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| flash SSD news |
SiliconSystems Opens
Office in People's Republic of China
ALISO VIEJO, Calif -
May 6, 2008 - SiliconSystems, Inc. today announced that it has expanded
its Asia-Pacific operations by establishing an office in Shanghai, the company's
first in the People's Republic of China.
The new office will play
a critical role in supporting the burgeoning demand for SiliconSystems'
industry-leading SiliconDrive technology in China and Taiwan. Yu Yuan Tang, a
21-year industry veteran, will head the new office.
"OEMs throughout the Asia-Pacific region have embraced the use
of SiliconSystems' SiliconDrive technology, resulting in tremendous year-on-year
revenue growth for the company throughout the entire region," said Michael
Hajeck, SiliconSystems' CEO.
...SiliconSystems
profile
8 Months Later 2.5" Flash SSD Price is 6x Lower
San Jose, Calif - May
6, 2008 - Super Talent Technology today launched a new line of
MasterDrive 2.5" SATA MLC flash SSDs.
The 120GB model has
R/W speeds upto 120/40 MB/sec and a price tag of $699. Proprietary
wear-leveling algorithms extend the life of these SSDs to over 65 years @ 50GB
write-erase/day.
...Super Talent
Technology profile
Editor's comments:- in less than 8 months
the price of a 120GB SSD from Super Talent has reduced by a factor of more than
6x - down to $699 for the new models compared to $4,499 in September
2007.
Adtron Samples Industrial Grade 2.5" 128GB SLC SSDs
FREMONT,
CA - April 29, 2008 - SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. today
announced the release of "true" industrial-grade 2.5" SSDs by its
subsidiary, Adtron Corp.
Based on the latest 8Gb Flash
technology, these new PATA / SATA drives feature densities up to 128GB, the
highest density available in the industry for SLC SSDs in a 2.5-inch (9.5mm-high)
form factor.
By leveraging the latest 50nm 8Gb
flash technology, these
new SSDs offer higher density, reduced height and lower price than before.
Available in configurations of 32, 64, and 128GB, the new A25FB-3 and I25FB-3
drives offer sustained performance of up to 72MB/s read and 57MB/s write.
The new SSDs are tested to meet a "true" industrial-grade
standard, which includes 8 hours of comprehensive test while temperature is
cycled through its rated range. In addition, the drives are certified to meet a
wide range of environmental requirements, including temperature, shock,
vibration, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), altitude, and current defense
industry standards, making them well suited for applications requiring
industrial-grade storage solutions.
"Advances in Flash
technology continue to drive new applications," explained Wade Campbell,
Director, SSD Marketing and Product Management. "With their increased
density and improved price/performance, these new drives enable us to deliver an
even wider range of industrial-grade applications in the defense and industrial
markets. They also provide a base platform for higher performance SSDs that we
expect to release in the coming months."
Early access A25FB-3 SATA SSD units are available now, with general
availability expected by mid-summer. The I25FB-3 PATA SSDs are scheduled for
general availability in calendar Q3 2008.
...Adtron profile,
...SMART Modular
Technologies profile
STEC Announces Fast 1" SSD
SANTA
ANA, Calif - April 21, 2008 - STEC, Inc. announced the MACH4 - a 1"
SATA / PATA SSD.
For a small drive - the MACH4 is fast:- with
sustained sequential reads upto 90MB/s and writes upto 55MB/s. It's expected to
be in mass production at the end of April in capacities up to 32GB. Projected
OEM pricing for the 8GB capacity point is $45.
...STEC profile,
1.0" SSDs
STORAGEsearch.com Unveils Flash SSD Roadmap
Editor:- April 17, 2008 -
STORAGEsearch.com published a new article today called - the Flash SSD
Performance Roadmap.
A few weeks ago a reader asked 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? or 2012? What are the technology factors which
relate to throughput and IOPS? And how much faster will they be than today.
There wasn't a simple answer I could give at the time. Clues lay
scattered all across this web site
and in my many discussions 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
Seagate Steps Towards Failing the SSD Market Challenge
Editor:-
April 15, 2008 - Seagate Technology has filed a patent suit against STEC
according to a report in the New York Times.
