| This is the 5th annual
edition of this popular guide. Pageviews of this SSD Guide increased 50%
in April 2008 compared to the year ago period. You can still see the earlier
editions here (2006 SSD
Guide,
2005
SSD Guide,
2004
SSD Guide,
2003
SSD Guide). STORAGEsearch.com
is the leading publication covering the SSD market and we have regular contact
with most vendors, including many in stealth mode. | |
How is this Guide
Organized?
On this page you can find SSDs grouped by form factor,
interface and memory type. Those are the most important initial selection
criteria cited by most users.
What are the Main Changes in the SSD
Market in the past 12 months? - from the article:-
Charting the
Rise of the Solid State Disk Market | |
| June 2007 |
Cenatek launched the
Rocket Drive Micro:- an
ExpressCard
form-factor, high speed solid state disk.
STORAGEsearch.com published a
directory of the
Fastest SSDs in
each popular form factor.
Apacer showed a 2.5",
128GB flash SSD at
Computex and previewed an SSD based
RAID.
SanDisk launched 64G 1.8"
and 2.5"
flash SSDs for the
notebook market.
STORAGEsearch.com
published a new
2.5" SSD Directory
with quick links to nearly 100 SSD models from 25 oems actively marketing SSDs
in the 2.5 inch form factor.
Myung unveiled its low
power MyStor product family which includes 2.5" IDE, and 3.5" IDE or
SCSI
flash SSD
products.
Samsung began mass
production of 64GB 1.8" SSDs for mobile computing applications.
SiliconSystems
said that it had received an additional patent for its PowerArmor technology
which protects SSD data from corruption due to power disturbances.
Concurrent Computer
launched the MediaCache 1000, the first in a line of
rackmount flash SSD
storage products based on COTS technology aimed at broadcasters. |
|
| July 2007 |
SiliconSystems
launched the first high reliability
USB SSD in CF form factor.
STORAGEsearch.com published a new
article - the Top 10
Solid State Disk OEMs
Solid Data Systems
launched the
StorageSPIRE, a
terabyte capacity Fibre
Channel connected SSD array.
STORAGEsearch.com published a new
3.5" SSD Directory
with quick links to over 22 SSD models from 11 oems.
SanDisk announced that
its SATA 5000 2.5-inch SSD will be offered as an option in IBM's new
BladeCenter HS21 XM.
|
|
| August 2007 |
VMETRO acquired
Micro Memory
Violin Memory launched
world's fastest 2U SSD.
STEC announced it will
sample 3.5" SAS
SSDs in Q108.
Targa
Systems launched a 64G 3U CompactPCI flash SSD with USB interface. |
|
|
Attorn
said its new rackmount HyperDrive4 provided the the lowest price per gigabyte
for a
RAM based solid state drive.
EasyCo launched its "Managed
Flash Technology" a storage system which includes a RAID-5 array of
flash SSDs with a
patent pending drive management layer which results in system write performance
100x faster than the unmanaged SSDs.
STORAGEsearch.com published a new
article:- RAM SSDs
versus Flash SSDs - which is Best? With features from the world's
leading SSD companies this looks at how technology and price trends have
reduced the gaps between the 2 main SSD technologies. |
| September
2007 |
Memoright demonstrated a
2.5" flash SSD with 100MB/sec sustained read/write.
Objective Analysis
published a 110 page report called -
the
Solid State Disk Market: A Rigorous Look.
BiTMICRO Networks
received $9.3 million in Series F funding and promised to ship 412GB 2.5"
flash SSDs in Q108.
Fusion-io launched the
ioDrive - a PCIe form
factor flash SSD
with upto 640GB capacity and 100K IOPS performance.
Texas Memory Systems
launched the RamSan-500 - which delivers 2 terabytes of high speed flash SSD in
a 4U rackmount package. Performance is 100,000 IOPS sustained random read,
10,000 IOPS sustained random write. Throughput performance from fibre-channel
hosts to internal flash storage is 2G bytes / sec sustainable (3G bytes / sec
peak).
Third I/O
demonstrated a prelaunch version of its Iris SSD at the Intel Developer's
Forum in San Francisco. Sustained performance reached 1,540MB/s on a single 8
Gb/s port. |
| October
2007 |
STORAGEsearch.com published the new
quarterly ranking of - the
Top 10 Solid State Disk OEMs
Texas Memory Systems took
part in an 8Gbps Fibre Channel demo at
Storage Networking World.
Violin Memory said it would
announce a supported InfiniBand
interface for its Memory Appliance at November's
SC07 .
SiliconSystems
launched a postage-stamp sized
USB SSD designed for
embedded storage applications - the SiliconDrive USB Blade.
Addonics Technologies
launched what it called a "low cost large capacity SSD" platform. It's
a PCI card that can be installed with 4 Compact Flash cards with inbuilt
RAID support. |
| November
2007 |
BiTMICRO Networks
announced plans to sample a terabyte class 3.5" flash SSD in Q108. With
1.6TB capacity and a 4Gbps Fibre
Channel interface - it will deliver sustained throughput more than 230MBps
and upwards of 55,000 IOPS.
