| |||||||||||||||||||||
| Editor:- January 26, 2012 - StorageSearch.com today published a new directory focusing on HA enterprise SSD arrays. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| January 2012 - OCZ and Micron acquire PCIe SSD software companies | |||||||||||||||||||||
| OCZ
announced it
has acquired SANRAD for
$15 million. WhipTail announced it has secured a Series B funding round. LSI announced it has completed the acquisition of SandForce. Intel announced an agreement to acquire the InfiniBand related product lines, IP and business assets of QLogic. RunCore announced it is shipping a 7mm high, Sandforce-based, 2.5" SATA 3 SSD for the high performance Ultrabook market. IP-Maker released a data transfer manager core - for use in PCIe SSDs - the 1st design to be compliant with the NVM Express specification. Micron announced it has acquired the assets of UK based Virtensys which marketed rackmount SSDs stuffed with Micron's PCIe SSDs and supported by a patented multi-server sharing virtualization interface. OCZ demonstrated new PCIe SSDs - which use SSD controllers jointly developed with Marvell (instead of - as in previous models - controllers from SandForce). Samsung entered the fast purge SSD market - which currently numbers about 25 companies. The company says that models of its PM810 2.5" SATA SSD family with its Crypto Erase technology deletes targeted data in a couple of seconds regardless of the overall volume of data or the capacity of the SSD. These models have been validated for compliance to NIST FIPS 140-2 pureSilicon launched a 1.6TB usable (2TB raw) 2.5" SATA eMLC SSD. The Nitro N2 has average latency under 100 micro-seconds, R/W speeds upto 540/520 MB/s and upto 130k random IOPS. The N2 uses a proprietary design and is protected against sudden power loss. Fusion-io exceeded 1 billion IOPS (64 byte data packets) in a configuration which used 8 HP servers each configured with 8x ioDrive2 Duo PCIe SSD - in a historic demo this month showing the capabilities of its latency reducing Auto Commit Memory (ACM) extension. Huawei Symantec published an SPC Benchmark report (66 pages pdf) for its high availability FC SAN rackmount SSD - the Oceanspace Dorado2100. A 1 terabyte (approx) usable protected (mirrored) SSD system (2.4TB raw) delivered over 100K SPC-1 IOPS at a market price of $0.90/SPC-1 IOPS. Nimbus announced its entry into the high availability enterprise SSD market with the uveiling of the company's - E-Class systems - which are 2U rackmount SSDs with 10TB eMLC per U of usable capacity and no single point of failure. Interface support includes unified 10GbE, FC, and Infiniband. Pricing starts at $150K approx for a 10TB dual configuration system. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| December 2011 - Apple acquires Anobit | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Apple acquired Anobit for a sum thought
to be in the range $400 to $500 million. SandForce announced that it is sampling a new design of SSD controller for enterprise markets - the SF-2481 - which will enable oems designing small architecture SSDs to adjust the amount of flash used in over-provisioning. XtremIO secured a 2nd round of funding in December 2011 - from various source including Lightspeed Venture Partners - bringing its total funding upto $25 million. OCZ reported preliminary revenue for the past quarter (ended November 30) to be in the range $100 and $105 million - an increase of approximately 90% compared to the year ago quarter and a 30% increase compared to the immediately preceding quarter. The company attributed much of this to its growing traction in the enterprise SSD market. Texas Memory Systems announced imminent availability of the RamSan-720 - a 4 port (FC/IB) 1U rackmount SSD which provides 10TB of usable 2D (FPGA implemented) RAID protected and hot swappable - SLC capacity with 100/25 microseconds R/W latency (with all protections in place) delivering 400K IOPS (4KB), 5GB/s throughput - with no single point of failure (at $20K/TB approx list). And the company also announced that it was looking for a potential acquirer. new SSD articles on StorageSearch.com this month include:- | |||||||||||||||||||||
| November 2011 - RunCore is one of the fastest growing tech companies in China | |||||||||||||||||||||