Seagate is claiming that SSDs made by STEC may infringe Seagate
patents related to disk interfaces and flash technology.
In an article
published earlier this year Why
Seagate will Fail the SSD Challenge I explored the business options
available for Seagate in the
flash SSD market.
This move against STEC is in line with that analysis (and conclusion).
You
can see what some other SSD analysts have to say on this subject in these
article links.
Gregory Wong, at Forward Insights says
"It's
hard to see the financial motivation behind such a move..."
Jim
Handy, at Objective Analysis looks at the weight of the patent arsenal but says
that SSD Purchasers shouldn't worry.
"In such
dealings the plaintiff (Seagate in this case) usually will try to collect
somewhat equivalent royalties from all players..."
Panasonic Previews 64GB Camcorder SSD
NAB, LAS VEGAS, NV - April 13,
2008 - Panasonic introduced a 64GB P2 solid-state memory card, model
AJ-P2C064, for its line of P2 HD/P2 solid-state camcorders.
The 64GB P2 card (available fall 2008) can hold more than 4 hours of
DVCPRO footage. Packaged in a rugged, die-cast frame, the P2 card is
resistant to impact, vibration, shock, dust and environmental extremes including
temperature changes. Panasonic has delivered more than 80,000 P2 HD/P2 units
worldwide with over 840 television networks and stations having adopted the
solid-state recording format.
...Panasonic profile
SSD Controller Company Gets $22 million Funding
Santa Clara, Calif. - April 9,
2008 - Link_A_Media Devices Corp secured $22 million in Series
B financing.
The funding round, led by
AIG SunAmerica Ventures,
was secured from 4 additional financial and corporate investors -
KeyNote Ventures,
NEC Electronics,
Micron and
Seagate.
Link_A_Media Devices is developing a new class of
chip controller resident
data recovery solutions for
HDDs and
SSDs. These are
designed to exceed the performance of conventional methods deployed in
peripheral storage devices, as well as provide adaptive features that can be
used during manufacturing to improve drive yields and product margins.
...Link_A_Media
Devices profile
Editor's comments:- MLC flash SSDs have
high internal
error rates and are currently unrecoverable. It looks like Link_A_Media's
technology could improve the odds of
data recovery in
failed devices which incorporate its technology (as well as reducing data errors
while the SSD is still operational.)
Another side effect of their
technology may be better
performance in
flash SSDs.
Link_A_Media
says their IOP
Buster architecture enables scalability within the controller to address
various segments of SSD applications seamlessly. It enables faster Read and
Write transfers.
Ultra Small Form Factor SSD Gets Socket
ALISO VIEJO, Calif -
April 8, 2008 - SiliconSystems, Inc. today announced that a robust
locking socket for its ultra-small form factor USB SiliconDrive SSD has been
designed by Samtec, Inc.
That provides OEM designers
more flexibility when using these postage stamp size SSDs in new products.
...SiliconSystems
profile
STEC Ships 4Gbps ZeusIOPS Flash SSDs
ORLANDO, FL - April 7, 2008 - STEC,
Inc. announced the volume availability of its first 4Gbps Fibre Cannel
compatible ZeusIOPS flash SSDs - which are being shown this week at Storage
Networking World.
The
Zeus-IOPS range of
2.5" and
3.5"
flash SSDs are
available in capacities from 18GB up to 512GB. ...STEC profile,
SAN
Editor's
comments:- it's 2 years since the first shipments of
4Gbps
FC storage products. Originally conceived as an interface for hard disk
arrays - this kind of throughput (and more) will soon be needed to get the most
performance out of the fastest 3.5" SSDs.
I expect flash SSD
throughput and IOPs to more than double every year in the period from 2007 to
2012. Consistent with that view (which is based on looking at what happens when
new architectures are combined with process improvements)
gigabyte per
second 3.5" SSDs are only 2-3 years away.
the Top 10 SSD OEMs in Q1 2008
Editor:- April 2, 2008 -
STORAGEsearch.com today published the 4th edition of - "the Top
10 Solid State Disk OEMs."
Covering the quarter ending
March 31, 2008 - the article also looks at market milestones and comments on
changes since the earlier quarters.