Samsung
Electronics announced it was sampling faster versions of its 64G 1.8"
and 2.5" SATA flash SSDs with sequential write speed of 100MB / sec
and sequential read speed of 120MB / sec.
SanDisk launched a PCIe
compatible 16G flash SSD.
Micron Technology said it
would launch a family of SATA 1.8" and 2.5" flash SSDs in Q1 2008
bringing the total number of market active
SSD oems to 60.
INTELLIAM launched its
LeanSTOR flash SSDs with AMC card form factor, SATA interface and 128GB
capacity. | |
| December
2007 |
|
STEC started shipping its
MACH8-MLC 1.8" and 2.5" PATA / SATA flash SSDs aimed at the notebook
market. While the performance is at the middle range of the market spectrum -
the new SSDs are available in high capacities upto 512GB (2.5"). Pricing is
aggressive. STEC offers this SSD family at pricing of $5/GB today, declining to
less than $2/GB within two years.
White Electronic Designs,
well known as a supplier of high
reliability
products in the military
market, announced its first medical series CompactFlash cards.
Objective Analysis
predicted that the Hybrid Hard Drive would not make a big splash in 2008 in a
new 36-page report called Hybrid Hard Drives: How, Why, And When? - The author
Jim Handy said - "Unfortunately, the hardware is ready but the software
support is weak. Hybrid drives will have to wait for better support to justify
their small additional cost." |
|
| 2008 SSD
Budgets - Robbing Peter to Pay Paul? |
I've got a question for
you. How big is your solid
state storage budget in 2008?
I hazard to guess that most of you
haven't put anything notionally marked as "SSD spending" in 2008's
budget - even if you already have a good idea about what you're going to spend
on traditional storage products and services.
I also predict that when
the crunch comes - and you find yourself spending surprisingly large amounts of
money on SSDs for the first time - these costs will be initially allocated to
other cost centers - such as servers or PCs - rather than storage.
It
was always thus.
In 1983 for example - over 90% of corporates didn't
have a budget for buying IBM PCs. These disruptive tools intitially crept in
under the IT department radar - as users found they could do useful jobs like
word processing and business analysis quicker, cheaper and more conveniently
than using the clunky alternatives then on offer by their IT departments.
Similarly
RAID systems did not
appear in most 1990 corporate IT budgets - but are now everywhere.
In
2007 the SSD
industry surprised many by introducing many exciting new technologies and
products.
I predict that in 2008 - innovative users will surprise the
SSD market by discovering for themselves a new generation of killer
applications- enabled by SSDs - which would have been technically impossible -
or even nuts to try and achieve using conventional
hard disk based
technologies. Those SSD sparks will feed back to fan the flames of the market.
Examples might include what I call - enterprise spreadsheet analysis -
in which business managers are enabled to model "what if?" scenarios
on duplicate sets of their entire customer database - to find gaps in their
marketing or test ideas for new products.
Other applications enabled
by SSD accleration might include AI enabled real-time upselling offers on
ecommerce web sites. These are already feasible for innovative small to
medium size companies but are not scalable with today's magnetic disk arrays.
Large enterprises can't be nimble with their data because their servers would
grind to a halt if you tried these types of tricks.
I'm not going to
give you a long list of predicted disruptive SSD technology enabled applications
- because they would be wrong - and you're going to see them coming thick and
fast from real users on these pages soon enough.
2008 will be the year
that users - rewrite the rules on how they mix and match new storage
technologies in ways that the original manufacturers of those products - never
dreamed about. | |
| January
2008 |
... |
Nanochip (founded in
1996) said it expects to sample its first commercial products in 2009. The
company will compete with
flash SSDs using
its own proprietary non volatile storage technology.
After a 20 year
gap
EMC re-entered the SSD
market with the launch of its Symmetrix DMX-4 networked storage systems
populated with SSDs from
STEC. You may not
realise that EMC was an SSD pioneer 20 years ago (in
1987).
Samsung
announced it has developed a 128GB MLC flash SSD in 1.8" and 2.5"
form factors that will ship in volume in the first half of 2008.
Texas Memory Systems
announced new SSD IOPS records (audited by
SPC). Its RamSan-400 SSD
delivered 291,208 SPC-1 IOPS with a record average response time of just
0.86 milliseconds.
BiTMICRO Networks said it
will sample its highest capacity 2.5" flash SSD -the E-Disk Altima 832GB
- in the 2nd quarter of 2008 - with volume production expected in Q3.
Memoright announced
availability of 64GB and 128GB versions of its 2.5" PATA / SATA flash
SSDs.
STORAGEsearch.com
published the new quarterly ranking of -
the Top 10 Solid State
Disk OEMs |
. |
|
|
 |
|
| February
2008 |
|
SMART Modular
Technologies acquired
Adtron.
Intel and
Micron Technology
unveiled details of their new
high speed NAND
flash technology which can sustain speeds up to 200MB/s for reads and
100MB/s for writes.
Ridata brand SSDs (made by
Advanced Media)
appeared in retail outlets - in 34 Fry's Electronics stores.
Mtron said that in April it
would be producing a 1.8" flash SSD aimed at notebooks with a maximum read
speed of 120MB/s and write speed of 100MB/s.
