vendors, news, market
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| How Big
will be the Market for PCIe SSDs? |
This is a new emerging
market so it's impossible to be precise.
But search volume based data
reveals some useful comparisons.
In Q4 2009 - PCIe was the #1 most
popular form factor for SSD related searches. In the same quarter the
single most popular company profile viewed by readers was PCIe SSD evangelist
Fusion-io. To put
that into context:- there are over 1,000 storage companies profiled on
StorageSearch.com, of which 163
actively market SSDs or SSD technology.
There's little doubt that the
availability of PCIe SSDs will bring new customers into the server acceleration
SSD market.
The PCIe SSD approach suits a Google style architecture - in which
the applications infrastructure consists of large numbers of democratically
equal powered servers.
The traditional FC-SAN
SSD approach fits in better with a hierarchical applications infrastructure
- with a lean top and fat bottom. However, the servers at the bottom can also
get speedup benefits from a DAS style
SATA SSD
implementation .
I think both SAN and PCIe SSDs will exist side by
side for many years serving different types of application - even within the
same enterprise. For more about this - see my articles - my
2009 - Year of SSD
Market Confusion and
Market Trends in the
Rackmount SSD Market.
The PCIe SSD market has low entry barriers
from a technical design point of view. And the high asps in the server market
will make it look like a voluptuous alternative for recession weary consumer
SSD product marketers.
Simply add a PCIe interface to a
flash SSD controller,
an array of flash memory, some firmware and some ASIC glue. Chip companies like
Marvell can supply
nearly everything you need. It's much simpler than getting started with a 2.5"
SAS SSD product - for
example.
I wouldn't be surprised to see as many as 50 oems marketing
PCIe compatible SSD cards and systems by the middle of 2010. Although not
all products will be equally good.
If you're interested in quantitative
predictions about PCIe SSD market size by revenue and unit shipments - see
SSD market analysts. | |
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PCI Express SSDs Technical
Pros and Cons
The great attraction of PCIe for SSD oems is
that it can support a wide range of performance options with throughput upto
16GB/s, and much lower attachment costs than the
alternatives.
The
older busses like PCI and cPCI also provide performance which is adequate for
many applications.
Bus connected SSDs have been around since the
earliest days
of the SSD market.
The advantage of this approach is high
throughput and low latency compared to SSDs connected via traditional hard disk
style interfaces like
SAS,
SATA,
fibre-channel or
InfiniBand.
But
there are disadvantages too which include:-
1 - Bus style
interfaces reduce the available market for the SSD oem. Because older servers
may not have the interface, or perhaps the interface (for example Sun's SBus) is
proprietary and is only available in a small range of models.
2 - Bus
interfaces tend to have shorter permissable cable lengths - which restrict how
such SSDs can be connected.
3 - Bus interfaces usually don't include
intrinsic end to end error detection and correction. If the physical arrangement
of the SSD pushes the speed and cable lengths too far - then errors can arise in
the bus connect - which have to be dealt with in the associated driver.
...Later:-
May 13, 2009 - Dolphin's
CTO, Venkat Krishnan emailed this article correction.
"Dolphin's
StorExpress addresses concerns of PCIe direct attached SSDs raised in (2) above.
It includes support for different types of PCIe interfaces (ExpressModule, AMC,
etc.). Multiple PCIe SSD cards can be used without requiring multiple PCIe slots
in the server. The storage can be collocated at distances of up to 300m from the
server and can also be potentially shared by more than one server." | |
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SSD Bookmarks
suggested
by - Tim Miller, CEO Dolphin Interconnect Solutions
.............. |
Here's an article written by or
about Dolphin
Integrating
Solid State Storage in a PCI Express Clustering Interconnect (pdf)
Tim
Miller says he chose this article because "Using PCIe SSDs as Direct
Attached Storage (DAS) is a hot topic these days. This paper describes
extending the benefits "outside the box" to e-PCIe SSD (external) by
detailing a number of new e-PCIe SSD usage models using Dolphin's
StorExpress.
This includes simple DAS, with virtualization and HA support for up to 2TB for
slot limited rack or blade servers to the ability for integration in PCIe
cluster environments for multi-server connectivity and eventually shared storage
creating 'networked' DAS - the flexibility of SAN, simplicity of DAS and the
performance of SSD."
Other SSD article suggestions...
Design
Tradeoffs for SSD Performance - written by Nitin Agrawal (University of
Wisconsin) and Vijayan Prabhakaran, Ted Wobber, John D. Davis, Mark Manasse and
Rina Panigrahy at Microsoft
Research presented at the annual
USENIX conference.
Tim
Miller says "This paper is a useful primer on technical trade-offs for SSD
performance appropriate for non-engineers who want to have a foundation of
knowledge."
Other SSD bookmark suggestions...
"The
're-debate' of SAN vs. DAS takes on a new dimension with PCIe SSD and now e-PCIe
SSD - I thought a couple recent blogs and articles were interesting"
DAS:
the biggest surprise at NAB '09 - by Robin Harris (StorageMojo)
DAS
VS. SAN - by George Crump, and published on
InformationWeek
Editor:-
thanks Tim for sharing your SSD links.
see also:-
Dolphin
- editor mentions on StorageSearch.com
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the Fastest SSDs
Fibre-Channel SSDs
Flash SSDs /
RAM SSDs
the Top 10 SSD Companies
the Solid State Disks
Buyers Guide
Looking Ahead to
the 2009 SSD Market
Predicting Future Flash SSD
Performance
RAM
SSDs versus Flash SSDs - which is Best? | |
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| PCIe
SSD milestones from
SSD History |
Foremay samples
200K IOPS class PCIe SSD Cards
Editor:- February 8, 2010
Foremay is
sampling
its EC188 D-series 2nd generation
fast
PCIe SSDs with
capacity upto 4TB (MLC)
and 1TB (SLC).
