATA-HDD) and tunes performance to satisfy quality of service priorities based on user selections for each type of application.

StorageSearch.com launched a new series - the SSD Bookmarks - in which SSD thought leaders suggest articles and links which cast light on their own patch of the SSD jungle.

Fusion-io announced an oem deal with HP whose new PCIe based StorageWorks IO Accelerator for for HP BladeSystem c-Class servers is based on Fusion's ioMemory SSD technology. A low level formatting tool for the HP SSD enables users to choose what level of over-provisioning is used - as a performance tweaking option.

A-DATA launched a 512GB 2.5" flash SSD at CeBIT. The dual interface (USB and SATA) compatible SSD has R/W speeds upto 230MB/s and 160MB/s and is aimed at notebooks.
2.5"   flash SSDs  from Memoright
2.5" rugged 128GB SLC flash SSDs
800 write IOPS - from Memoright
.
New Guide for SSD Wannabies
Editor:- May 1, 2009 - StorageSearch.com published a new article this week called - "3 Easy Ways to Enter the SSD Market."

Nowadays it seems like everyone wants to get into the SSD market. This tells you how to do it. And gives real examples.

So if you're a hard disk maker, or RAID controller company or flash memory maker who still doesn't have an SSD product line here's my advice.

Stop giving the press interviews about how you're still - "looking" at the SSD market from the sidelines and evaluating what you might do next year maybe..."

Some of these storage manufacturers (and you know who I mean) - have been singing the same old song for years. And it just sounds pathetic. They should shape up, shut up, and get in the game.
click to read article - Enter  the SSD market I've had early feedback from senior VPs in several SSD companies already - who think it's a very interesting article. A shade cynical and brutal in places - but tells it how it is...
Datalight announced a new tree-based file system for embedded flash devices which boosts sequential and random write speeds as much as 5x faster on Microsoft Windows Mobile than the default file system.

Pretec Electronics is sampling a 128GB ExpressCard SSD for the notebook market with 38/30MB/s R/W speeds and hardware encryption. Volume shipments are expected next month.

Solid Access Technologies said it has broken the $10,000 price barrier for a high performance rackmount RAM SSD. It's offering a 2U 16GB FC or SAS connected USSD 200 model for just $9,900.

Sun Microsystems launched its new Sun Flash Analyzer - a free Java tool to help users determine how much their (Solaris, Windows and Linux) servers could benefit from SSD acceleration. The company also launched a try before you buy marketing promotion for its servers which have Sun branded 2.5" SLC flash SSDs pre-integrated. The 32GB SATA SSDs have sequential R/W upto 250MB/s and 170MB/s respectively. Random R/W IOPS are upto 35,000 and 3,300 respectively (4k blocks). Endurance is 3 years - assuming max write speed and 100% write duty cycle.

Dell announced SSD options for its iSCSI compatible EqualLogic PS6000 storage arrays. Pricing starts at $25,000. This brings the number of rackmount SSD oems to 34. That number is expected to reach 300 in 2010.

SiliconSystems announced that it has shipped over 4 million SiliconDrives integrated with the company's 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.

Apacer launched the SAFD 254 range of SATA 2.5" SLC flash SSDs. Aimed at the industrial market, operating temperate is from -40°C to + 85°C. Capacity is from 8GB to 128GB. R/W speeds are 150MB/s and 130MB/s respectively. Internal S.M.A.R.T technology logs spare blocks and erase counts. ECC corrects upto 8 bit errors per 512 bytes. Power consumption is 400mA (active), 140mA (idle). Volume production starts in Q2 2009 - with antipicated prototype price of $900 for the 128GB model.

Dolphin launched the StorExpress a rackmount SLC flash SSD with upto 960GB capacity. The PCIe connected SSD has R/W throughput upto 2,700MB/s and 50 microsecond access latency. Dolphin quotes a figure of 270,000 IOPS but the initial datasheet doesn't break out IOPS figures for reads and writes. The StorExpress can be located upto 10m from the host bus using copper cable and 300m with optical fibre.

Winchester Systems said it will launch a range of rugged rackmount SSDs this month at FOSE . Among these is a 1U RAID 5 / 6 protected rugged SSD array - the RX-1300 FlashDisk - which houses 12x 2.5" SSDs. Interface options for the array include SAS, FC and PCIe.

Viking Modular Solutions launched the SATA Cube - a flash SSD which provides upto 256GB capacity in a small 30x32mm footprint. Sustained R/W speeds are 110MB/s and 79MB/s respectively. It's available as a BGA device or with a MicroSATA connector.

Fusion-io announced an enhanced version of its ioDrive - called the ioDrive Duo which will ship next month. Capacity has doubled to 640GB with 1.2TB planned for the 2nd half of 2009. Performance has been enhanced too. The ioDrive Duo can easily sustain 1.5 Gbytes/sec of read bandwidth. Read IOPS performance is 186,000 (4k packet size). Write IOPS reaches 167,000 (4k packet size).

Memoright said it will ship a new industrial grade 2.5" flash SSD range in May. The rSSD (upto 128GB capacity) is designed to operate from -40 to +85 degrees C and the company says its product testing processes satisfy MIL-STD-810F. R/W speeds are both upto 120MB/s.

Compellent announced it would demonstrate its tiered SSD technology at a user event in May 2009. The physical layer is based on STEC's ZeusIOPS SSDs. The soft part, something which Compellent calls policy driven Data Progression apparently " minimizes the number of SSDs required while providing the highest levels of performance for mission-critical applications."

PhotoFast launched a PCIe SSD for the Windows Vista / XP market - the G-Monster-PCIe Turbo Speed SSD. Capacity options include:- 256GB, 512GB and 1TB. Both MLC and SLC options are available. The flash array includes onboard RAID protection and has R/W speeds upto 750MB/s and 700MB/s respectively.

Pliant Technology announced it has received $15 million in Series C funding. This will be used as working capital to support volume production of its SAS compatible flash SSDs.
.
April 2009 StorageSearch.com launched a new directory of merchant market SSD controller chip vendors.

SandForce unveiled its SF-1000 family of SSD Processors - aimed at oems building SATA flash SSDs. Its 2.5" SSD reference design kit is the fastest 2.5" SATA flash SSD on the market - with 250MB/s symmetric R/W throughput and 30,000 R/W IOPS.

