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EMC will oem LSI's PCIe
SSDs
Editor:- January 30, 2012 - EMC's upcoming "Lightning"
SSD family will include LSI's
WarpDrive
PCIe SSDs it was
announced
recently.
FIO's revenue nearly trebles - but gross margin declines
Editor:-
January 24, 2012 -
Fusion-io today
announced
that revenue for its 2nd quarter ended December 31, 2011 was $84
million - which is 2.7x its revenue in the year ago period.
Editor's
comments:- like many other SSD companies nowadays FIO lost money in the
quarter and you can see the gory details by clicking on the links above and
going to their web site. I'm not a financial guy - a but I have written
an article in which I share
my thoughts about why loss making SSD companies like Fusion-io are still
warming (rather than cooling) SSD interest in the VC climate.
Micron buys SSD PCIe integration IP
Editor:- January
20, 2012 - Micron
today
announced
it has acquired the assets of UK based Virtensys which marketed
rackmount SSDs stuffed
with Micron's PCIe SSDs and supported by a patented multi-server sharing
virtualization interface.
Editor's comments:- if buying an
SSD software company
was a good idea for leading
PCIe SSD makers
Fusion-io and
OCZ - then Micron has to
follow suit or get out of the game.
Chipmakers generally dislike
buying "systems" software companies - because they don't understand
systems and risk alienating their oem customers. But Micron's reputation won't
be dented if they can't leverage the Virtensys software. Everyone knows how hard
it is to get real value out of a software acquisition. And in the next few weeks
more people will take another look at Micron's
Micron's SSD pages.
So it's paid for itself already.
OWC may enter PCIe SSD market
Editor:- January 12,
2012 - OWC has
partially
unveiled a new PCIe SSD aimed at the Mac market.
OCZ acquires SANRAD
Editor:- January 10, 2012 -
OCZ yesterday
announced it
has acquired SANRAD
for $15 million.
"SANRAD's software is a wonderful complement to
OCZ's Flash technology," said Oded
Ilan, CEO of SANRAD Inc. "We are excited with the opportunity
created by this unique combination between storage virtualization, caching and
PCIe Flash storage."
Editor's comments:- this makes the
4th SSD IP or company acquisition that OCZ has done that I've written about on
these pages. 3 out of the 4 have aimed squarely at the enterprise SSD market.
SSD software will be
a powerful sales and business growth accelerator for
PCIe SSD companies in
2012 - as it will open
up new market opportunities much faster than previously possible with human
engineering assets. Put simply - it's let the software solve the problem of
integrating the SSD. It's more than simply
auto-tiering - but
that's an important enabling tool as well.
SANRAD was also the 1st
company to ship front loadable PCIe SSD modules BTW.
OCZ uses Marvell controller in Z-Drive R5
Editor:-
January 9, 2012 - at the Storage
Visions 2012 Conference today OCZ is
demonstrating
new
PCIe SSDs - which use
SSD controllers
jointly developed with Marvell
(instead of - as in previous models - controllers from SandForce).
OCZ
says its new "Kilimanjaro" based Z-Drive R5 will be the fastest
SSDs in its enterprise product range
and have capacities up to 12TB.
Editor's comments:- if anyone
wondered how OCZ would retain its positioning in the PCIe SSD market -
relative to competitor LSI
- following the latter's acquisition of SandForce - this anouncement is
the answer. OCZ also has its own controller line - acquired from
Indilinx.
There
are plenty of SSD controller designs in the market - and SSD designers have a
lot of freedom to choose what works best for particular markets at different
times.
Remember the 1st SSD company who did 1 billion IOPS?
Editor:-
January 6, 2012 - in a historic
demo
yesterday showing the capabilities of its latency reducing Auto Commit
Memory (ACM) extension Fusion-io
announced it had exceeded 1 billion IOPS (64 byte data packets) in a
configuration which used 8 HP servers each configured with 8x
ioDrive2 Duo PCIe
SSDs.