The new SSDs deliver sequential speeds up to 1.6
GB/s for reading and 1.5 GB/s for writing, and R/W IOPS up to 200K/180K.
"IOPS is one of
the major pain points to be addressed in the deployment of today's high-end and
mission-critical servers and workstations," said Dr. Jack Winters,
Foremay's CTO and cofounder. "We hope that our new EC188 D-series PCIe
SSDs, with greater than 100K IOPS and more than 1GB/s bandwidth, can help solve
problems in the majority of those computing applications where IOPS or speed is
the bottleneck."
Editor's comments:- Foremay's new PCIe
SSDs aim at the same kind of customers who currently buy from
Fusion-io and
Texas Memory Systems
both of whom have been shipping this type of product for over a year
already. Customer qualification by OS and application type is a prerequisite
to sales in this part of the market. Foremay will have to be aggressive
on price to get volume customers interested enough to test its products.
Clarifying SSD Pricing - where does all the money go?
Editor:-
January 27, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article -
Clarifying SSD Pricing.
SSDs are among the most
expensive items of computer hardware many of you will ever buy - with high end
models costing more than high end servers.
Understanding the factors
which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating process - not
made any easier when market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more
than 100x to 1! This new guide suggests simple tactics to help
you. ...read the
article
LSI will Compete with Fusion-io
Editor:- January 26,
2010 - LSI and
Seagate today
announced
they have collaborated on designing
PCIe SSDs for the
enterprise accelerator market which will sample in Q2 2010.
Editor's
comments:- LSI is approximately the 163rd company to enter the
SSD market (not counting
SSD SoC makers - which
would push the score to about 185).
Partly this is due to a strong
suction effect from the SSD
market bubble - and partly an inevitable step given that the high end of the
RAID controller market
is going to disappear.
There's little point in spending money aggregating
IOPS in an
array of hard disks -
if the result costs more, is slower and is less
reliable to
operate.
Rudderless Solaris Market Gets Open Source Drivers for PCIe SSDs
Editor:-
January 26, 2010 - Texas
Memory Systems today
announced
it is delivering open source drivers on
Linux and
Solaris for its
RamSan-20
PCIe SSD accelerator.
This thin driver offers a simple control paradigm and is easy to port
and manipulate as open source. It offers little burden to the host system and
creates a neat division of labor between the host and the device allowing the
host system to operate to its maximum potential.
Editor's comments:-
IBM and
HP long ago had their own
engineers tweak and customize
Fusion-io's PCIe SSDs
- for remarketing to their own respective server customers.
Despite
several quarters (some might say years) of uncertainty over the Solaris server
market - customers still have to make decisions about what to do to keep their
installed base in good shape. Perhaps the availability of open source code for
these SSD accelerator products will encourage some systems integrators or users
to take architectural tweaking matters into their own hands.
2010 - 1st Fizz in the SSD Market Bubble
Editor:-
January 12, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article -
2010 - 1st Fizz in the
SSD Bubble.
I think
SSD analysts will
look back on 2010 as - "Year 1 of the SSD Market Bubble." Greed
will play as big a part as technology in shaping the
SSD year ahead. Wonder
why? ...read the
article
RunCore Ships 1st PXI Express SSDs
Editor:- January
5, 2010 - RunCore
has started shipments of the 1st SSDs aimed at the
PXI Express market (a standard
which brings PCIe performance and functionality into the robust modular form
factor popular in automated instrumentation
test systems).
RunCore's
3U CPCIe\PXIe SSD card provides upto 768GB
MLC or 384GB SLC
capacity and has sustained R/W speeds upto 400MB/s. Available with industrial
operating temperature range and MIL-STD-810F processing, the module provides a
fast purge rate of
5GB/s.
2.5" SSD Market Fights Back
Editor:- January 4,
2010 - StorageSearch.com
disclosed today that the gap in search volume between
PCIe SSDs (most
popular form factor) and 2.5"
SSDs (#2 form factor) narrowed in December 2009 - rather than widened.
The
imminent availability of consumer priced 6Gbps SATA SSDs coupled with growing
competition in the 2.5" SAS SSD market has boosted the acceleration ceiling
in traditional disk form factors. That provides more reasons for customers to
look again at the 2.5" form factor. Reader pageviews for PCIe SSDs were
nearly 4x higher than a year ago.
Solid State Drives -
market research & analysts
InnoDisk Enters PCIe SSD Market
Editor:- December 22,
2009 - InnoDisk
entered the PCIe SSD
market with a new model called the Matador with upto
800MB/s read and
550MB/s write speeds and upto 1TB capacity (MLC).
SLC versions are
also available - but are slower - R/W upto 700MB/s and 500MB/s respectively.
Retail pricing for 256GB is $999.
It has an internal
RAID allocation function
enabling users to trade between capacity between data protection and
performance (over-provisioning).
Its Power Guard protection ensures data will be written into flash when
power is interrupted unexpectedly.
Editor's comments:-
Although it sounds remarkably similar to the type of products that
Fusion-io was
shipping a year ago - InnoDisk says it's an original design based on their own
firmware and IP.
the Problem with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs
Editor:-
December 16, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article -
the Problem with
Write IOPS - in flash SSDs.
Flash SSD "random write IOPS"
are now similar to "read IOPS" in many of the
fastest SSDs. So
why are they such a poor predictor of application performance?