Fusion-io was named the #1 company in StorageSearch.com's list of the the Top 10 SSD OEMs based on search volume in Q1 2009. This was the 1st time that the #1 slot has been held by a company which does not make traditional hard-disk form-factor SSDs. Also this month, Fusion-io announced it has closed $47.5 million in Series B funding and named a new CEO, David Bradford.

Super Talent Technology pre-announced its RAIDDrives SSD product line. This connects via PCIe and supports up to 2TB of RAID5 protected MLC flash storage. R/W performance is upto 1.2GB/s and 1.3GB/s respectively. More details are promised in June 2009.

Solidata announced it has appointed Melbourne based Solid State Central as its new exclusive distributor for the SSD market in Australia.
Fusion-io fast SSDs - click for more info
world's fastest production PCIe SSD
from Fusion-io
Intel said it is EOLing its Z-P230 SSD module which was aimed at the netbook market. 25 companies now make SSD chips, DOMs or SSD modules designed to fit into very small footprints.

Samsung will pay Spansion $70 million as part of a flash memory patent settlement. The companies have also exchanged rights in their patent portfolios in the form of licenses and covenants subject to a confidential settlement agreement.

Samsung claimed to be the 1st company to offer SSDs with hardware-based encryption in a misleading press release.

OCZ unveiled its 1st miniPCI-Express compatible SSDs. Aimed at notebooks OCZ miniPCI-E options include:- 16GB or 32GB capacity, and 2 interface options. SATA models - have R/W speeds 110MB/s and 51MB/s respectively . PATA models - have R/W speeds 45MB/s and 35MB/s respectively.
Texas Memory Systems announced the RamSan-620 - a 2U rackmount SLC Flash SSD with 2TB ($88,000 list price) to 5TB capacity and 2 to 8 FC or InfiniBand ports. Throughput is 3GB/s. R/W latency is 250µS and 80µS respectively. Transactional performance is 250,000 random IOPS. Power consumption is 325W. Multiple RamSan-620s can scale to higher capacities.

Solid Access Technologies' President, Tomas Havrda - shared his SSD Bookmarks with readers of StorageSearch.com.

MAGMA and Dolphin jointly announced they have collaborated to develop an improved version of the latter's previously announced 2U StorExpress PCIe SSD product line, which will ship next month. Capacity options include 0.5TB (under $20K), 1TB and 2TB. It achieves 270K read and write IOPs (512 bytes to 4KB blocks) and up to 2.8GB/s of sustained bandwidth. Latency is less than 50µS. The StorExpress enclosure can be positioned 1,000 feet away from the host server using fiber.
.
May 2009.............. Dolphin's CEO, Tim Miller shared his SSD Bookmarks with readers of StorageSearch.com.

Ramtron cited the auto market crash as a significant factor in the 26% decline in sales of its F-RAM memory in Q1 2009.

JEDEC published a new standard for 1.8" Slim SSDs. MO-297 defines the dimensions, layout and connector position for 54mm x 39mm SSDs with a standard SATA connector.

AGIGA Tech started sampling its new AGIGARAM non-volatile system technology which delivers densities between 4 megabytes (32 megabits) and 2 gigabytes (16 gigabits) and peak transfer rates equivalent to DRAMs.

STEC confirmed rumors that its Zeus-IOPS SSDs have indeed been oemed by IBM in several popular servers and storage systems. And STEC said it expects sales of its ZeusIOPS (2.5" and 3.5") flash SSDs in the 1st half of 2009 to reach $65 million.

DDRdrive emerged from stealth mode and launched the DDRdrive X1 - a PCIe compatible RAM SSD with onboard flash backup. Load / restore time is 60S. Performance is over 200K IOPS (512B). R/W throughput is 215MB/s and 155MB/s respectively. Capacity is 4GB. OS compatibility:- Microsoft Windows (various). Price is $1,495.

Walton Chaintech launched its APOGEE Mars SSD for the "hardcore gamers market". Includes 512MB mobile SDRAM buffer, capacity upto 250GB, R/W speeds upto 250MB/s and 180MB/s respectively.

Patriot Memory launched its Torqx line of SATA compatible 2.5" flash SSDs with 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities. The new models include 64MB of DRAM cache and deliver upto up to 260MB/s read, 180MB/s write speeds. OS support includes:- WindowsXP, Vista, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Super Talent announced new firmware for its UltraDrive ME series 2.5" SSDs. This includes what the company calls a "Performance Refresh Tool" to fix performance degradation problems in its earlier generation of SSDs. Although some commentators on the web have attributed such problems to fragmentation - that's completely incorrect! Since the access time for random reads in a well designed SSD is nearly identical for all locations - the real problem in Super Talent's SSDs (and some models from Intel) was due to badly designed products which were rushed to market too soon without adequate testing. For a deeper look at these issues see Can you trust flash SSD specs & benchmarks? - published nearly a year ago - which first alerted buyers to these problems. See also:- SSD controllers and IP.
.......
flash SSD Jargon Explained
typical news flash:- dd/mm/yy - Fast symmetric R/W IOPS high endurance, MLC SSD, with 3 levels of wear-leveling, massive over-provisioning, write attenuation and fast garbage collection provides competitive alternative to RAM SSDs.

Do you understand the list of ingredients in all the solid state drive headlines?
flash SSD Jargon Understanding what goes on inside flash SSDs - can be as important as knowing what you can do with them. See the article flash SSD Jargon Explained.
............................................................................................
OEMs Race to Design Their Own SSDs..........
Editor:- May 29, 2009 - StorageSearch.com disclosed week that search volume for SSD SoCs (systems on a chip and controllers) has overtaken 1" SSDs (includes miniature SSD modules) this month for the first time.

Guess that confirms my sneaking suspicion that a lot of oems want to design their own SSDs. It used to be very difficult for manufacturers to do this, but it's gotten a lot easier recently.

Although SSD architecture is more complex than RAID systems - what's happening today in the SSD market is similar to the emergence of RAID controller companies in early days of the RAID market. (And that's one of the reasons I chose the same icon for this subject BTW.)

Nearly 20 companies selling SSD controller technology and IP are listed in our directory.