Editor's comments:- although we're used to thinking about
SSD IOPS in terms of bigger packets - such as 4kB - instead of the very small
packet size in this demo -
IOPS is simply
a convenient and not always reliable way of comparing the relative
performance of storage products.
In real life - users don't have a
choice of what size the R/W operations are which take place in their apps. They
occur at all sizes (mostly smaller than 4kB) and when these R/W operations take
place in traditional storage architecture systems - which internally impose
their own restrictions on the minimum size of atomic data packets - that's where
latencies and performance become discontinuous compared to the value of the data
update due to amplification
and packetization effects.
In my view - the important thing about this
demo - is that the same PCIe SSD product which can perform useful work as a
storage device - can also be deployed as a super scaler memory device - when it
is running the appropriate software.
The difference is that with
traditional storage software - you might expect that a 64x PCIe SSD system might
hit 64M IOPS or some similar figure (regardless of the small size of the data
packet). Instead the demo shows that apps developers can get 16x more
performance in small R/W transactions if they are willing to invest the
effort to make their apps work with FIO's new APIs.
It's that order of
magnitude difference which is the attraction for some markets - because it
closes the gap in performance between
RAM SSDs and flash
SSDs. And when you can run apps 10x faster than other flash competitors at the
same price - or support 10x bigger data sets than competitors using RAM SSDs -
that create new markets. See also:-
Record Breaking
Storage
NVMe compliant IP core aims at PCIe SSD designers
Editor:-
January 6, 2012 - IP-Maker
released a
data
transfer manager core - for use in
PCIe SSD designs
fitting between the media and the
flash controller. The
design is compliant with the NVM
Express specification.
"PCIe SSD manufacturers will benefit
from a performance increase thanks to the IP-Maker NVMe IP core" says Mickaël Guyard, Product
Marketing Director at IP-Maker. "This efficient DMA manager ensures the
data flow up to the NandFlash, therefore off-loading the motherboard CPU."
SandForce joins LSI's new Flash Components Division
Editor:-
January 4, 2012 - LSI
today
announced
it has completed the acquisition of SandForce.
Editor's
comments:- most of the leading companies in the earth shaking
PCIe SSD market use
large
architecture controllers or software - which provides cost and efficiency
advantages when you compare usable capacities with maximun fault protection
enabled.
That puts competitors who use small SSD architecture (such as
OCZ and
Seagate - who use
SandForce's controller
- and STEC which has yet
to establish a stronghold in this market with its own ASIC) at a potential
disadvantage as capacities scale up.
One of the design challenges for
LSI will be to see if they can extract the proven flash management features in
past SandForce controllers and scale them up to support bigger capacities and
faster throughput without adding latency penalties (which currently accrue with
arrays of SFPs) or which uses a new processor core or split controller
architecture to better support larger flash chip populations.
How Fusion-io changed the SSD market
Editor:-
December 15, 2011 - continuing the series -
Who's who in SSD? - I've written a
new article today about
Fusion-io which discusses the 3 main contributions they have made to
altering the course of enterprise SSD market history.
OCZ's revenue growth accelerated by enterprise SSDs
Editor:-
December 1, 2011 - OCZ
reported
preliminary
revenue for the past quarter (ended November 30) to be in the range $100
and $105 million - an increase of approximately 90% compared to the
year ago quarter.
"We expect to report record revenue in Q3'12,
driven primarily by increased traction for our enterprise and server SSD
offerings along with initial shipments of our new PCIe-based offerings,"
said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "Based on the exit
bookings rates from November, interest in these products is exceeding our
expectations, due to accelerated adoption of our SSDs by server OEMs and
enterprise customers."
now sticky SSD cards can chew rack-size data
Editor:-
November 15, 2011 - Fusion-io
announced
that it will ship 10TB versions of its
ioDrive Octal
(so-called because it includes 8 memory modules on double-wide
PCIe cards) in the
next quarter - which deliver 1.3 million IOPS with 6.7 GB/s bandwidth.