And
why are users still buying
RAM SSDs which cost
9x more than SLC? - even when the IOPS specs look similar. This tells
you why the specs got faster - but the applications didn't. And why competing
SSDs with apparently identical benchmark results can perform completely
differently. ...read
the article
IBM Markets PCIe SSD Technology Sourced from Fusion-io
Editor:-
December 9, 2009 - Fusion-io
today
announced
that its ioMemory PCIe
SSD technology has been adapted by IBM who will remarket
these solutions (initially with upto 320GB capacity) as its
High
IOPS SSD PCIe Adapters for use in System x servers.
Editor's
comments:- Fusion-io's public association with IBM goes back to August 2008
- when it was revealed as the secret ingredient in
IBM's million IOPS
story.
2.5" SSD Market Maintains Growth
Editor:-
December 2, 2009 - 2.5" SSD pageviews on StorageSearch.com increased 85%
in November compared to the year ago period.
But that wasn't enough
for this subject to regain the #1 slot for "most viewed SSD form factor"
by our readers.
The #1 subject was again -
PCIe SSDs. Proof - if
it were needed - that once SSD buyers have bought into the idea of application
acceleration - they are prepared to cast aside ties to historic interfaces and
form factors and look at the best value for money when considering new
projects.
Fusion-io Unveils World's Fastest SSD Card
Editor:-
November 17, 2009 - Fusion-io
today
unveiled
details of a very fast PCIe form factor,
InfiniBand
compatible, flash SSD designed for 2 undisclosed government customers.
The
ioDrive Octal card, occupies 2 slots and delivers 800,000 IOPS (4k packet
size), 6GB/s bandwidth and has upto 5TB maximum capacity (implemented by 8x
ioMemory modules.
Each deployment consists of hundreds of terabytes of
solid-state storage capacity and is capable of sustaining over one terabyte
per second of aggregate bandwidth with access latencies under 50
microseconds.
"We were eager to take on the challenge of creating
a device that meets the intense demands of high performance computing"
said Steve Wozniak, Chief Scientist at Fusion-io. "With this architecture,
IOPS are easy. We achieved over 100 million IOPS, more than enough
performance to meet our customer's requirements. The real power in our
architecture was the ability to also scale bandwidth. We look forward to
productizing the ioDrive Octal in the future, and bringing the power of this
solid-state storage technology from the world of HPC to the enterprise."
NextIO Opens Next Phase in PCIe SSD Market
Editor:-
November 10, 2009 - NextIO
has entered the multi-million IOPS
rackmount SSD
market via an oem agreement which leverages multiple
225GB / 450GB PCIe SLC
SSDs made by Texas
Memory Systems.
Available immediately, the
14 slot NextIO
application acceleration appliance can be configured and reconfigured with
any mix of servers and TMS SSD cards depending on system demands. Pricing for a
basic configuration starts at $19,500, which includes implementation, training
and onsite application or database tuning assistance.
NextIO will
demonstrate a bundled storage appliance utilizing 8 or more TMS RamSan-10 PCIe
SSD cards performing at 1.2M IOPs or greater next week at
SC09 .
Woody
Hutsell, President, Texas Memory Systems said - "Just a
few months ago we
announced a record-breaking 5 million IOPS in a 40U rack and now with a joint
solution from NextIO, customers can realize over 15M IOPs in the same
datacenter footprint. This partnership with NextIO provides our customers with a
quantum leap in scalable performance by simply combining these 2 world-class
technologies."
Editor's comments:- in a little over 2 years the
PCIe SSD market first
captured the imagination of server architects worldwide and then moved off the
page into the datacenter overtaking
2.5" SSDs in
blueprints for future enterprise class servers.
Today's announcement
is significant. You may ask why? Haven't all the elements in this product mix
been available for some while? In some ways that's true:- rackmount PCIe
connected SSDs have been shipping since
August 2007 (Violin Memory) and very
fast PCIe SSDs cards for adding into server slots since March 2008 (Fusion-io), and
rackmount SSDs based on multiple PCIe cards since
March 2009 (Dolphin). But to my
knowledge Dolphin's solution is not available as an unbundled card.
The
new thing about today's announcement is it's the 1st time that an already market proven PCIe SSD card
from one oem has also been offered in a supported (Dolphin style) rack product
from another. That considerably reduces the risk for users - and provides an
incremental upgrade path for users who aren't yet in a position to commit to
multi-terabyte proprietary rackmount SSDs. For more discussion of open versus
proprietary rackmount SSDs see -
Market Trends in
the Rackmount SSD Market
SSD Guide Popularity Grows 127%
Editor:- November 2,
2009 - StorageSearch.com
disclosed that pageviews of the
Solid State Disks
Buyers Guide increased 127% in September 2009 compared to a year
ago.
The SSD Guide - the #1 most popular article with our readers - is
a useful digest of the
SSD market - especially for
readers who don't have time to read the hundreds of other in-depth articles and
analysis here on the mouse site.
Pageviews for the top 5 articles
(all on the theme of SSDs) increased an average of 73%.
Foremay Enters PCIe SSD Market
Editor:- October 26,
2009 - Foremay
has entered the PCIe SSD
market with its
EC188
Dragon series - which is now sampling and will ship in volume in Q1 2010.
Supporting
both x8 and x16 slots - R/W performance is upto 1.5 GB/s and 1.3 GB/s
respectively. Both MLC and SLC models are available. Capacities range from
128GB to 4TB. Sequential R/W IOPS is up to 90,000/80,000. Random R/W IOPS is
up to 27,000/12,000.
Features available with the EC188 Dragon PCIe
SSD include power outage protection, dual PCIe configuration through a built-in
PCIe RAID controller, and active garbage collection. OS support includes
Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux, and UNIX.
Editor's comments:-
Foremay is coy about publicly announcing prices for the new Dragon models. But
the pricing disclosed to me for a terabyte MLC unit looks competitive - as it
has to be.