In 5 years' time - designing application specific SSDs for common applications will be as easy as designing a NAS box is today.
SSD SoCs controllers But between now and then - expect to see a lot more confusion and upsets in the SSD market.
Toshiba announced it is offering 512GB SSDs as an option in notebooks for the Japanese market. The new, Toshiba-developed 512GB SSD employs a 2-bit-per-cell MLC flash memory - which gives 4x the capacity of SLC flash used in industrial and enterprise SSDs for the same silicon wafer footprint. One of the failures of the SSD market in 2008 was the low performance of SSDs integrated in notebooks. Toshiba's new notebook seems to address that market failure . The company says its new SSD controller boosts data throughput figures of 230MB/s reads and 180MB/s writes.

Skymedi launched a SATA SSD controller aimed at the notebook market. It supports R/W speeds up to 180MB/s and 150MB/s respectively and upto 512GB capacity. That brings the number of companies listed on our merchant market SSD controller and IP page up to 17.

TDK launched a range of 2.5" industrial temperature SATA SSDs (SLC and MLC) with upto 64GB capacity and R/W speeds of 95MB/s and 55MB/s respectively. Other features include 15-bit/sector ECC, 128-bit AES encryption and SMART. The new SSDs include internal UPS and an auto-recovery function that automatically recovers data when read disturbance errors occur. The company also launched a range of 1.8" SSDs.

OCZ launched its fastest 2.5" consumer SATA SSDs - the Summit Series - with 200MB/s sustained write and 250GB capacity.

Unity Semiconductor exited stealth mode and stated its aim to have the lowest manufacturing cost per bit in the non volatile memory industry with a new breakthrough technology called CMOx. The company said it will ship 64Gb devices in volume in 2011.

Swissbit launched an industrial 2.5" PATA/SATA SLC flash SSD product line with 45MB/s R/W performance and 2GB to 32GB capacity.

PhotoFast launched its G-Monster 1.8" SATA SSD with internal 64MB DRAM cache and upto 128GB capacity. It supports R/W speeds upto 230MB/s and 160MB/s respectively. The company says - what's important in this type of notebook product is not just sequential R/W throughput for large blocks - but also write performance for small random blocks. It claims its 12MB/s (for 4KB blocks) is best in class.

White Electronic Designs introduced a surface mount miniature PATA SLC SSD (22mm x 27mm PBGA) with 1, 2 and 4GB densities for use in high reliability embedded defense applications such as aircraft, communications and missiles.

MemoCom emerged on the international scene. The company announced it would show a comprehensive range of SSDs from 1" upto 3.5" at Computex 2009 in June.

Silicon Power launched a key ring form factor dual interface eSATA/USB MLC flash SSD. Capacity is 64GB, R/W speeds are:- 90MB/s and 50MB/s for eSATA, dropping down to 30MB/s and 20MB/s for USB.

ASMedia Technology became an executive member of the SSD Alliance .
.
June 2009.............. Avnet became a distributor for White Electronic Designs.....................
PhotoFast showed a faster version 2 prototype of its G-Monster PCIe SSD at Computex. Read performance is claimed to be 1,500MB/s.

Numonyx announced a technology agreement with Samsung Electronics to develop common specifications for Phase Change Memory (PCM) products.
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.

SanDisk started shipping its 2nd generation of miniature PATA compatible SSD modules for the netbook market. Performance is 9,000 vRPM and capacities range from 8 to 64GB. SanDisk says it has improved the non volatile cache to prevent "stalling" or "shuddering" which was a problem in 1st generation netbook SSDs.

Fusion-io announced it will ship a consumer optimized version of of its enterprise PCIe SSD family in July. Priced at $895, the ioXtreme has 80GB MLC flash capacity and average throughput of 520MB/s. Supported OS's include:- Windows XP, Vista and Linux.

DTS won a best of show award at Interop Tokyo 2009 for its Platinum SSD. The company says it will ship a 2.5" version of this product - which delivers about 40,000 IOPS and 250MB/s R/W - later this month.

PhotoFast launched the fastest ExpressCard - initially for the Japanese market. R/W speeds are 180MB/s and 100MB/s respectively.

NextIO announced it would demonstrate a 12 slot PCIe flash SSD system, designed in collaboration with Marvell later this month. Each slot would be capable of over 200,000 IOPs and offer 400GB capacity.

Western Digital Solid State Storage announced it has begun shipping its new SiliconDrive III SSD product family which includes 2.5" SATA and PATA and 1.8" Micro SATA products with target read speeds up to 100MB/s and write speeds to 80MB/s in capacities up to 120GB. SiliconDrive III has been designed and optimized for high reliability in demanding 24x7 applications in the embedded systems, media appliance and data streaming markets.

StorageSearch.com published a new article - giving an Overview of the Notebook SSD Market. This is a troubled and complex segment of the SSD market - which has earned a justifiably bad reputation. Nevertheless SSD vendors continue to throw products at the notebook market in many shapes and sizes - hoping that something will stick before their cash runs out.

Tower Semiconductor, announced it has taken an equity position (value approx $1.25 million) in Crocus Technologies, and announced it is porting Crocus's MRAM to its 200mm wafer fab.

Samsung started sampling a SATA mini-card SSD for use in the netbook marketplace. The 30mm x 51mm x 3.75mm miniature SSD weighs 8.5g and consumes 0.3W. Capacity options are - 16GB, 32GB and 64GB. R/W speeds are 200MB/s and 100MB/s respectively.
Universal Solid State Disk USSD 200 from Solid Access Technologies with SAS, FC, SCSI or custom interfaces
fast rackmount RAM SSDs
SAS, FC & SCSI interface options
from Solid Access Technologies
.......
click to see profile and editor's analysis for Intel
SSD Bookmarks

suggested by - Kevin T Crow, Strategy Specialist, 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
Corsair announced 128GB and 64GB versions of its 220MB/s R/W 2.5" SATA MLC flash SSD family with 128MB of cache memory. Online price for the 128GB model is approx $355.

Dataslide announced it was close to productizing its revolutionary hard drive technology. Why mention it here? If successful - the technology (which we first reported on 7 years ago) would deliver similar IOPS and throughput performance as a mid range PCIe SSD - but at the media cost of a hard drive.

