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... the changing face of the industrial SSD market . If they survive manufacturing they'll survive customers too. by Zsolt Kerekes, editor - June 24, 2011 (updated Feb 2012) military storage fast erase SSDs Surviving SSD sudden power loss adding "e" to MLC - is it really better? Data Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design

... the changing face of the industrial SSD market One of the oldest markets for flash SSDs is the embedded industrial market - where rugged flash SSDs have been used since the mid 1990s. Some of the pioneering companies which shipped those early industrial flash drives are still in the market today. And you could say that the industrial SSD market has remained a constant factor in the fast changing world of the SSD market. But during the past 5 years - the vendor definitions of what makes an "industrial grade SSD" - have changed. Buyer assumptions which were once safe and universal - can no longer be taken for granted. Some assumptions have stayed the same. These are:- operating temperature range - from -40C to +85C rugged operation:- industrial SSDs must be capable of operating and surviving in a range of vibration conditions typically found in vehicles - and sometimes upto specific MIL standards. reliability considerations:- unlike the enterprise server SSD environment (in which individual disks can be backed up, RAIDed or repaired) and unlike the notebook SSD environment (in which flaky firmware can be fixed by downloads and reboots) - reliability and stability constraints on industrial SSDs are much higher. In many embedded applications the assumption is that the SSD lifetime is the same as the equipment life. Industrial SSDs have to be "fit and forget". electrical power:- industrial SSDs are available with a vast range of power consumption envelopes (more than 20 to 1) - and in many applications the SSD wattage is a key starting point for selecting a product. Industrial SSDs need more complex designs to protect data integrity when there is a sudden power loss - because they are used in a wider range of power supply systems than typical computer systems. physical size:- if it doesn't fit in the space then it can't be used. That's one reason why industrial SSDs are available in very small form factors - which I've lumped together in the 1 inch SSD directory. OS driver support:- industrial SSDs have to support operating systems which are additional to those used in the computer market - such as real-time OS's EOL (end of life) issues. Companies which use industrial SSDs for use in equipment and embedded systems need to be confident that they can continue obtaining these products during the lifetime of their programs - which are typically 3 to 5 years. That's dramatically different to the consumer and enterprise SSD markets where product lifetimes are typically in the range 6 to 24 months. The reason is that industrial SSD customers want to minimize the amortized costs of requalifying new products and doing redesigns in what are typically low volume markets. Consequently industrial SSD companies have to manage their technology roadmaps and customer service interfaces in a different way to computer market SSD makers. This is similar to the requirements in the military market. Subtle feature creep divergence has crept into the industrial SSD market in the past 5 years as its needs have grown apart from the military storage market. There used to be nearly 100% overlap between companies which marketed industrial SSDs and military SSDs - and the main differences between many industrial / military product lines used to be in their operating temperature range and testing processes. That's no longer the case. The differences have widened due to memory usage (true mil SSDs only use SLC flash) and the need for fast purge in military SSDs. Some important assumptions in industrial SSD product families have changed since this market began. use of MLC flash memory. Not that long ago - it would have been unthinkable for industrial SSDs to be offered with anything other than SLC flash memory. The industrial SSD market was slower in moving to an MLC permissive market than the enterprise SSD market because of the need to qualify other associated components - not just the flash chips - over the wider temperature range. Integrating SMART-like controller metrics back into the equipment design loop. Most industrial SSD makers offer tools to help equipment designers understand - the on-board SMART-like data collection features in their SSD controllers - and how use this info to model system life. Performance. Until recently - the fastest industrial SSDs used to lag 3 years or so behind similar form factor SSDs in the computer market. Not anymore. They are now available with speeds which are similar. Encryption and security. The range of security options and the associated economics in the industrial SSD market are as diverse as the markets in which they are used. For example the storage zones which hold the programs and other critical data can made unreadable outside of defined conditions to prevent competitors reverse analyzing the design. Industrial SSDs used to be replacements for hard drives. But in new designs we're seeing embedded SSDs replacing functions which were once done by vanilla flash memory. Why's that? It's because when memory capacity gets above a certain size - then the only reliable way to manage it is with SSD-like controller technology. So designs which once used bunches of flash chips are morphing into slots for low end SSDs - simply as a pragmatic way of using flash without equipment designers needing to peek inside unreliable flash chips. How does the industrial SSD market compare in size and importance to other segments in the SSD market? Industrial SSDs are 1 of the 5 main SSD user value proposition groups described in StorageSearch.com's SSD market penetration model. But this isn't a market which shouts loudly about the latest technology fashions. And it's fair to say that because of the conservative and largely hidden nature of the market - it rarely grabs the storage news headlines. But the industrial SSD market has great potential. One SSD analyst - Web-Feet Research - said recently they thought that "the embedded flash drive market would approach $17 billion annual revenue in 2015." To find related companies, products and related articles - see the list at the top right of this page. related articles and white papers the SSD reliability papers SSDs Take Hold in Embedded Applications principles of bad block management in flash SSDs How Bad is - Choosing the Wrong SSD Supplier? What defines a true Industrial Grade Flash SSD? (pdf)