Samsung invests in Fusion-io
Editor:- October 20,
2009 - Samsung
has invested in
Fusion-io .
These
2 leading SSD companies
have also agreed to jointly evaluate technology for new SSD applications.
Samsung's
strategic financial investment will drive further solid-state innovation at
Fusion-io, which is expected to result in a steady evolution of state-of-the-art
storage media.
Editor's comments:- not all
flash memory is created
equal - and an important part of the competitive advantage in an
SSD controller is the
brainpower which the SSD designer has invested into understanding the
personalities of the flash he/she is using. These supplier specific
personalities arise from architecture and process differences in flash memory
and they yield unique distributions of parameters which are often not
explicitly specified in the datasheet. But a good SSD designer can use this
proprietary knowledge to design an SSD which is more economic, or faster, or
more reliable than using generic assumptions.
But those technology
insights can only succeed in the market if the SSD vendor can ensure that they
will get a continuous supply of raw memory products tweaked or batch tested to
fit their controller model. Why should the memory maker restrict their freedom
to innovate their products for the whole market - compared to guaranteeing
features for a single customer?
To make this work the collaborators
have to share confidential technology and market information. That's how this
type of investment agreement starts.
3 years ago
Samsung invested in
SiliconSystems - the background to that was a market in which SLC flash
was expected to be in short supply. Today's investment in Fusion-io has a
different market background - but it demonstrates the 2 companies think they can
do better by working together. Fusion-io said it will be demonstrating new
products based on this collaboration next month.
Fusion-io Slashes Costs for MySpace
Editor:- October
13, 2009 - Fusion-io
published a
case
study showing how their ioDrive
SSDs helped MySpace reduce
servers, claim back 50% rack space while increasing application performance and
massively decreasing electrical power.
The ioDrives performed much
better than the legacy SAS
disk arrays, but more importantly for MySpace, they did it with much less
hardware. A single ioDrive allowed MySpace to replace a 2U HP DL380 server with
1U HP DL160 server.
In the initial phase of this deployment MySpace
replaced 150 of their standard load servers, recovering 150U of rack space.
Additionally, the ioDrives' phenomenal performance reduced its need for heavy
load servers, allowing it to permanently end-of-life 50 of 80 heavy load
servers. This allowed it to recover another 65U of rack space.
Reliability also
increased and the Fusion-io solution is
greener.
Estimates suggest that the power savings alone could easily pay for the
ioDrives over their lifetime.
MySpace says it plans to replace
another 1,770 2U servers with Fusion-io enabled servers as they reach their
end-of-life.
"In the last 20 years, disk storage hasn't kept pace
with other innovations in IT, and right now we're on the cusp of a dramatic
change with flash technologies, with Fusion-io clearly leading this
transformation," said Richard Buckingham, VP of technical operations for
MySpace. "We looked at a number of solid state disk solutions, using many
different kinds of RAID configurations, but we felt that Fusion-io's solution
was exactly what we needed to accomplish our goals." ...read the
article (pdf)
Sun Launches PCIe SSD
Editor:- October 12, 2009 -
Sun Microsystems
launched
2 new SSD product lines.
- The F5100
Flash Array ($45,995 upwards) is a new 1U
rackmount SSD -
which has 16 SAS ports
and provides upto 1.92TB capacity. R/W IOPS are upto 1.6M and 1.2M respectively
(for a system populated with 80 SSD modules).
- The FlashFire
F20 is a 96GB SLC flash
PCIe SSD with 100k
read and 84k write IOPS. R/W rates are upto 1092MB/s and 501MB/s respectively.
The card also includes a
SAS controller.
Top 10 SSD OEMs in Q3 2009
Editor:- October 2, 2009 -
StorageSearch.com published
the new (10th quarterly edition) of the
top 10 SSD oems
ranked by storage search volume.
It's a popular barometer of the
SSD market and includes - as usual - a commentary for each of the companies
listed.
PCIe SSDs Snatch #1 Storage Search Crown
Editor:-
September 24, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
disclosed today that search volumes for
PCIe form factor SSDs
have surpassed that for
2.5" SSDs for
the 1st time.
"This is a tsunami warning event for SSD vendors
addressing the enterprise server acceleration market" said Zsolt Kerekes,
editor of StorageSearch.com.
"In the 25 years that I've been
involved in the enterprise storage - there were just 3 great waves of user
mass adoption for new disk form factors - starting with 8.5", moving
onto 5.25", then 3.5" and finally 2.5".
"In
contrast, after
3 decades of
sleepy stealth mode development the SSD market is now streaming ahead on
SSD time. Users have woken up to what the SSD market can do for their servers -
and for new systems they don't want to plow through their data fields dragged
down by the clutter and dead weight baggage of the
rotating disk peddlers.
A year ago interest in 2.5" SSDs was an order of magnitude higher than
PCIe SSDs. Both have grown in search volume - but PCIe SSDs seem to have
captured the imagination of this market to a degree which only its most
optimistic supporters would have predicted."
OCZ Finally Ships Z-Drive
Editor:- September 16, 2009
- OCZ announced
immediate availability of its
Z-Drive
PCIe SSDs available
with SLC or MLC
flash.
Editor's comments:- This product was originally
unveiled in March
2009 at CeBIT. The IOPS
performance of the
SLC
version is an order of magnitude lower than that of true enterprise
acceleration products from
Fusion-io and
Texas Memory Systems
which does beg the question - what applications are really viable for this
product?
Former Fusion-io CEO Encores at Violin
Editor:-
September 15, 2009 -
Violin Memory
today announced that Donald Basile has been named CEO.
Dr.
Basile (with over 20 years of leadership experience) most recently served as the
CEO of Fusion-io
which evangelized the use of
PCIe flash SSDs for
servers and workstations. Under his leadership, the company concluded agreements
with HP, IBM and Dell. He also led sales growth that generated over 300 global
enterprise customers in less than 1 year.