Foremay announced one of the fastest 2.5" SLC flash SSDs in the market. The SATA compatible SC199 Cheetah V-Series has sustained R/W speeds of 260MB/s and /250MB/s respectively and 42,000 random IOPS. Capacity options range from 32GB to 256GB.
...
Targa Series 4 - 2.5 inch SCSI flash disk
Removable 2.5" Military SSDs
from Targa Systems
.
July 2009.............. WhipTail Technologies announced a 6TB MLC version of its 2U flash SSD appliance.

Ramtron announced that its FRAM has been selected to store the virtual block-to-sector map in a new flash SSD design by SBS Science and Technology. The use of hybridizing memory technologies - for example using faster RAM-like non volatile memory in some parts of the SSD device and slower flash-like memory in the bulk storage arrays to accelerate performance inside SSD caches was predicted by StorageSearch.com several years ago in various articles including the Flash SSD Performance Roadmap.

StorageSearch.com published the 9th quarterly edition of the Top 10 SSD OEMs - based on comparing search volume in Q2 2009 for 155 SSD oems. For the 1st time - the top 10 list included a company whose primary business is designing SSD controllers - SandForce - which was ranked #2. The #1 company, for the 2nd consecutive quarter was Fusion-io.

OCZ announced faster versions of its 2.5" SATA flash SSDs. By increasing the internal cache speed by 8% the Vertex Turbo now delivers read and write speeds clocking in at up to 270MB/s read and 210MB/s write. These are fast for consumer SSDs - but see the fastest SSDs list for much faster devices.

Foremay has recently announced the fastest 1.8" SLC flash SSD. The SATA compatible SC 199 Cheetah has sustained R/W speeds of 250MB/s and 220MB/s respectively. R/W IOPS are 6,000 and 5,200 respectively. Capacity options range from 16GB to 64GB. Endurance for the 16GB device is rated at 87 years assuming 50GB sequential writes per day.

Active Media launched its SaberTooth brand of SATA Mini PCIe MLC flash SSD cards as upgrades for Asus Eee PCs. R/W speeds are upto 155MB/s and 100MB/s respectively. The 64GB model costs $219.95.

STEC announced it had received $120 million order for its ZeusIOPS SSDs from a single enterprise storage customer for delivery in the 2nd 1/2 of 2009. This followed an earlier announcement that the company has partnered with a leading defense systems contractor to supply its MACH8 industrial SSDs for integration into a platform designed on behalf of the U.S. Military as part of a 12 month, $28 million supply contract.

Curtiss-Wright launched the VPX3-FSM a rugged 256GB encrypted SLC flash SSD in a 3U VPX form factor module. Aimed at integrators in the aerospace and defense markets, the conduction-cooled SSD can be configured to appear to the host as 4 separate 64GB SATA drives or as a single drive with hardware RAID0 support. It's rated at 160MB/s memory R/W when configured as RAID0, and 75MB/s per port in a JBOD configuration.

Fusion-io announced the results of TPC-H benchmark tests sponsored by, and running on, Dell servers, and audited by Performance Metrics, Inc. The tested system achieved 28,772 QphH on a 100GB database, at a cost of $1.47 per database transaction. (The typical 3 year cost of ownership for the whole system including software is quoted as $41,998.)
RamSan-20  very fast PCIe SSD from Texas Memory Systems
RamSan-20 very fast 450GB PCIe SLC flash SSD
from Texas Memory Systems
.
The New Skinny on flash SSDs
Editor:- July 28, 2009 - StorageSearch.com today published an article - RAM Cache Ratios in flash SSDs - which proposes new terms to describe and differentiate products in the flash SSD market.

It is hoped that the new classification jargon will be useful to users who have to evaluate lots of products, and will be useful to vendors as a shorthand when communicating about different segments within their flash SSD product lines.

Within the 2.5" SSD market - for example - the fastest products confusingly include models in all 3 of the new categories.
read the article RAM Cache Ratios in flash SSDs The new article explains why it's important to know the underlying RAM cache architecture - even if you're happy with the R/W and IOPS performance. ...read the article
.
.
Intel announced a process shrink for its X25-M - SATA 2.5" MLC flash SSD. The new 34nm devices deliver upto 8,800 (4KB) write IOPS and up to 35,000 read IOPS. R/W speeds are 250MB/s and 70MB/s respectively. R/W latenciy is 65µS and 85µS. The 160GB model is priced at $440 (1,000 unit price point).

IDT announced it was working with Micron to develop a commercial PCIe flash SSD for the server market. Micron had previously tested market reaction by unveiling a prototype PCIe SSD (with 800MB/s R/W speeds) in November 2008.
.
August 2009......... STEC said it will ship 6Gb/s SAS flash SSDs in both 2.5" and 3.5" form factors in Q4. STEC's new ZeusIOPS SSDs will deliver 80,000 IOPS random read, 40,000 IOPS random write with transfer speeds of 550MB/s read and 300MB/s write. STEC also said it's sampling a faster version of its 3.5" FC compatible SSDs. STEC also announced a new policy of offering MLC flash in so called "enterprise class SSDs".

Texas Memory Systems launched the RamSan-6200 a 40U rackmount SSD with 100TB of SLC flash storage, 5 million IOPS performance and upto 60GB/s throughput - which uses approximately 6kW of power. It's a scaled up system that combines 20x RamSan-620s in a single datacenter rack and uses TMS' TeraWatch software to provide unified management and monitoring from a single GUI console.

PhotoFast disclosed details of its G-Monster Quad Drive SSD which includes 4x RAIDed CFast SSDs in a SATA compatible 100mm x 70mm x 9.5mm module.

Capacities are 8, 16 and 32GB. R/W speeds are 100MB/s and 50MB/s respectively.

Intel and Micron Technology today announced the development of a new 3-bit-per-cell MLC NAND technology, leveraging their 34nm geometry process. The new 32Gb chips, expected to ship in the 4th quarter, will typically be used in consumer storage devices such as flash cards and USB drives rather than SSDs until the reliability of the new technology can be proven.

SandForce announced the availability of the SF-1000 family Evaluation 2.5" SSD featuring 34nm flash from Micron.
Why Consumers Can Expect More Flaky Flash SSDs!
Editor:- August 10, 2009 - a new article published on StorageSearch.com explains why the consumer flash SSD quality problem is not going to get better any time soon.

You know what I mean. Product recalls, firmware upgrades, performance downgrades and bad behavior which users did not anticipate from reading glowing magazine product reviews. And that's if they can get hold of the new products in the first place.