Pliant Technology
announced it had received $8 million in Series A
funding to drive the
development of SSD storage devices for enterprise computing markets.
STEC launched
the the 32GB MACH4 CompactFlash - the fastest CF form factor SSD on the market
with 90MB/s read and 55MB/s write speeds. It's got low power consumption too
- just 1W.
STORAGEsearch.com
published a new article:-
Are MLC SSDs
Safe in Enterprise Apps? This was a follow up to the popular
write endurance
article published the year before.
SanDisk said it would soon
ship storage products based on a 3-bits-per-cell MLC flash memory technology
which had been codeveloped with
Toshiba. |
| |
| March
2008........... |
Imation entered the SSD
market with products oemed from
Mtron |
|
SeaChange claimed it had
eliminated the need for spinning disks in the on-air broadcast chain with the
announcement of its FML200 - rackmount flash SSD broadcast library.
Memoright launched a
faster family of 2.5" SATA flash SSD. The GT Series has upto 64GB
capacity and 120MB/s sustained read/write.
OCZ entered the SSD market
with a 2.5" flash
SSD - taking the number of SSD
oems listed on STORAGEsearch.com to 70.
STEC announced Q407 revenue
declined 28% compared to the year ago quarter.
STORAGEsearch.com published a new
1.8" storage drives
directory listing 21 oems actively marketing SSDs and HDDs in the 1.8
inch form factor.
Toshiba launched 3 MLC
flash SSD families with SATA
interfaces and form factors including module,
1.8" and
2.5".
Trident Space & Defense
launched the BGADrive - an IDE compatible 32GB flash SSD in a 29mm x 29mm form
factor module for embedded applications.
A
CNET
article insinuating high customer reject rates for
Dell's SSD based notebooks
was dismissed as
not
true.
XLC Disk
unveiled its multi-level cell nand flash technology for high density flash
SSDs.
International
Microsystems launched a range of
SATA flash SSD
testers for parametric qualification and burn-in.
Fusion-io announced it
had secured $19 million funding for its ioDrive.
Pageviews of
STORAGEsearch.com's SSD Guide
increased 51% in March 2008 compared to the year ago period. Searches
for "SSD" across the whole publication were 4x higher than the
year ago period. | |
|
|
|
|
|
| How Much Do Solid State
Disks Cost? |
Our
SSD Market
Adoption Model showed why SSDs were being used by customers in defiance of
superficial cost per gigabyte comparisons with hard disks. That's because of
the user value propositions - described in that prophetic article - which looked
at the total benefit users get in each type of application.
Due to the
volatile nature of memory prices, most manufacturers have been historically
reluctant to quote indicative pricing in past editions of this guide.
There
are 2 main factors which will drive down the price points of SSDs are
- falling memory prices. Typically the price of memory capacity
halves every couple of years due to semiconductor process improvements,
following Moore's Law.
- greater market efficiency. As the SSD market grows and products
become more standardised, users will need less education about choosing and
evaluating products. Consequently the marketing and distribution costs, which
are currently a high percentage of the selling price of many products, will be
amortised over a larger number of units. In the next few years this could
deliver as much cost reduction as the technology improvements (above).
In
March 2007 SanDisk
announced it was offering its 32GB 2.5" SATA SSD to oems for $350.
In
August 2007 -
Violin Memory launched
its 2U RAM SSD priced at $39,500 for 120GB.
In an article November
2007 -
Texas Memory
Systems said its RamSan-500 - which delivers 2 terabytes of high speed
flash SSD (100,000 IOPS sustained random read, 10,000 IOPS sustained random
write) costs in the range $300,000 - $340,000.
In September 2007 -
Super Talent
Technology said that the street price for its 128GB 2.5" / 3.5"
SATA flash SSDs is approx $4,499. Later - in May 2008 the company said its new
120GB MLC SSDs cost about $699 .
In February 2008 I got the following
pricing inputs for a future article which I was working on.
BiTMICRO Networks said
its 3.5" E-Disk Altima flash SSD is roughly averaging $40 per GB for
Commercial Grade models.
Curtis said its 3.5"
HyperXCLR RAM SSD costs about $1,000 per GB.
In its Q1 2008 online
price list
Solid Access
Technologies lists a rackmount 64GB dual port SAS SSD for $49,0000.
A case
study using this model shows how a customer monitoring 7 million online
devices was able to reduce the number of servers from 7 to 4 using the SSD while
improving response time and reliability.
Price projections for
the next 5 years - comparing flash and SSD memory (the biggest factor in SSD
costs) are contained in the article
RAM SSDs versus
Flash SSDs (in the SSD pricing article from
Objective
Analysis).
An additional factor affecting the price per gigabyte of
flash SSDs is -
how many bits can be stored in a single memory cell. MLC flash devices can store
2, 4 or 8 bits of data in a single cell - which provides lower cost per bit -
but has other implications. Related articles are:-
Unveiling XLC Flash SSD
Technology and
Are MLC SSDs
Safe in Enterprise Apps? There is no comparable X-factor capacity
multiplication tehnology for
RAM SSDs. |
| .................................................................................................................... | |
|