"Don has an impressive record of building both value and market
footprint rapidly as was shown in his time as CEO at Fusion-io" said Steve
O'Donnell, Senior Analyst at Enterprise
Strategy Group. "He possesses the unique combination of operational,
technical, managerial and marketing skills that will have an immediate positive
impact on Violin Memory."
Micron Solidifies PCIe SSD Vaporware
Editor:- July
27, 2009 - IDT
announced
it was working with Micron
to develop a commercial PCIe
flash SSD for the server market.
Micron had previously tested
market reaction by unveiling a prototype PCIe SSD (with 800MB/s R/W speeds) in
November 2008.
TPC-H with Fusion-io SSDs in Dell Results
Editor:-
July 27, 2009 - Fusion-io
today announced today the results of TPC-H benchmark tests sponsored by, and
running on, Dell servers, and audited by
Performance Metrics, Inc.
The
tested system
achieved
28,772 QphH (Query-per-Hour Performance Metric) on a 100GB database, at a
cost of $1.47 per database transaction. (The typical 3 year cost of ownership
for the whole system including software is quoted as $41,998.)
These
results (which Fusion-io says are comparable to a 160 hard disk drive based
system) were accomplished using a single
Dell
PowerEdge T610 server equipped with 4x
Fusion-io 80GB
ioDrives, and 8 hard drives, running Microsoft Windows Server 2008
Enterprise Edition x64 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition x64.
"At a cost-per-transaction, inclusive of the server, software
licensing and storage, the Fusion-io solution, which used solid-state
technologies, reduced the cost of database transactions by almost half,"
said David Flynn, CTO, Fusion-io.
Paul Prince, CTO, Dell Enterprise
Product Group said "In the past, high-performance SSDs were simply too
cost-prohibitive to be taken seriously and these results (using off-the-shelf
products) confirmed that such configurations are a very real consideration for
many applications in enterprise IT solutions."
Top 10 SSD OEMs
Editor:- July 7, 2009 -
StorageSearch.com today
published the 9th quarterly edition of
the Top 10 SSD OEMs
- based on search volume in Q 2009.
Who are the top 10 most
important SSD manufacturers - the companies which you absolutely have to look at
if you've got got any new projects involving SSDs? With over 155 oems
now in the SSD market - this article with its commentary and analysis is a must
read. ...read the
article
SSD Market's Biggest Shifting Trends?
Editor:- July
1, 2009 In a fast growing market like
SSDs - how do you spot the
most significant trends?
I discuss the 2 most significant changes in
the past year and how I think they will affect the future market in my new
preface to the
SSD buyers guide
published today. Because of its relevance to this page you're viewing now -
I've cut and paste part of it here below.
"The astonishing rise
in vendors marketing
PCI Express SSDs -
concurrent with 4x growth in reader pageviews in this subject. These
factors clearly predict that PCIe SSDs will become a significant part of the
population of SSDs inside the enterprise server box. A mere 25% separates
reader pageviews between this - and the most popular SSD form factor - for
2.5" SSDs."
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 factors analyzed in a new
article today.
Fast IOPS Hard Drive Concept Resurfaces
Editor:-
June 22, 2009 - last week Dataslide announced
it was close to
productizing
its revolutionary hard drive technology.
Why mention it here? On
these SSD pages...
We all thought it safe to assume
there
aren't going to be any faster hard drives.
I know most of you don't
look at the HDD news
any more. That's why I'm repeating it here. It may be out of context
technology-wise - but it's definitely hard core SSD subject matter market-wise.
If successful - Dataslide's technology (which we first reported on 7 years ago)
would deliver similar IOPS and throughput performance as a mid range PCIe SSD
- but at the media cost of a hard drive.
That would add more
complicated choices to an already complex market for inside the box server
accelerators.
NextIO Unveils PCIe flash SSD
Editor:- June 17, 2009
- NextIO today
announced
it will demonstrate a 12 slot
PCIe flash SSD system,
designed in collaboration with
Marvell later
this month.
Each slot will be capable of over 200,000 IOPs and offer
400GB capacity.
Editor's comments:- there are nearly as many
companies making PCIe SSDs
today - as there are making 2.5"
SSDs. And it wouldn't surprise me to see the PCIe SSD oem count to become
the larger of the two.
With the growing number of
SSD controller and IP
companies in the market it's getting
easier to design
SSDs.
An electronics college graduate could probably build a
passable demonstration product as a summer project. But it's another matter
entirely - how well such a college demo unit would work in a variety of
applications and OS platforms. There's no shortcut to market experience. Users
will have to judge how much it's worth becoming beta sites for the mass of new
SSD companies flooding into the market.
NextIO is better
funded than most
students. The most recent
$15
million funding round announced earlier this month took their total to
over $55 million.
the Most Popular Storage Products
Editor:- June 8,
2009 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article -
the Most Popular
Products on StorageSearch.com (2007 to 2009)
What can we learn
about changes in the
storage market and the
changing interests of readers by looking at how the most popular storage
products viewed by our readers have changed in recent years?
I
couldn't remember what these products were. And I didn't know the answer. So I
delved into the log files. That revealed some trends which seem obvious now -
but which I hadn't consciously noticed before. ...read the article
Fusion-io will Offer Consumers PCIe SSD Accelerators
Editor:-
June 2, 2009 -
Fusion-io
announced it will ship a
consumer optimized
version of its enterprise PCIe SSD family in July.
Priced at
$895, the ioXtreme has 80GB MLC
flash capacity and average throughput of 520MB/s. Supported OS's include:-
Windows XP, Vista and Linux.