The new article explains why it's happening and gives some suggested workarounds for navigating in a world of imperfect flash SSD product marketing. ...read the article
.
Samsung Electronics announced it is targeting the PC gaming industry with its 256GB SSD. This seems to confirm the consumer-led focus of the company's business strategy. Earlier StorageSearch.com had said it doesn't think Samsung's SSD product marketing is good enough to achieve success in the enterprise server market.

SMART Modular Technologies announced a new range of rugged 2.5" 256GB SSDs for defense applications that will ship next month. Data declassification compliance is implemented by the company's EraSure technology. The models comply with MIL-STD-810F environmental specifications for operating shock, vibration, humidity and altitude, and each drive passes a demanding 8 hour, full-temperature range burn-in test prior to shipment.

KingFast announced its ZIF range of MLC SSDs available in 1.8", 2.5" and 3.5" sizes with access times of 0.1mS.

Skymedi wants to concentrate efforts on its flash controller business and spin off its multimedia processor division according to a report in DIGITIMES .

Dataram said it will launch an SSD accelerator at SNW in October. The product is currently being evaluated by key customers.
............................................................................................
September 2009... StorageSearch.com revealed that in August 2008 reader pageviews for PCIe SSDs were approximately 6x the level of a year ago.

Violin Memory announced that Donald Basile has been named CEO. Dr. Basile (with over 20 years of leadership experience) had recently served as the CEO of Fusion-io.

Texas Memory Systems expanded its IP base with the acquisition of data management patents and source code from Incipient. TMS also published a new video explaining subtle operational features of its RamSan-20 PCIe SSD.

Tom's Hardware published a performance review of a dozen disk form factor (1.8" & 2.5") flash SSDs. Most exceeded 200MB/s R/W throughput.

Intel said it will deploy up to 10,000 SSD notebooks this year to its own employees following an internal review of the benefits.

StorageSearch.com showed how a single SSD magic number - write IOP terabytes per dollar - can help in ranking server acceleration products in an article on its home page.

2 new company profiles have been added to our our classic SSD manufacturers directory. These are:- China based KingFast, and California based MagicRAM. Also 2 new companies have been added to the SSD SoC directory bringing the total up to 21.

Adaptec announced a new platform for integrators building hybrid storage pools using SSDs. Its MaxIQ SSD Cache Performance Kit (which operates with upto 4x customized 32GB Intel SSDs) includes software that identifies frequently (hot) read data blocks and optimizes subsequent "reads" by moving "hot" data directly into the SSD cache for lower latencies and higher system performance.

Pliant Technology started sampling its Lightning family of 2.5" (150GB) and 3.5" (300GB) skinny flash SAS SSDs. The SLC drives deliver R/W rates upto 525/340MB/s and 160,000 IOPS (for a 90% R, 10% W mix). Pricing for a single EFD is expected to fall between $15/GB and $30/GB.

NextIO named DaWane Wanek as VP of world wide sales. Prior to joining NextIO, Wanek served at Dell, where he was a director of the Advanced Systems Group.

Avere Systems announced it has secured $15 million in Series A funding from Menlo Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners. Avere founders were members of the team that created Spinnaker Networks, an innovator in scalable grid storage solutions, acquired by NetApp in 2004 for $300 million.

More who oems whom - SSD news stories.
  • Samsung announced that HP was offering its SSDs as an option in ProLiant servers.
.
Need SSD Acceleration ASAP? - see SSD ASAPs
Editor:- December 18, 2009 - StorageSearch.com today published a new article which discusses the pros and cons of using SSD ASAPs - Auto-tuning SSD Accelerated Pools of storage.
read the article on SSD ASAPs How can server users easily decide if they should ignore these products - or spend more time looking at them? It's going to be a huge market. ...read the article
.
StorageSearch.com published a new directory of Fast Purge flash SSDs to help designers in defense applications.

Foremay announced the SC199 Hi-Rel Series SLC flash SSDs in 1.8", 2.5" and 3.5" form factors which meet military standards MIL-STD-810G and MIL-STD-833G. Operational temperature options include -40°C to approx 100°C.

Dataram launched the XcelaSAN - a fast 2U rackmount flash SSD with 450,000 random IOPS performance (assuming 50/50 R/W and 4k blocks), and upto 8x 4Gbps FC ports - aimed at the SAN application acceleration market. Pricing starts at $65,000 for a unit with approx 360GB internal flash, of which 128GB is effectively used as a cache. Dataram's product includes proprietary software - which does away with the need for an SSD expert engineer to identify hotspots and relocate critical data. The company says the XcelaSAN will automatically learn and self optimize during the 1st few hours of operation.

Samsung announced it has begun producing 512Mb PRAM memory. PRAM combines the speed of RAM for processing functions with the non-volatile characteristics of flash memory for storage. This has been a Problematic (rather than a Perfect) RAM technology. Samsung originally announced a working prototype of the 512Mb PRAM 3 years earlier - in September 2006.
............................................................................................
October 2009....... Seagate disclosed it has started sampling its 1st SSD product to major oems.

Emulex expanded its InSpeed chip bridging technology to simplify the job of designing fast native SAS and Fibre-channel compatible flash SSDs.

StorageSearch.com disclosed that search volumes for PCIe form factor SSDs in September 2009 had surpassed that for 2.5" SSDs for the 1st time.

Dane-Elec Memory announced it will start shipping a range of USB 3 compatible external SSDs with 250MB/s throughput in December. They use Intel's flash SSDs.

Avere Systems unveiled its FXT Series of clusterable 2U rackmount hybrid NAS appliances. Each module contains upto 8x 3.5" SAS hard drives, 64GB DRAM and 1GB of nv RAM. The embedded Avere OS provides storage acceleration by dynamically tiering between the internal rotating and solid state storage. List pricing starts at $52,500.

Active Media Products launched its Aviator 312 line of bus powered fast USB 3.0 external SSDs with R/W speeds upto 240MB/s and 160MB/s respectively. Measuring less than 3" long and only 0.2" thin, the A312 is smaller than a credit card and is designed to fit in a pocket. Capacity options include:- 16GB ($89), 32GB ($119) and 64GB ($209).

Some of the technical folks at Texas Memory Systems have contributed to a new book called - Oracle Performance Tuning with SSDs - written by Oracle expert, Mike Ault. This is part of an august collection of Oracle tuning books published by Rampant Press.

