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| flash SSD news
(below) / all SSD news |
Cheetah Joins Fastest SSD
List
Editor:- July 2, 2009 - Foremay has recently
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.
Crossing the T's in STEC's SWOT
Editor:- June 23,
2009 - what are the biggest threats to STEC?
The
PCIe SSD market and
server oems designing their own
2.5" SSDs are
among the many topics analyzed in a new article on our
home page today.
Samsung Samples Netbook SSD
Editor:- June 23, 2009 -
Samsung is
sampling a SATA mini-card SSD for use in the expanding
netbook
marketplace with these key parameters:-
- footprint:- 30mm by 51mm by 3.75mm
- weight:- 8.5g
- capacity options:- 16GB, 32GB and 64GB
- R/W speeds:- 200MB/s and 100MB/s respectively
- power:- 0.3W
"The market is beginning to embrace a
smaller SSD for the
nascent netbook sector," said Jim Elliott, vp, memory marketing, Samsung
Semiconductor.
WD Ships SiliconDrive III
Editor:- June 16, 2009 -
Western Digital
Solid State Storage announced that 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 120 GB.
"SiliconDrive III is the first example of how WD plans to
productize solid state technology developed by SiliconSystems. The launch of
SiliconDrive III will also enable WD to leverage its global sales and
distribution channels to accelerate the adoption of SSD technology beyond
SiliconSystems' traditional embedded systems OEM customer base into data
streaming applications such as multimedia content delivery systems and data
center media appliances," said Michael Hajeck, senior VP and GM of WD's
solid state storage business unit. "SiliconDrive III is an ideal solution
for OEMs that require increased performance, capacity,
reliability and
data throughput in their applications."
Editor's comments:-
some oems in the small form factor flash SSD market have earned a bad
reputation due to shipping sexy sounding products in volume before the
design and qualification process was adequately completed.
In contrast
- SiliconSystems' SiliconDrives were never the fastest products in their class -
but due to the background of its founders - the company's prime concern was to
design SSDs that were reliable and stayed reliable. When WD looked at the
spectrum of SSD technologies to acquire - an important consideration was this
proven reliability - established in millions of products over many years.
Of
all the SSD parameters to tweak - the easiest one is to make a product faster.
But. as many other HDD and SSD companies have learned you can't quickly fix
a reputation for flaky products.
New Notebook SSD Market Overview
Editor:- June 15,
2009 - StorageSearch.com
published a new article today called -
Overview of
the Notebook SSD Market.
There's a simple way to summarize
the complex view of the SSD Notebook / Netbook market.
Lots of
initial hype and optimism that the market would deliver an astonishingly
new product experience to users, followed by dismay and disillusion due to
a flurry of poorly conceived, badly designed and ineptly executed products.
...read the
article
DTS Hybrid SSD Wins Best of Show
Editor:- June 12,
2009 - DTS today
confirmed it has won a
best
of show award at Interop
Tokyo 2009 for its Platinum SSD.
Editor's comments:-
DTS's original Platinum drive was a
3.5"
hybrid - which
included a RAM SSD accelerated
hard drive. The
internal SSD controller
virtualized the interface to make it appear as an OS agnostic
SATA drive.
More
recent versions of this drive embed a
flash SSD (instead
of HDD). The best way to think about this product is as a scaled down single
disk version of an SSD
accelerated RAID. It can significantly increase random IOPS for some types
of application - at a cost which nothing else comes close to (using SLC
flash technology). It's scalable too. Some DTS customers use these drives in
rackmount arrays.
This is the kind of product which requires extensive
benchmarking in the production environment in which it's going to be used. If
it's a good fit - then great. But actual speedup and competitiveness depends on
a variety of factors which are too difficult for most users to model. DTS says
it will ship a 2.5"
SSD which delivers about 40,000 IOPS later this month.
SanDisk Ships New DOM for Netbooks
Editor:- June 2,
2009 - SanDisk
started shipping its 2nd generation of PATA compatible
SSD
modules for the netbook market.
Storage clairvoyants,
IDC, project consumer
purchases of netbooks to rise from 11.5 million sold in 2008 to 50 million in
2013.
Performance of SanDisk's new pSSD 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.
Editor's comments:- 27 companies make
miniature SSDs under 1.0"
in size. pSSD is simply a brand name of this SSD family from SanDisk -
and not new SSD jargon
term you need to know about. The traditional term for this type of product
is a DOM (disk on module). A SanDisk document describing the
1st
generation pSSD said the benefits were low cost and low weight - 1/10th
the weight that of a typical 1.8"
HDD. |
|
| PhotoFast
Announces Faster 1.8" Notebook SSDs |
| Editor:- May 27, 2009 - 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. | |
|
Unity Semiconductor Unveils
Flash's Successor
Editor:- May 19, 2009 - 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. Unity Semiconductor
says it will develop and produce NAND flash successor technologies and
products that, in time, will extend into high performance embedded and
enterprise applications.
"It's a Technology for Terabits that
will challenge high volume rotating magnetic media" said Unity
Semiconductor Chairman, President & CEO Darrell Rinerson a former executive
at Micron Technology
and at AMD.
The
company, also announced today it has closed a Series C funding round for $22
million. This brings to nearly $75M the total funding to date in Unity
Semiconductor.