Inevitably - over 60
SSD oems couldn't make it
into the top 10 SSD list (and that includes
enterprise rackmount
SSD wannabe EMC which
lay just outside at #11.)
If you're choosing
SSD suppliers or strategic
partners - this is the must-see predictive list of the top companies that
matter - based on hundreds of thousands of readers searching for SSD content
on the site rated most highly by SSD companies themselves. ...read the article
Unveiling XLC Flash SSD Technology
Editor:- March 31, 2008 -
STORAGEsearch.com today published an article about stealth mode fabless
semiconductor company, XLC Disk, Inc called - Unveiling XLC Flash SSD
Technology.
It describes their revolutionary multi-level cell nand
flash technology which may appear in a new range of high density
flash SSDs in Q1
2009.
Overcoming the intrinsic technology problems which have limited
previous MLC
devices to 2 bits in a single
flash memory cell - the
new XLC technology uses a patent pending calibration / discriminator
architecture which enables reliable operation with 4 bits (with today's process
technology) and may be scalable to more bits in the future.
If
successful - this type of technology could deliver 16x the storage density
currently available from SLC SSDs using the same area of silicon - thereby
closing the gap in cost per gigabyte between
SSDs and
HDDs. As with any new
storage technology reliability
is an unknown factor - but XLC Disk claim that intrinsic data repeatability
(before on chip error correction) is at least as good as current MLC devices.
This article was initially planned for publication tomorrow (on April
1st) but when I contacted Jim Handy at
Objective
Analysis for a comment on this spoof concept - he surprised me by saying
that he knows of at least one of the
top 10 SSD companies
which is working on exactly this type of technology. It shows that fact can be
stranger than fiction - and we can expect to see SSDs starting to put price
pressue on the hard drive market years earlier than predicted by Moore's Law
type density improvements. ...read the article
IMI Launches SATA SSD Testers
Milpitas, Calif - March
20, 2008 - International Microsystems Inc. today announced immediate
availability of 3 new SATA SSD testers.
The IMI testers support
functional testing including read/write functional tests, read/write speed tests
as well as parametric standby/dynamic current tests. Also supported is the
initialization of the SSD
controller which is normally required as the first step in production testing.
- The M7305 is a 4 slot engineering tester.
- The M7300 is a 4 - 16 slot benchtop production tester.
- The M7310 is a 4 to 16 slot burn in chamber production
tester with a temperature range from -73°C to +180°C.
All 3 testers come with user-friendly
software and are supplied as fully functioning standalone systems with display,
keyboard and mouse along with Ethernet connectivity. The powerful GUI allows
user definition of all parameters governing the chosen tests. All models can
be used as SATA SSD duplicators
with master data being supplied by either a master drive or by a master binary
file.
...IMI profile
Does Unhappy Notebook Maker Have High Rate of
SSD Flash Backs?
Editor:-
March 19, 2008 - a report discussed in an article on CNET saying that
flash SSDs in notebooks are incurring double digit customer reject rates has
been dismissed by Dell as "untrue."
SiliconSystems Enhances SiliconDrives
ALISO VIEJO, Calif -
March 18, 2008 - SiliconSystems, Inc. today announced its enhanced 2nd
generation of SiliconDrive SSDs.
Capacity and read/write speeds
have been increased.
SiliconDrive II
are aimed at embedded systems in which design factors such as reliable
operation, elimination of drive corruption and the ability to forecast
useable life are calculated to deliver significant cost benefits compared to
expensive field failures and replacements over a multi year installed life -
which can come from using hard
disks or less glitch resistant consumer SSDs. Available form factors
include 2.5", CF and miniature modules. Available interfaces include PATA,
SATA and USB.