Foremay entered the PCIe SSD market with its EC188 Dragon series - which is now sampling. Supporting both x8 and x16 slots - R/W performance is upto 1.5 GB/s and 1.3 GB/s respectively. Both MLC and SLC models are available. Capacities range from 128GB to 4TB. Sequential R/W IOPS is up to 90,000/80,000. Random R/W IOPS is up to 27,000/12,000. Features include power outage protection, dual PCIe configuration through a built-in PCIe RAID controller, and active garbage collection. OS support includes Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux, and UNIX.

Panasas announced support for SSD acceleration within its Series 9 ActiveStor hybrid storage systems ( ASAPs). A single 42U rack configured with the new Series 9 system is capable of delivering an estimated 80,000 NFS operations per second, as well as 6 gigabytes per second of throughput.

Storspeed emerged from stealth mode and unveiled the SP5000 Application-Aware cache. This is a NAS compatible SSD accelerator (base price $65,000 ) which uses a fat flash SSD environment integrated within a hybrid storage pool.

Foremay launched its EC188 Jaguar Series flash SSDs optimized for the Mac market. Form factors include 1.8", 2.5" and 3.5", interface types include SATA, micro SATA, SATA LIF, IDE and IDE ZIF/LIF. Capacties range from 64GB to 1TB and R/W speeds are upto 260/230MB/s.

WhipTail Technologies became the 1st SSD appliance company to market integrated in-line deduplication. WhipTail announced it will ship its newly renamed Racerunner (6TB) NAS SSDs with Exar's Hifn BitWackr deduplication and compression solution in Q4 2009. Racerunner has demonstrated deduplication performance in excess of 1Gbps.

Fusion-io published a case study showing how their ioDrive SSDs helped MySpace reduce server count, claim back 50% rack space while increasing application performance (compared to its legacy SAS RAID system) and massively decreasing electrical power. As a result of this initial project - MySpace plans to replace all remaining 1,770 2U servers with Fusion-io enabled servers as they reach their end-of-life.

Solidata unveiled its SS 2.5" SATA line of enterprise flash SSDs which use SSD controllers from SandForce. That contributes to its high R/W performance (280/270MB/s) and high R/W IOPS (50,000/35,000).

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.

Sun Microsystems launched 2 new SSD product lines. The F5100 Flash Array ($45,995 upwards) is a new 1U rackmount SSD - which has 16 SAS ports and provides upto 1.92TB capacity. R/W IOPS are upto 1.6M and 1.2M respectively (for a system populated with 80 SSD modules). The FlashFire F20 is a 96GB SLC flash PCIe SSD with 100k read and 84k write IOPS. R/W rates are upto 1092MB/s and 501MB/s respectively. The card also includes a SAS controller.

Samsung announced it has invested in Fusion-io. Quarter-over-quarter sales for Fusion-io products have nearly doubled since the company announced its first product, the ioDrive, in late 2007.

pureSilicon starts shipping its Renegade R2 Series 2.5" SATA SLC flash SSDs this month. Sequential R/W speeds are 255MB/s and 180MB/s respectively. IOPS performance is:- 18,000 IOPS random read: (4K) and 1,200 IOPS random write. Capacities upto 128GB in a low profile (9.5mm height) 2.5" form factor and -40°C to +85°C operating temperature.
AoE Enabled storage  for consumers & SMBs from JWE - click for more info
AoE Enabler storage
for consumers, SOHO & SMBs
from JWE
.
read the article about SSD integrity written by SandForce
Data Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design
Editor:- October 16, 2009 - StorageSearch.com recently published a new article called - Data Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design - written by Kent Smith Senior Director, Product Marketing, SandForce.

Since bursting onto the SSD scene in April 2009, SandForce has achieved remarkably high reader popularity. How did a company whose business is designing SSD controllers achieve this? - especially when the direct market for its products today numbers less than 1,000 oems.

The answer is - that if you want to know what the future of 2.5" enterprise SATA SSDs might look like -you have to look at the leading technology cores that will affect this market. Even if you're not planning to use SandForce based products yourself - you can't afford to ignore them - because they are setting the agenda.

Reliability is the next new thing for SSD designers and users to start worrying about.
read the article about SSD integrity 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
Numonyx published an article in EDN - Phase-Change Technology Enters The Memory Market - which compares the cost, latency and endurance of PCM to SLC flash. Whereas the cost of PCM - based on silicon real-estate per GB is currently 20% more than SLC - the write latency is 1,000x lower. This may justify its use in some SSD designs.

Texas Memory Systems announced that its RamSan-620 - (2U 5TB SLC flash SSD, price $220,000 approx) - has achieved a record setting SPC-1 result. It produced 254,994.21 SPC-1 IOPS with average response time of 0.72mS and at a cost of only $1.13 per SPC-1 IOPS - which is better than any competing RAID or Flash solution.

SMART 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 SSDs include EraSure technology, which provides secure erase features.
.
November 2009 Link_A_Media Devices secured $18 million series C funding.

SandForce announced that it has closed $21 million in Series C funding.

SanDisk announced that its 64GB (9,000 vRPM) pSSD module has been selected as a standard SSD option in Sony's VAIO X ultra-thin laptop.

Foremay announced that secure erase and fast purge options are now available for most models in its SC199 SSD product family.

Forward Insights published a new market report this month - SSDs: Enabling MLC Technology in the Enterprise (price is $6,499).

Unigen announced it will manufacture a new range of flash SSDs using SSD processors from SandForce. The 2.5" SSDs will be available with SATA or SAS interfaces.

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.

Global Unichip announced mass-production of its ARM7-based GP5080 series PATA / SATA compatible SSD SoC platform for use in portable consumer products. There are 2 different models. GP5080 is optimized for cost sensitive applications by removing the need for external DRAM cache (skinny SSDs), while GP5086 supports DRAM cache for (regular SSD) applications needing extra extended lifetime (write attenuation).

Adaptec released the results of 3rd party performance testing of its new MaxIQ SSD Cache Performance Solution in MySQL environments.

STEC disclosed that its biggest customer, EMC, hasn't sold as many of its SSDs as expected - and will carry inventory into 2010. If this was a surprise to anyone it's only because they didn't read my analysis (published April 1, 2009) which appeared in the 8th quarterly edition of the top 10 SSD oems and was repeated in my comments in STEC's profile page in which I explicitly warned about STEC's over reliance on partners like EMC who were adding very little added value to their SSD offerings - and underperforming in the rackmount SSD market.