OCZ Raises Performance Summit for its 2.5" Consumer SSDs
Editor:-
May 19, 2009 -
OCZ today
launched its
fastest 2.5"
consumer SATA SSDs -
the
Summit Series - with 200MB/s sustained write and 250GB capacity.
Although
not the fastest SSDs
in the industry, they are more than 2x as fast as OCZ's Core series
launched in July 2008.
New Standard for 1.8" SSDs
Editor:- May 18,
2009 - JEDEC
today 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. Storage ORGs
Super Talent Refreshes Tired Flash SSDs
Editor:-
May 15, 2009 - Super
Talent today 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 tobadly
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.
Toshiba Takes the High Ground in Notebook SSD Wars
Editor:-
May 14, 2009 - Toshiba
announced today 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.
TDK Unveils 2.5" Industrial SSDs
Editor:- May
12, 2009 - 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.
Patriot Memory Offers Consumers Faster 2.5" SSDs
Editor:-
May 11, 2009 - 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.
APOGEE Mars SSD Aims at Gamers Market
Editor:- May 7,
2009 - 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.
Sun Turns Up Heat on flash SSD Hype
Editor:- May 5,
2009 - Sun Microsystems
re-entered the hype zone today with an
announcement
that hundreds of customers across a range of industries have purchased its
flash SSD accelerated storage systems.
I don't wish to be unkind to
anyone still working for the company... But if they had followed the advice
which I offered 5
years ago about the unique opportunities for them in the SSD market - and
done something about it a lot sooner than they in fact did - perhaps
Sun itself as a company would have been worth a lot more (to Oracle,
IBM or whoever) than merely the accumulated sum which Sun had spent on
acquiring other storage
companies. Or maybe they wouldn't have been up for sale at all.
RunCore Offers 256GB SSD Upgrade for $890
Editor:-
May 1, 2009 - RunCore
announced
pricing
for its new Pro IV 2.5"
SSD user installable PC / Mac upgrades which will ship in 2 weeks.
These
SSDs clone externally via USB
and then run internally via
SATA. Street price
for the 256GB model is expected to be approx $890.
New Guide for SSD Wannabies
Editor:- April 28, 2009
- StorageSearch.com
published a new article today 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. ...read the article
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| . |
Flash
based SSDs use non volatile semiconductor technology to store data, and do
not need any batteries to retain data when they are unpowered. Because they
have no moving parts they are inherently more
reliable than
hard disks and use less
operating power. Flash SSDs can operate in hostile environments including
industrial, military and even outer space applications.
Flash SSDs
are physically smaller than RAM
based SSDs. The densest flash SSD products available today offer nearly the same
storage capacity in 2.5 inch form factors as hard drives.
The fastest
flash SSDs can offer random IOPs which are 10 to 50 times as fast as 15k RPM
hard disks, and this makes them also suitable for enterprise server speedup
applications.
Unlike
raw flash storage devices
(and most USB flash
modules) F-SSDs incorporate internal media management controllers which overcome
the limitations of intrinsic flash technology and vastly increase
reliability.
| |
| . |
| 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? |
 |
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. | | |
| . |
| SSD Myths and
Legends - "write endurance" |
| Does
the fatal gene of "write endurance" built into
flash
solid state
disks prevent their deployment in intensive server acceleration
applications - such as RAID
systems? |
It
was certainly true as little as a few years ago.
What's the risk with
today's devices?
This article looks at the current generation of
products and calculates how much (or how little) you should be worried. |
 | |
| RAM based SSDs have been
used alongside RAID for years - but
flash SSDs are
physically smaller and have bigger capacity (upto 412G in 2.5", 512G in
3.5") and are lower cost than RAM-SSDs and could actually be configured
in standard RAID boxes. F-SSDs aren't as fast as RAM based products but a single
flash SSD can deliver 20,000 IOPs - which when scaled up in an array - starts to
look interesting.
...read the
article,
storage reliability
solid state disks | |
| . |
| Z's Laws - Predicting
Future Flash SSD Performance |
A reader asked me a
very good question.
"Is there an industry roadmap for future
flash SSD
performance?"
That prompted other questions like...
- How fast are flash SSDs going to be in 2009?, 2010? or 2012?
- What are the technology factors which relate to flash SSD throughput and
IOPS?
- How close will flash SSDs get to
RAM SSD performance?
There wasn't a simple answer I could give at the time. Clues lay
scattered all across this web site
and in my many one on one discussions with readers about the market... |
 |
But I agreed there should be
a single place on the web where these answers could be found.
Forget
Moore's
Law. That gives you the wrong answer, and this article explains why. ...read the article | | |
| . |
| Are MLC SSDs Safe
in Enterprise Apps? |
This is a follow up
article to the popular
SSD Myths and
Legends which, a year earlier demolished the myth that flash memory
wear-out (a comfort blanket beloved by many
RAM SSD makers)
precluded the use of flash in heavy duty datacenters.
This follow up
article looks at the risks posed by MLC Nand Flash SSDs which have recently
hatched from their breeeding ground as chip modules in cellphones and morphed
into
hard disk form
factors. |
 |
It starts down a familiar
lane but an unexpected technology twist (which arrived in my email while
writing this article) takes you to a startling new world of possibilities.
...read the
article | | |
| |