...SiliconSystems
profile
Editor's comments:- when you look at SiliconDrive
performance and capacity specs relative to many other available consumer market
oriented flash SSDs
they aren't the fastest or the biggest. But within the spectrum of flash SSD
reliability there's
more than an order of magnitude difference even within
SLC devices.
Toshiba's MLC SSDs in Mass Production
IRVINE,
Calif. - March 18, 2008 - Toshiba has started mass production of MLC
flash SSDs aimed at the notebook market.
The new
Toshiba
SSDs have SATA
interfaces and will be available in 3 form factors:- module,
1.8" and
2.5", and with
upto 128GB capacity. Toshiba says overall performance is better than 5,400
RPM and 7,200 RPM HDDs.
Read / write speeds are 100MB/s and 40MB/s respectively. Initial production is
for Toshiba's own notebooks. ...Toshiba profile
BenchmarkReviews.com Tests MemoRight's GT
2.5" SSD
Editor:-
March 13, 2008 - BenchmarkReviews.com has published performance tests on
MemoRight's fastest 2.5" flash SSD - the GT.
Overall
the tests confirm this as the fastest overall
2.5" SATA drive
period (HDD or
SSD). It was already listed
in our own fastest SSDs
article. ...read
the article , ...Memoright
profile
OCZ Takes SSD OEM List to 70
Sunnyvale,
CA - March 12, 2008 - OCZ Technology Group, Inc. today entered the SSD
market with a range of SATA compatible 2.5" flash SSDs.
OCZ's
SSDs have capacities of 32GB and 64GB and speeds of 120MB/s read and 100MB/s
write.
...OCZ profile
Editor's
comments:- that takes the total number of
SSD oems to 70 and
the number of 2.5" SSD
oems to 31.
Imation Enters the SSD Market
OAKDALE,
Minn - March 10, 2008 - Imation Corp. entered the SSD market today with
solid state drives powered by Mtron.
Imation's SSD
portfolio includes the MOBI 3000 Series for high performance end users, and the
PRO 7000 Series for enterprise, corporate and IT infrastructure applications.
"Many storage applications can benefit from the increased performance,
reliability and power savings that SSDs are able to provide in the computing and
enterprise environment," said Jeff Janukowicz, research manager,
IDC. "Shipments of SSD
solutions, such as those in Imation's SSD solutions meet the requirements for
this performance-demanding storage market are expected to increase at a 73% CAGR
through 2011."
...Imation profile,
...Mtron profile
Editor's
comments:- oeming Mtron's high performance
flash SSDs is a
good business move for Imation - which has a well known (50 years old) storage
brand. The SSD market
provides Imation with a shimmering
Stargate like escape route
out of the shrinking
tape backup market.
Memoright Announces Faster 2.5" SSD
Editor:- March
7, 2008 - Memoright reconfirmed its lead in the high performance 2.5"
SATA flash SSD market today.
Memoright says its new GT Series can
sustain 120MB/s read / write and is available with capacity upto 64GB. Its
standard product has higher capacity (128GB) but lower speed (100MB/s). ..Memoright profile
SeaChange Eliminates Spinning Disks in the
On-air Chain
March
3, 2008 – SeaChange International today introduced its
Broadcast Flash Memory Library FML200, a flash memory-based ingest and
play-to-air solution that sets a new benchmark in reliability and economy.
With no moving parts, the breakthrough server is 100x more reliable and consumes
10x less power than spinning disk-based counterparts, greatly mitigating
failures, rebuilds, replacements and other disk-related threats. The system can
eliminate spinning disks in the on-air chain and is immediately available for
television operators worldwide. SeaChange will demonstrate the FML200 at
NAB2008 in April.
...SeaChange
International profile
Are MLC SSDs Ever Safe in Enterprise
Apps?
Editor:-
February 27, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com published a new article today
called - Are MLC SSDs Ever Safe in Enterprise Apps?
This is a
follow up article to the popular
SSD Myths and
Legends which, in early 2007, 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 new
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 this morning) takes you to a startling new world of
possibilities. ...read the article
STEC Shows Fastest CompactFlash SSD
SANTA ANA, Calif - February 26,
2008 - STEC, Inc. today announced the industry's fastest CompactFlash
SSD - the MACH4 CompactFlash.