A legal company called Brower Piven said it was considering a class action lawsuit against STEC regarding what it called "misleading statement(s) to investors" (earlier this year) regarding the state of design wins and oem potential business related to STEC's ZeusIOPS.

OCZ 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.

NextIO entered the multi-million IOPS rackmount SSD market via an oem agreement which leverages multiple 225GB / 450GB PCIe SLC SSDs made by Texas Memory Systems. Available immediately, the 14 slot NextIO application acceleration appliance can be configured and reconfigured with any mix of servers and TMS SSD cards depending on system demands. Pricing for a basic configuration starts at $19,500, which includes implementation, training and onsite application or database tuning assistance.

PhotoFast unveiled a new range of 1.8" native PATA MLC regular flash SSDs with internal garbage collection -the G-monster-1.8" IDE V4. Capacity options include:- 32/64/128/256G. Internal cache is 64MB, R/W speeds are upto 128MB/s and 90MB/s respectively. PhotoFast says that its internal hardware garbage collection makes the SSD especially suited to traditional OS's which don't have TRIM such as XP. The drive rearranges itself when the laptop is in idle time. The benefits might not shine through in server style benchmarks (which assume 100% duty cycles) but for real life notebook usage it should work adequately.

Google opened its doors to developers who want to work with Chrome OS - a new operating system for web notebook products. In the opening video of the Chrome OS blog we learned that the architects of the new OS are "obsessed with speed". Therefore the new netbook OS is designed from the ground up to support only flash SSDs as the default mass storage.

Axxana announced it has secured $9 million Series B investment led by Carmel Ventures. The funds will be used to accelerate the adoption of The Phoenix System - a lossless data recovery system which sits on the SAN and records data into a rugged flash SSD-enabled, locally situated, data survival box.

StorageSearch.com published a new directory of companies making PATA SSDs.

Fusion-io unveiled details of a very fast PCIe form factor, InfiniBand compatible, flash SSD designed for 2 undisclosed government customers. Each ioDrive Octal card, occupies 2 slots and delivers 800,000 IOPS (4k packet size), 6GB/s bandwidth and has upto 5TB maximum capacity (implemented by 8x ioMemory modules).

Symwave announced that its USB 3.0 controller has been designed into a new flash SSD by OCZ - which will be shown at CES in January 2010.

RunCore announced availability of its Pro IV Light mini-SATA 50mm PCI-e SSD - a regular flash SSD design and small form factor - which is designed to accelerate netbooks. Capacity options include:- 16GB (32MB cache), 32GB and 64GB (64MB cache) with smaller capacity drives for oems available on request. Sustained R/W speeds are 125MB/s and 80MB/s. Random R/W speeds (4K blocks) are 18MB/s read and 5 MB/s respectively. RunCore says it's compatible with all major OSes and installs easily via its USB slave port.
.......
There are hundreds of SSD articles on StorageSearch.com
Here are some examples.
  • SSDs - our classic SSD directory (started in 1998) lists over 170 current and past SSD oems - all memory types and all form factors - and 30 days of recent SSD news
  • RAM Cache Ratios in flash SSDs - it's important to know the underlying RAM cache architecture - even if you're happy with the R/W and IOPS performance.
  • 2010 - 1st Fizz in the SSD Bubble? - even the dogs in the street know this is going to be a multibillion dollar market. Greed will play as big a part as technology in shaping the SSD year ahead.
  • the pros and cons of using SSD ASAPs - auto tuning SSD appliances are a new category of SSD which entered the market in the 2nd half of 2009 to accelerate servers without needing human tune-ups. How can you tell if they are right for you? And how well do they work?
.
December 2009 Fusion-io announced that its ioMemory PCIe SSD technology has been adapted by IBM who will remarket these solutions (initially with upto 320GB capacity) as its High IOPS SSD PCIe Adapters for use in System x servers.

Symantec announced an upgrade to its Storage Foundation management software which enables it to automatically discover SSDs from leading vendors and optimize data placement on SSD devices transparently.

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.

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 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.

EMC published a report on its new fully automated storage tiering concept which the company says will simplify user operations needed to optimize storage allocation between hard drives and SSDs within the company's arrays. EMC says some of this functionality is now available on some models.

A-DATA announced it has joined the growing roster of SSD makers using SSD SoCs from SandForce. Products are now in the final testing stage and will be previewed at CES next month.

InnoDisk entered the PCIe SSD market with a new model called the Matador with upto 800MB/s read and 550MB/s write speeds and upto 1TB capacity (MLC). SLC versions are also available - but are slower - R/W upto 700MB/s and 500MB/s respectively. Retail pricing for 256GB is $999. It has an internal RAID allocation function enabling users to trade between capacity between data protection and performance (over-provisioning). Its Power Guard protection ensures data will be written into flash when power is interrupted unexpectedly.
.......
the Problem with Write IOPS
Editor:- December 16, 2009 - StorageSearch.com today published a new article - the Problem with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs.

Flash SSD "random write IOPS" are now similar to "read IOPS" in many of the fastest SSDs. So why are they such a poor predictor of application performance?

And why are users still buying RAM SSDs which cost 9x more than SLC? - even when the IOPS specs look similar.
the problem with flash SSD  write IOPS This new article tells you why the specs got faster - but the applications didn't. And why competing SSDs with apparently identical benchmark results can perform completely differently. ...read the article
.

2010 - "Year #1 of the SSD Market Bubble"

2010 - 1st Fizz in the SSD Market Bubble
Editor:- January 14, 2010 - SSD analysts will look back on 2010 as - "Year #1 of the SSD Market Bubble."

Fermentation has already begun. The 2010 SSD harvest will be a memorable vintage. Can you realistically sample the benefits of heady new SSD-powered apps and avoid the risk of painful hangovers?

Greed will play as big a part as technology in shaping the SSD year ahead. Wonder why? ...read the article
.......
Adtron industrial grade  flash solid state disk
2.5" true industrial SATA SLC flash SSDs
from Adtron
.......
top 10 SSD Companies - new edition
Editor:- January 11, 2010 - StorageSearch.com recently published the 11th quarterly edition of the top 10 SSD oems ranked by search volume in the 4th quarter of 2009.