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Over 50 companies design industrial SSDs including:- . APRO BiTMICRO CoreSolidStorage Emphas Foremay Greenliant Systems Hagiwara Sys-Com InnoDisk KingFast MagicRAM Memoright Microsemi Red Rock Technologies RunCore SMART STEC Viking Virtium Technology WD For more industrial SSD vendors take a look in these related directories:- 1" SSDs, 1.8" SSDs, 2.5" SSDs, PATA SSDs, SATA SSDs, SCSI SSDs, SSD news and "industrial SSD" - editor mentions in StorageSearch.com. .. Surviving SSD sudden power loss Why should you care what happens in an SSD when the power goes down? This important design feature - which barely rates a mention in most SSD datasheets and press releases - has a strong impact on SSD data integrity and operational reliability. This article will help you understand why some SSDs which (work perfectly well in one type of application) might fail in others... even when the changes in the operational environment appear to be negligible. If you thought endurance was the end of the SSD reliability story - think again. ...read the article . . flash SSD capacity - the iceberg syndrome Have you ever wondered how the amount of flash inside a flash SSD compares to the capacity shown on the invoice? What you see isn't always what you get. There can be huge variations in different designs as vendors leverage invisible internal capacity to tweak key performance and reliability parameters. ...read the article . the flash SSD story - market survival of the fittest? The emerging size of the flash SSD market as you see it today was by no means inevitable. It owes a lot to 3 competing storage media competitors which failed to evolve fast enough in the Darwinian jungle of the storage market in the past decade. One of these 3 contenders is definitely on the road to extinction - but could one of the other 2 still emerge to threaten flash SSDs? A recently published article - SSD's past phantom demons explores the latent market threats which hovered around the flash SSD market in the past decade. They seemed real and solid enough at the time. Getting a realistic perspective of flash SSD's past demons (which seemed very threatening at the time) may help you better judge the so-called "new" generation of nv memory contenders - which are also discussed in the article. ...read the article . What's the best way to design a flash SSD? and other questions which divide SSD opinion More than 10 key areas of fundamental disagreement within the SSD industry are discussed in an article here on StorageSearch.com called the the SSD Heresies. ... Why can't SSD's true believers agree upon a single coherent vision for the future of solid state storage? ...read the article . Fast Purge SSDs The need for fast and secure data erase - in which vital parts of a flash SSD or its data are destroyed in seconds - has always been a requirement in military projects. Although many industrial SSD vendors offer products with extended "rugged" operating environment capabilities - and even notebooks SSDs come with encryption - it's the availability of fast data purge which differentiates "truly secure" SSDs which can be deployed in sensitive applications. .

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