Built with STEC's proprietary
controller technology, the MACH4 implements multiple Flash channels to enable
sustained throughput speeds of 90MB/s for read and 55MB/s for write. STEC is
displaying the MACH4 this week at
Embedded World
in Nuremberg, Germany.
"With the MACH4, we expect to see an entirely new wave of
adoption of flash-based
storage in embedded applications," said Patrick Wilkison, VP of
marketing at STEC. "As the preponderance of our customers strive to reduce
the physical footprint of their applications, from blade servers in the data
center to ultra portable computing devices, STEC optimizes around the key
dimensions of capacity, form factor, performance and
reliability."
STEC's MACH4 CompactFlash offers very low latency compared to
traditional hard disk
drives and consumes much less power (approximately 200 milliamps or 1 watt
compared to 12 watts for a standard 7,200 RPM ATA disk drive. ...STEC profile,
Storage Events,
CompactFlash,
Record Breaking
Storage
iSuppli Says Flash Prices Are Dropping
Below Costs
Editor:-
February 20, 2008 - iSuppli Corp. is cutting its outlook for global
NAND flash revenue growth in 2008 to the single digit percentage range, down
from their previous outlook of a 27% rise.
In an early warning
sign of consumer weakness, Apple
has slashed its 2008 NAND order forecast significantly and has informed
suppliers that its demand growth will slow in 2008 compared to 2007, according
to iSuppli sources. This is expected to have a huge impact on the NAND market.
With its extremely popular flash-memory based
iPods, Apple was the world's
3rd largest OEM buyer of NAND flash
memory in 2007.
On the supply side, slower NAND demand will have a
major impact on suppliers' financial results. Capital spending on NAND
production will rise by more than 20% this year, ensuring easy availability of
parts. This will cause prices to decrease. iSuppli believes that NAND prices
already are below suppliers' fully loaded costs.
...iSuppli profile
Editor's comments:- buyers in the fast growing
flash SSD market
will be the beneficiaries of this downturn. As I predicted last year
overcrowding in the notebook SSD market means that prices are already well below
previously forecast levels.
Traditionally the big memory chip makers
switch fab production between RAM
and flash to whichever
reaps the highest price. But many
analysts already
predicted this would not be a good year for RAM oems either.
Introducing Another Enterprise SSD Player
Milpitas, Calif -
February 19, 2008 - Pliant Technology today announced that it has
received $8 million in Series A funding to drive the development of SSD storage
devices for enterprise computing markets.
Pliant's new
Enterprise Flash Drive devices are being designed to deliver dramatically
higher levels of performance while meeting the growing need for increased energy
efficiency and reliability
in enterprise computing environments.
Pliant Technology was formed by
several of the foremost experts and innovators in the data storage industry
including:- Jim McCoy (co-founder of
Maxtor and
Quantum), Amyl Ahola
(former CEO of
TeraStor
and Mike Chenery (former VP of advanced product engineering at
Fujitsu). Pliant's
solution is expected to be available to OEM and data center customers in the 4th
quarter of 2008.
...Pliant Technology
profile, rackmount
SSDs
Editor's comments:- over 20 oems currently make products
for what Pliant calls the "new" enterprise SSD market. This will be as
big a market in revenue as the consumer notebook SSD market - but with (mostly)
different players.
Some of Pliant's founders have worked together
before on the same concept (replacing hard drives) at
TeraStor
which went through more than $85 million in the 1990s working on an
unsuccessful optical storage technology. Computer architecture, applications
experience and marketing are the key factors needed to make a successful
enterprise SSD business today. There are plenty of companies who will sell you
cheap memory chips. The enterprise SSD market in 2009 will be an exciting area
to watch.
See also:-
Squeak! - RAM SSDs
versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?