| SandForce has been nominated for the 2011 Global Semiconductor Alliance Awards - in the category "most respected private semiconductor company." OCZ started sampling dual port 6Gbps SAS SSDs in a smaller form factor - the Talos 2 SAS SSD provides upto 70,000 4K IOPS (75R/25W) and upto 1TB capacity in 2.5" (previously only available from OCZ in 3.5" size). STEC started sampling a new high endurance MLC SSD - based on its proprietary CellCare technology - the new ZeusIOPS XE (Extreme Endurance) is a 6Gbps SAS SSD family, available in 1.8", 2.5" and 3.5" sizes (300GB or 600GB) and supports at least 30 full capacity writes per day, every day, for 5 years. Latency is 50 microseconds max. Sustained R/W throughput is upto 500MB/s and 275MB/s respectively and random IOPS is upto 38,000 8K (70R/30W). NexGen emerged from stealth mode and announced general availability of its first product - the n5 - a 3U iSCSI auto-tiering and real-time compression appliance - which internally leverages 48GB RAM cache, 1.3TB PCIe SSD and 32TB raw SAS HDD capacity to deliver 120TB RAID protected usable fast virtual storage with adjustable performance QoS for every volume. BiTMICRO announced that it has designed a new generation of enterprise SSD controllers which will deliver upto 400,000 IOPS performance, support upto 5TB capacity and will be available in SSDs with SAS, SATA, Fibre Channel, and PCIe interfaces in the first half of 2012. BiTMICRO's new ASIC based platform architecture consists of a multi-core SSD controller integrated with multiple high-speed serial on-chip buses and embedded processors Fusion-io announced that it will ship 10TB versions of its ioDrive Octal (so-called because it includes 8 memory modules on double-wide PCIe cards) in the next quarter - which deliver 1.3 million IOPS with 6.7 GB/s bandwidth. Coraid announced that it has closed a $50 million investment round - bringing its total funding to over $85 million. Virident Systems announced it has completed a $21 million Series C funding bringing its total equity funding to $50 million. The company also launched its first MLC based PCIe SSD - the FlashMAX MLC - with 1.4TB RAID protected (7+1) capacity and 1.4 Million IOPS with 20 microseconds latency. (1TB MSRP $13,000) RunCore announced it has been ranked #14 in the new Deloitte Technology Fast 50 China Program of 2011 - which ranks companies based on revenue growth over the past 3 years. The top 5 companies achieved an average revenue growth of 77x this year while other winning companies posted an average revenue growth of 11x (1,186%). OCZ launched 2 new models in their full height PCIe SSD range - aimed at the Windows consumer market - the RevoDrive 3 Max IOPS (120GB to 480GB costs $549-$1,399) and RevoDrive 3 X2 Max (240GB to 960GB costs $849-$2,499) with 4KB random write performance of up to 245,000 IOPS, and R/W rates upto 1,900MB/s and 1,725MBs/ respectively. new SSD articles on StorageSearch.com this month include:- | |||||||||||||||||||||
| October 2011 - LSI buys its way into the top 5 SSD companies list | |||||||||||||||||||||
SolidFire has raised $25 million in its 2nd funding round, bringing its total funding to $37 million. NEVEX launched its first product - an auto-tiering / SSD ASAP software cache for Windows Server, VMware, Hyper-V priced at $2,495 per physical server. Kove's RAM SSD - the XPD2 was 12x faster than the previous fastest system - in the Market Snapshot benchmark audited by STAC. LSI announced a definitive agreement to acquire SandForce for approximately $370 million. The transaction is expected to close early in the first quarter of 2012. SandForce president and CEO, Michael Raam will become General Manager of LSI's newly formed Flash Components Division. Samsung and Micron launched an new industry initiative - the Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium - which will standardize a new module architecture for memory chips - enabling greater density, faster bandwidth and lower power. StorageSearch.com published the 18th quarterly edition of the top SSD companies list - based on search metrics in the 3rd quarter of 2011. This was the first time that any ISVs had entered the list (FlashSoft and IO Turbine). OCZ agreed to acquire the UK Design Team (approximately 40 engineers located in Abingdon) and certain assets from PLX Technology which will enable OCZ to accelerate the development of its next generation of fast SSDs - while also reducing development costs. Fusion-io announced that it will sample new faster models in its range of PCIe SSDs in November. The ioDrive2 family (pdf) will offer R/W latency of 68 / 15 microseconds for the MLC models and R/W IOPS of 350k / 510K IOPS (512B) for the SLC models. Viking announced an extension of their non volatile module range. The DDR3 ArxCis-NV plugs into standard RAM sockets and provides 2GB to 8GB RAM which is backed up to SLC flash in the event of a power failure - while the memory power is held up by application dependent supercap arrays. SMART announced imminent sampling of a SATA 3 version of its MIL-STD-810 compliant 2.5" SSD family - which includes encryption and fast erase. The new Xcel-200 provides from 60GB to 240GB SLC capacity, 500MB/s sequential R/W speeds and 60K/40K random R/W IOPS. It operates at standard industrial temperature ranges and is certified for operation at altitudes up to 80,000 ft. | |||||||||||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| ....... | |||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| ....... | |||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| ....... | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