Editor's comments:- the ioXtreme
marketing package ends the confusion about the blurring boundaries in the
PCIe SSD market
between enterprise SSDs and pro consumers. This product has been optimized for
the consumer market.
- Out goes expensive SLC
flash (consumers don't need it - although most
enterprise apps
do). MLC is less than 1/2 the price of SLC for the same capacity (and that
gap is widening).
- Toss out 80% of the capacity (and memory cost) which you'd find in a
single slot enterprise card too. A single user doesn't need it.
- Winding down the performance from an enterprise class product like
Fusion-io's ioDrive Duo (1.4GB/s
R/W) to about 1/3 of that saves a bundle on fast glue hardware. It makes the
cache memory cheaper. The SSD controller processor can run slower and you
don't need onboard RAID logic (or if you do - it can be cheaper).
Those
kinds of value optimized decisions can lead you to a product like the
ioXtreme - which is still many times faster than any
2.5" SSD and
satisfies speed hungry consumer budgets without cannibalizing sales to
enterprise customers. It's a clever marketing move and I'm sure it will attract
huge interest.
SMART Enters PCIe SSD Market
Editor:- June 1, 2009
- SMART Modular
Technologies disclosed it had used Marvell's
SSD controller in
SMART's new XceedIOPS
PCIe SSD which offers
upto 400GB capacity and 140,000 random IOPS performance.
PhotoFast Promises 1,500MB/s SSD
Editor:- June 1,
2009 - PhotoFast
showed a faster (version 2) prototype of its G-Monster
PCIe SSD today at
Computex.
Read
performance is claimed to be 1,500MB/s.
SSD Article Pageviews Grow 98%
Editor:- June 1,
2009 - StorageSearch.com
disclosed today that page views for the popular
SSD Buyers Guide
increased 65% in May 2009 compared to the year ago period.
Average page views of the top 5 SSD articles in May 2009 were 98%
higher than the top 5 SSD articles a year ago.
The #1 incoming
search word to the mouse site was "SSD" which occurred
2.4x as often as a year ago. These metrics indicate continued growth
in reader activity related to the SSD market despite the
recession.
"Nearly every IT publication now has something to say about SSDs"
says StorageSearch.com's editor, Zsolt Kerekes. "The SSD content explosion
includes a lot of froth and inaccurate analysis - but also a lot of good
stuff too. The best of the these get honorable mentions in
the SSD Bookmarks."
"As
you're on the PCIe SSD page - I looked up the stats for what's been happening
here recently. In May 2009 pageviews for the main PCIe SSD page increased 27%
compared to 3 months ago (in Feb 2009)."
Inside PCIe Gen3
Editor:- May 19, 2009 - Electronic Design today published a
new article -
PCI
Express And The PHY(sical) Journey To Gen 3.
"PCIe Gen3 will
make possible legacy channel functionality at 8 Gbits/s per lane."
The
article looks at the legacy of PCIe and the interactions between error
correction, data transmission and power saving strategies. And it describes the
architectures and strategies required for the next generation of speedup.
See
also:- SSD Controllers
/ IP, storage chips,
PCIe SSDs
Debunking Tier 0 Storage Babble
Editor:- May 18,
2009 - in a new article published today on StorageSearch.com I explain why
- I Tire of - "Tier
Zero Storage"
You don't need to waste any of your precious
brain cells by investing "tier 0 storage" with an importance this
travesty of
storage jargon
really doesn't deserve. ...read the article
New SSD Bookmarks - from Dolphin Interconnect Solutions
Editor:-
May 13, 2009 - Dolphin's
CEO, Tim
Miller shares his
SSD Bookmarks
with readers of
StorageSearch.com.
In
addition to the interesting articles and blogs suggested today, Tim has answered
for me the question of what to call externally connected PCIe SSDs. You may be
ahead of me here already - "e-PCIe" is to PCIe what eSATA is to
SATA. But it was new
to me. I've had an interesting time this morning reading the articles. I'm
sure you will too. ...read the article
DDRdrive Launches Low Cost PCIe RAM SSD
Editor:- May
4, 2009 - DDRdrive
emerged from stealth mode and launched the
DDRdrive X1 - a
PCIe compatible
RAM SSD with onboard
flash backup. |
 |
Load / restore time
is 60S. I/O performance is over 200K IOPS (for 512B blocks). For 4kB blocks
IOPS is:- 50k (reads) and 35K (writes). R/W throughput is 215MB/s and
155MB/s respectively. Capacity is 4GB. OS compatibility:- Microsoft Windows
(various). Price is $1,495.
Using Microsoft Windows built-in
RAID support, DDRdrive
X1's can be spanned (capacity), striped (performance), mirrored (redundancy),
and RAID-5 configured.
Editor's comments:- the DDRdrive X1
looks competitively priced for accelerating database applications in which the
hot files can be squeezed into a capacity range from about 4GB to 12GB. Above
that - you get into the region of entry level
rackmount SSDs
and high performance PCIe
flash SSD cards
from companies like Fusion-io
and Texas Memory Systems.
There's definitely a gap in the market for this scale of product (low
entry price, low capacity - high IOPS). For the past year or so DDRdrive
shipped an earlier generation of its SSD accelerators exclusively to a large
enterprise for secret internal projects.
...Later:- May 7,
2009 - I can now reveal the "large enterprise" customer was
Intel.
Dolphin's New StorExpress SSD Ships in May
Editor:-
April 21, 2009 - MAGMA
and Dolphin
jointly
announced
they have collaborated to develop an improved version of the latter's
previously announced
StorExpress
(2U rackmount PCIe
connected SSD product line) which will ship next month.