Mtron's New Notebook SSD will be 6x
faster than Hard Drive
SEOUL,
South Korea - February 18, 2008 - Mtron Technology Co. Ltd - announced
today that they have completed the development of a new 1.8" ZIF-type SSD
family for laptop PCs and will begin production in April.
Mtron's
new SLC flash SSD has a maximum reading speed of 120MB/s and writing speed of
100MB/s, which is more than 6x faster than a typical
1.8" HDD. Therefore
when it's used in laptop PC and
UMPC,
it delivers much faster performance than a desktop.
Mtron also
released a 1.8" MLC Flash SSD with up to 128GB capacity along with a
maximum reading speed of 110MB/s and writing speed of 40MB/s.
Steve
Jeon, CEO of Mtron, said, "With our new 1.8 inch SSD, Mtron has added
another great product line as a leader in the SSD market, which is expected to
grow into ten billion dollars in 2012. Our new product is a result of careful
market analysis and research of consumer needs."
...Mtron profile |
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| flash SSD OEMs list |
Addonics Technologies
Adtron
Advanced Media
Afaya
Aitech Defense Systems
Altec ComputerSysteme
Apacer
Asine
BiTMICRO Networks
Cenatek
Curtiss-Wright
DataDirect Networks
Delkin Devices
EasyCo
Fusion-io
GalaxyStor
Gnutek
Hagiwara Sys-Com
IEI Technology
Imation
InnoDisk
Intel
INTELLIAM
Memoright
Micro Memory
Micron Technology
Mtron
Myung Information Technologies
Nanochip
OCZ Technology Group
Panasonic
Phoenix International
Pliant Technology
PNY Technologies
PQI
Pretec Electronics
Samsung Electronics
SanDisk
SeaChange International
SEEK Systems
Shining Technology
SiliconSystems
STEC
SMART Modular
Technologies
Super Talent
Technology
Taejin Infotech
Targa Systems
TDK
Team Group
Texas Memory Systems
Toshiba
Transcend Information
Trident Space &
Defense
Unigen
Vanguard Rugged
Storage
Violin
Memory
VMETRO
White Electronic Designs
XLC Disk |
| still can't find it? check the
acquired, dead &
renamed list or SSDs All |
Why I was
Wrong About SSD Growth....
It will be Very Much Faster
Editor:-
December 7, 2006 - although 2006 has been a very good year for revenue growth in
the SSD market - next year will be even better.
SSD market adoption has
progressed pretty much as predicted in my
article
last year. And those predictions about applications look just as accurate for
the next couple of years too. But as we start to see SSDs appearing more widely
in products - there are some factors which may accelerate the take-up beyond
what might be predicted from preliminary performance predictions.
For
example - in the notebook market - flash vendors have predicted that SSDs will
give an application speedup of x2 to x3. Those figures are based on comparing
the theoretical performance of low cost flash SSDs compared to
hard disk drives, and
are backed up by early measurements done by product developers.
What
the figures don't tell you is that the comparisons are done for new systems
with a freshly loaded squeaky clean OS and application software. Real life is
more messy.
If you fast forward a couple of months and end-users start
doing software updates - the effect of fragmentation will slow the performance
of the HDD based systems down by a factor of x2 to x7 depending on the
application and the interval between defrags (which is rarely - if ever
performed on most personal notebooks).
In contrast - the speed of the
SSD systems stays the same as it was when the system was new - because the
random access time is the same for all data - and fragmentation effects are
effectively zero.
The impact is that when you compare a 3 month old
Vista notebook with or without an SSD - the difference in speed could be as
much as x5 or x10.
This only applies to notebooks
which have pure SSDs and the benefit won't apply to hybrids.
I predict
that once users have eyeballed the comparisons in real-life - the flash based
SSD sales will soar. Pressure from users on their corporate IT managers to throw
out the old HDD based notebooks will create a tsunami of demand as
strong as that which led to companies originally buying PCs back in the early
80s.
Am I right? - Keep bookmarked to this page - and you'll see. |
| . |
In-Stat
Says SSDs will be in 50% of Mobile Computers by 2013
SCOTTSDALE,
Ariz. - July 17, 2006 - hard disk drives face competition in the mobile
computer mass storage market as flash-based solid state drives stand ready in
the wings according to a new report (price $2,995 ) published by In-Stat.