It includes comments, market analysis and comparions with past quarters - analyzing data from millions of people deciding the future of the SSD market. ...read the article
.......
Clarifying SSD Pricing - where does all the money go?
Editor:- January 29, 2010 - StorageSearch.com this week published a new article - Clarifying SSD Pricing.

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! This new guide will help you. ...read the article
January 2010 IDC said that SSD shipments in 2009 exceeded 11 million units, an increase of 14% year over year.

ioSafe launched the ioSafe Solo SSD - an ultra rugged USB / eSATA external flash SSD with upto 256GB capacity ($1,250) designed to provide data protection against disasters such as fire, flood, and building collapse.

LSI and Seagate announced they have collaborated on designing PCIe SSDs for the enterprise accelerator market which will sample in Q2 2010.

Plextor announced it would enter the notebook SSD market in Q1 2010 with a new product line based on SSD controllers from Marvell.

RunCore has started shipments of the 1st SSDs aimed at the PXI Express market (a standard which brings PCIe performance and functionality into the robust modular form factor popular in automated instrumentation test systems). RunCore's 3U CPCIe\PXIe SSD card provides upto 768GB MLC or 384GB SLC capacity and has sustained R/W speeds upto 400MB/s. Available with industrial operating temperature range and MIL-STD-810F processing, the module provides a fast purge rate of 5GB/s.

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.

Storage related news coming out of CES was a disappointment to me - because nearly all the major news about SSD products had already been preannounced (and covered on these pages) in the months leading up to the show. If it's not new - and we've already talked about it - it's not news. That's why editorial arising from this event has been sparser than expected. SSD marketers in many companies have got into the habit of preannouncing products anything upto a year ahead - as part of the SSD Bubble. In that way they hope to get multiple shots at web visibility. It doesn't work that way here on StorageSearch.com. My purpose is to save you time - not to waste it.

White Electronic Designs has introduced a 4GB secure PATA SLC SSD in a 22mm x 27mm PBGA for embedded military applications. This product is designed for applications in aircraft, communications and missiles. A hardware and software triggered fast purge can eliminate all data in less than 10 seconds and device options include sanitization compliant with various government agency specifications.

Texas Memory Systems announced it is delivering open source drivers on Linux and Solaris for its RamSan-20 PCIe SSD accelerator.

Viking Modular Solutions 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.

Avere Systems announced it is shipping new SLC flash SSD options in its FXT Series 10GbE NAS compatible SSD ASAPs. The 2U FXT 2700 appliance features 64GB of DRAM, 1GB of NVRAM, and 512GB of SLC flash SSD. FXT clusters can scale to 25 appliances and support millions of operations/sec and tens of GB/sec throughput. Pricing starting at $82,500.

SanDisk announced results for the quarter ended January 3, 2010 - revenue of $1.24 billion increased 44% on a year-over-year basis and increased 33% sequentially. SanDisk's Chairman and CEO, Eli Harari, said the company had achieved unit sales growth of 55% and gigabyte growth of 100% compared to the year prior quarter.
.
February 2010 Intel and Micron announced they are sampling the world's 1st 25nm NAND flash memory. This gives 8GB MLC (classic 2 bit) flash memory in a stackable TSOP. The new chips will enable higher density SSDs to ship in volume in Q2.

Silicon Motion announced that its SSD controller shipments increased over 50% year-on-year - in the most recent quarter and now account for almost 10% of its ($87 million annual) corporate revenue. The company said - that the vast majority of controllers that are shipping are for 40nm and 30nm NAND flash and they are on track to deliver controllers for 20nm NAND flash that is expected to be available in the 2nd half 2010. In the 4th quarter 2009 the company also began shipping 3-bits per cell MLC controllers
high reliability flash SSDs  for embedded and high reliability servers
1.0" SSDs 1.8" SSDs 2.5" SSDs 3.5" SSDs rackmount SSDs PCIe SSDs SATA SSDs
SSD controller chips SSDs all flash SSDs hybrid drives RAM SSDs SAS SSDs FC SSDs
< - Each of the links in the table here on the left takes you to a directory which includes all known oems in that category, and related articles for that sub-segment of the SSD market.

Solid State Disks by Interface - Part 1 - the Usual Suspects
SCSI (parallel SCSI) SAS Fibre-channel PATA / IDE SATA
Asine
BiTMICRO Networks
Curtis
Memtech
Myung
Phoenix International
Real Ram Disk
RunCore
SanDisk
SEEK Systems
SMART Modular Technologies
Solid Access Technologies
Solid Data Systems
Targa Systems Division
TiGi
Vanguard Rugged Storage
see the dedicated SAS SSDs page see the dedicated FC SSD page see the dedicated PATA SSDs page see the dedicated SATA SSDs page
Solid State Disks by Interface - Part 2
Ethernet / iSCSI / NAS InfiniBand FireWire ExpressCard SSDs
EasyCo
EMC
Fusion-io
Nimbus Data Systems
Sun Microsystems
Taejin Infotech
Targa Systems Division
WhipTail Technologies
BiTMICRO Networks
Fusion-io
Texas Memory Systems
Violin Memory
Altec ComputerSysteme
BiTMICRO Networks
see ExpressCard SSDs directory
...
SSDs with Unusual Interfaces
Some SSDs have application specific interfaces.

One example I saw recently (June 2008) was SSDs with video inputs or outputs.

They're made by Trident Space & Defense and are used in security and law enforcement systems.
...
SSDs - USB
Most flash storage devices with USB interfaces don't include wear leveling - and so aren't listed here.

You can see a complete list in our USB storage page.
Solid State Disks on Cards by Bus Type
chip / module / 1" and under PCI / PCIe / compactPCI PMC / AMC VMEbus
see the 1.0" SSD directory see the PCIe, PCI & cPCI SSDs directory Aitech Defense Systems
Asine
BiTMICRO Networks
Curtiss-Wright
General Micro Systems
Lauron Technologies
Micro Memory
Vanguard Rugged Storage
Virtium Technology
Aitech Defense Systems
Asine
BiTMICRO Networks
General Micro Systems
Phoenix International
Targa Systems Division
Vanguard Rugged Storage
VMETRO

storage search banner

StorageSearch.com is published by ACSL