Capacity
options include 0.5TB (under $20K), 1TB and 2TB. It achieves 270K read and write
IOPs (512 bytes to 4KB blocks) and up to 2.8GB/s of sustained bandwidth. Latency
is less than 50µS. The StorExpress enclosure can be positioned 1,000 feet
away from the host server using fiber.
"PCI Express, with its
tight linkages to microprocessors is the natural technology for creating high
performance systems" said Tim Miller, CEO Dolphin. "By partnering
with Magma we have created an exceptional solution - simple, elegant, cost
effective yet capable of delivering world class performance and flexibility."
OCZ Unveils miniPCI-E Notebook SSDs
Editor:- April
17, 2009 -
OCZ today
unveiled its
1st miniPCI-Express
compatible SSDs.
Aimed
at notebooks OCZ miniPCI-E options include:- 16GB or 32GB capacity, and
2 interface options.
- SATA
models - 110MB/s read and 51MB/s write speeds
- PATA
models - 45MB/s read and 35MB/s write speeds
HP and Fusion-io Demonstrate Scalabity of PCIe SSD Accelerated
ProLiant
Editor:- April 6, 2009 - Fusion-io announced
today that its SSD technology has enabled HP to achieve 1
million IOPS (using 2KB random 70/30 read/write mix) and 8GB/s sustained
throughput from a single ProLiant server.
Working together in HP's
ProLiant engineering labs in Houston, technologists from HP and Fusion-io built
a system using 5x 320MB ioDrive Duos and 6x 160MB ioDrives in a single HP
ProLiant DL785 G5 server, running with 4 Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors.
"These
results show the true power of combining our PCI Express and NAND flash
technology with HP's ProLiant architecture," said David Flynn, CTO of
Fusion-io.
Editor's comments:- Fusion-io's SSDs were the
secret ingredient in an
IBM
"million IOPS" story last summer.
The point of this kind
of story is not the performance number, or the throughput, but to show the scalability
of the solution. End-users like scalable speedups - because they know that
no matter how well an accelerator solves their problem today - if the
application is successful - the growth in demand for it will mean they'll need
yet another speedup 3 to 6 months later.
See also:-
million
IOPS - editor mentions on StorageSearch.com
Super Talent Joins Over Crowding PCIe SSD Market
Editor:-
April 1, 2009 - Super Talent
Technology pre-announced its
RAIDDrives
SSD product line.
This connects via
PCIe and supports up
to 2TB of RAID5 protected MLC flash storage. R/W performance is upto 1.2GB/s
and 1.3GB/s respectively. More details are promised in June 2009.
New PCIe SSD Aims at PC Acceleration Market
Editor:-
March 26, 2009 - PhotoFast
has unveiled a
PCIe SSD for the
Vista / XP market - the
G-Monster-PCIe
Turbo Speed SSD - expected to ship in June.
Capacity options
include:- 256GB, 512GB and 1TB. Both
MLC and SLC options
are available. The flash array includes onboard
RAID protection. R/W
speeds are quoted as 750MB/s and 700MB/s respectively.
Editor's
comments:- Until now -there has been a theoretical gap in the market. Such
products have only supported enterprise OS's such as Linux, Solaris and
Windows Server because, frankly, consumers can't afford them. Financial
traders and analysts might be a potential market for these accelerators - but
I can't see many consumers deciding to forego upgrading their car and upgrading
their PCs instead.
Dolphin Launches PCIe Connected Rackmount SSD
Editor:-
March 12, 2009 -
Dolphin
launched the
StorExpress
a rackmount SLC
flash SSD with upto 960GB capacity.
The
PCIe connected SSD has
R/W throughput upto 2,700MB/s and 50 microsecond access latency. Dolphin quotes
a figure of 270,000 IOPS but the initial datasheet doesn't break out IOPS
figures for reads and writes. The StorExpress can be located upto 10m from the
host bus using copper cable and 300m with optical fibre.
Fusion-io Raises the PCIe SSD Ceiling - Announces ioDrive
Duo
Editor:- March 11, 2009 - Fusion-io announced
an enhanced version of its ioDrive - called the
ioDrive Duo which
will ship next month.
Capacity of this
PCIe SSD has doubled
to 640GB with 1.2TB planned for the 2nd half of 2009. Performance has been
enhanced too. The ioDrive Duo can easily sustain 1.5 Gbytes/sec of read
bandwidth. Read IOPS performance is 186,000 (4k packet size). Write IOPS
reaches 167,000 (4k packet size).
Fusion-io says the performance for
multiple ioDrive Duos scales linearly, allowing any enterprise to scale
performance to 6Gbytes/s of read bandwidth and over 500,000 read IOPS by using
just 4 drives.
Data integrity and reliability have been engineered into
the design at many levels providing triple redundancy for a single storage
component. These factors include:-
- Multi-bit error detection and correction
- Patent-pending Flashback protection, offering chip-level N+1 redundancy and
on-board self-healing so that no servicing is required
- Optional RAID-1 mirroring between two ioMemory modules
StorageSearch.com's SSD market
model suggests that the market opportunity for PCIe SSDs (in server
acceleration roles) is as large in revenue as the total market for
2.5" SSDs . There
are enough competing alternative vendors in the PCIe SSD market today to
minimize the risks for end-users and systems integrators - who choose this
route for their SSD speedups.
TMS Joins the Surging Tide for PCI Express SSDs
Editor:-
March 10, 2009 -
Texas Memory Systems
today unveiled a PCIe SSD
that will ship in Q2 2009.
The
RamSan-20 has 450GB
of RAID protected SLC flash with 80 microseconds latency. R/W bandwidth is
700MB/s and 500MB/s respectively. Sustained IOPS are:- 120,000 random read, and
50,000 random write. Endurance is rated at 12 years (assuming 25% continuous
writes). List price is about $18,000.