In fact, SSDs have the
potential to dethrone HDD
as the top laptop storage choice within 10 years, the high-tech market research
firm says. The research leads In-Stat to believe that the SSD market share in
mobile computers could reach 50% by 2013.
The research was driven by In-Stat's survey of 389 mobile computer
users, which allowed primary insight into consumers' valuation of SSD in mobile
computers. From this research, In-Stat weighed the perceived benefits of SSDs
with the rapidly declining cost/gigabyte trends of Flash to develop a demand
sensitive forecasting model. The market inflection point begins in 2010 for
In-Stat's expected forecast, as SSDs start to become an economically viable
alternative to a wider base of consumers. ...In-Stat profile,
Market research
See
also:- STORAGEsearch.com's
SSD Market Adoption Model - which explains all the market segments for SSDs
in the next 5 years. |
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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.
| |
| . |
| Squeak!
- 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 (160G in 2.5") 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 | |
| . |
A
New Chapter in the SSD Market Story
In
March 2007 - StorageSearch.com
commented on the overheating market for 2.5"
SATA
solid state disks...
"There
are now more oems now making 2.5" SSDs (22) than make hard drives."
You can see the full list in the
SSD Buyers Guide
In
2003 we published our prediction that the SSD market would become a $10 billion
plus market, and released the first edition of our
SSD market
penetration model which described in detail where SSDs would be used and why
they would be adopted very much faster than anyone expected based on simplistic
price per gigabyte considerations.
Marketers and company presidents
throughout the SSD industry in established companies and new start ups have
commented how useful the model was in alerting them to new opportunities which
had previously been experienced in a fragmented form.
As predicted in
2003, once the SSD market had moved past the $1 billion revenue milestone (in
2006), market analysts
(the usual suspects and some others which had long tracked the
flash market) leapt on
the bandwagon and started pouring out competing predictions that place the
eventual size of the SSD market anywhere from $5 billion to $10 billion in the
next several years.
You can see how the SSD market moved from technical
obscurity into the mainstream in our 20 year timeline article:-
Charting the
Rise of the Solid State Disk Market.
Is the
hard disk market under
threat from SSDs?
Some parts are already becoming an endangered species
- as decribed in my article -
Who's Eating Whom
in the Storage Market?. But the threat to hard disks is not the same as that
we discussed in 2001
when we started saying why disk
to disk backup would eventually kill
tape backup. (Tape is a
market which is still surviving - but not growing - in isolated enclaves).
In
contrast hard disks will survive and thrive but not in the same
applications which dominate the hard disk market today.
Instead hard
disks will predominantly be used as an archive media (for movies, email and
other bulk content). Looking ahead 5 years to 2012 it will be rare to see a hard
disk directly attached to a high performance server - except as part of a
RAID system or D2d backup
system connected by a storage
network.
The storage hierarchy will be rewritten as:- core
processor, core chip cache, motherboard cache,
DRAM, SSD and then hard
disk storage - with the SSD being the new factor (as
predicted in 2004
- supported in the operating system).
Other
storage publications
mainly write about the market after things have happened. We do that here too.
But from time to time I dust off the crystal ball and share its revelations with
the most important segment in the storage market... that's You - the
reader. | |
| . |
Squeak! -
Why are Most Analysts Wrong About Solid State Disks?
Most
analysts and editors of other computer publications don't really understand the
solid state disk market. They show their ignorance and naivete by prefacing
every discussion of SSDs with a superficial analysis which compares the cost per
byte of storage between flash and hard disk drives. That's the wrong answer to
the wrong question. And it's far removed from why the SSD market is racing to
become a multi billion dollar market seemingly in blithe ignorance of the cost
per byte proposition.
This article tells you what's important to
users and the main applications in which SSDs are already being used and new
applications where they will be used in the next 3 years. ...read the
article, Solid State Disks | | |