With the number of PCIe SSD
oems already in double digits and expected to go north of 30 in 2010, I asked
TMS's President, Woody Hutsell what was different about their offering?
He
agreed with my observation that the technical barriers to entering this market
are low. But he said that unlike most other PCIe SSD vendors - this is the
14th generation of SSD for TMS and they already have 18 months of customer
experience with flash SSDs in the most demanding server applications with their
earlier RamSan-500. The implication being - their new flash SSD will work in
enterprise accelerator apps - without nasty surprises - and TMS knows what to
tell the customers who need tuning advice. They've been training up additional
technical support people to cope with the anticipated ramp in questions from new
customers.
Woody Hutsell also said the new RamSan-20 has a very low
server load footprint which enables users to realistically configure multiple
units, and the onboard controller ensures that no data will be lost in the event
of a power outage or server crash. (In some enterprise flash SSD array designs
the controller functions such as flash block remapping are done by the host
server - which theoretically could result in data corruption if the host CPU is
abruptly terminated.)
As StorageSearch.com
has already reported - reader interest in PCI Express SSDs has surged in the
past 9 months. If that translates into buying behavior - there will be more than
enough business for the companies in the market.
OCZ Joins the PCIe SSD Crowd
Editor:- March 9, 2009
- OCZ Technology Group
unveiled a PCIe SSD
last week at CeBIT.
The
Z Drive uses MLC
flash and has 1TB capacity. According to a show report on
Tom's
Hardware - R/W speed is 600MB/s and 500MB/s respectively.
HP oems Fusion-io's SSD Accelerator Technology
Editor:-
March 3, 2009 -
Fusion-io
announced an oem deal with HP
whose new PCIe based
StorageWorks
IO Accelerator for for HP BladeSystem c-Class servers is based on
Fusion's ioMemory SSD technology.
A low level formatting tool for the
HP SSD enables users to choose what level of
over-provisioning is
used - as a performance
tweaking option.
NetApp Starts Walking the SSD Talk
Sunnyvale,
Calif. - February 3, 2009 - NetApp unveiled 2 strands in its solid
state storage acceleration strategy today - support for Texas Memory
Systems' RamSan-500 flash SSD array and also a new Performance
Acceleration Module.
Support for the 100K IOPS
RamSan-500 SSD is
supplied by NetApp's V-Series storage controller and Data ONTAP software. The
RamSan-500 can be utilized as a large, fast networked cache, or otherwise
partitioned to maximize storage efficiency.
Meanwhile - the new
PAM
provides a read cache (16GB to 80GB) implemented by PCI Express DRAM cards.
These enables NetApp customers to significantly increase application
performance in FC disk arrays by 35% using 1/2 the number of hard disks
typically used in over-provisioned HDD arrays. Alternatively customers can
deploy lower cost, higher density SATA HDDs instead of FC disks while still
maintaining performance and making substantial savings in costs. ...Network Appliance
profile, ...Texas
Memory Systems profile
Editor's comments:- Although NetApp's
PAM is a PCIe RAM card and not a PCIe SSD - it's just a short walk from
one to the other - which is why I've mentioned it here. I have little doubt the
company has already been evaluating options in this market space.
January 2009
StorageSearch.com disclosed that in the
1st 4 weeks of January pageviews for
PCIe SSDs had
overtaken all other form factors except
2.5" SSDs.
December 2008
StorageSearch.com disclosed that PCIe
SSDs had risen into the top 10 subjects viewed by readers in November.
November 2008
Violin Memory announced
availability of a new 1010 Memory Appliance - a fast 4TB SLC flash SSD in a
2U rackmount. Its patent pending non blocking architecture delivers over 200K
random Read IOPS and 100K random Write IOPS (4K block). Interface options
include:-
PCIe,
Fibre Channel and
Ethernet.
Micron Technology
demonstrated prototypes of fast PCIe flash SSDs with 800MB/s throughput, and
hinted that it might demonstrate 1GB/s SSDs soon.
October 2008
Virtium Technology
entered the SSD market with its LeanSTOR - an AMC form factor SSD module for
the AdvancedTCA market.
Other AMC/ PMC SSD oems include:-
Aitech Defense Systems,
Asine,
BiTMICRO Networks,
Curtiss-Wright,
INTELLIAM,
Micro Memory and
Vanguard Rugged
Storage.
September 2008
Fusion-io unveiled
the ioSAN - a 10GbE or Infiniband
attached flash SSD on PCIe form factor which will ship in 2009.
August 2008
Violin Memory said it had
delivered 1 million IOPS on a single interface port (a world record) using the
latest version of its Violin 1010 memory appliance. - Violin also said that its
new technology would deliver 100K write IOPS on a flash SSD version of their
product (which hasn't been announced yet.)
Fusion-io added RAID
protection to the flash memory array in its Fusion-io PCIe SSD and improved R/W
performance.
June 2008
Fusion-io said it's
adapting its flash SSDs to provide acceleration in HP's BladeSystem servers.
STORAGEsearch.com disclosed that the
new PCIe SSD page (this page) appeared in the
top 20 subjects viewed
by readers in May.
May 2008
STEC launched a PCIe mini
card form SSD with 32GB capacity and 55MBps / 25MBps R/W speeds.
April 2008
STORAGEsearch.com
published a new separate directory of
PCIe, PCI & cPCI SSDs
March 2008
Fusion-io announced it
had secured $19 million funding for its ioDrive - a PCIe compatible flash
SSD.
December 2007
RunCore launched the
E-drive, a PCIe SSD
with upto 256GB capacity and R/W speed upto 400MB/s or 200MB/s respectively.
November 2007
SanDisk launched a PCIe
compatible 16G flash SSD.
October 2007
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. | |
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