This
means up to 20TB of bus accessible flash-based acceleration in a 1U server and
40TB (using 4 Octal drives) in a 4U server, such as the HP ProLiant DL585 G7.
The company says this will enable its technology partners to scale-up Fusion-io
accelerated appliances for big data apps such as data warehousing, research
and supercomputing while significantly decreasing the physical space, power
footprint and cost compared to competing solutions.
Editor's
comments:- While keeping in mind that recently unveiled "future"
products always look glossy compared to what's already been shipping - how
does the new Octal capacity compare to current products from other SSD
makers?
Compared to other fast
PCIe SSDs - it's
nearly double the density of the
Z-Drive
R4 R from OCZ.
Compared
to fast FC SAN
compatible rackmount
SSDs - the capacity density leaders are the
RamSan-810
(10TB in 1U) - from Texas
Memory Systems and the
6232
(22TB in 3U) - from Violin
Memory. However, in the case of these rackmounts the capacities quoted are
"usable"
rather than "raw" (about 30% more flash inside is below the level
you see).
So Fusion-io's new Octal will enable systems integrators to
meet or exceed the storage density of leading rackmount SSDs while still having
the application flexibility offered by being resident in industry standard
servers.
Fusion-io's CMO, Rick White spoke to me
about the new market opportunities it will open up for FIO's partners -
particularly when they
leverage FIO's
APIs (aka "Virtual Storage Layer"). He said that having 20TB to
40TB of low latency SSD in a single server fitted well with many data
warehouse applications for example.
In a recent article I discussed
the market interplay
of PCIe SSDs and rackmount SAN SSDs and picked up on the theme of "data
decentralization" which Fusion-io had started to talk about recently. When
I asked Rick about decentralization he said it was more accurate to think about
it as "shared decentralization" because whereas the data wasn't
sitting on a SAN - being
inside a server meant it was also accessible to any other servers that could
talk to this one.
I asked about
price - and while
(understandably) not wanting to be too definitive (because the price depends on
who you are, when you buy, and where you are in the channel, etc) - Rick said
in effect that the PCIe SSD market is very competitive - and that all new
products have to look attractive compared to what they are supposed to replace
and he referred me to price guidance the company had given in a recent
investors conference call.
"Stickiness" is another thing we
talked about. I've been saying for a long time that once a customer starts using
FIO's APIs to optimize performance (by xN - where N can be any number from 2 to
10) it means that competing PCIe SSDs look less attractive - even if they have
spot performance specs which are faster. Rick agreed that this assessment is
correct - and reminded me that several years ago he had described Fusion-io to
me as a "software company". From the business point of view it's good
for Fusion-io's business - but also good for FIO's business partners - because
as the catalog of VSL
compatible APIs and applets grows - they can get more powerful functionality for
lower incremental development cost.
So what can you do with an Octal
powered server that you couldn't do before?
One trivial example is
that if you add some dedupe,
compression and an iSCSI
stack you can easily create a 1U storage appliance with maybe 100TB to 200TB
of fast virtual storage which (because of the low latency) will run rings
around similar bulk storage SSDs which use
2.5" SSDs in
RAID.
The
general availability of denser PCIe SSDs - which we'll see across the whole
market next year -
means that servers will grow up to be faster a lot sooner than they have been
doing in the past decade. And having 10x faster servers always creates
new markets which weren't viable before.
Virident joins the MLC bus with 1.4 Million IOPS PCIe SSD
Editor:-
November 10, 2011 - Virident
Systems
today announced it has completed a $21 million Series C funding led by current
investor Globespan Capital Partners with strategic investments from Intel
Capital, Cisco and a storage solutions provider, along with existing investors
Sequoia Capital and Artiman Ventures - bringing its total equity funding to $50
million.
Virident also
announced
immediate availability of its first MLC PCIe SSD - the
FlashMAX MLC is a
low-profile form factor module with upto 1.4TB
RAID protected (7+1)
capacity (1TB MSRP $13,000) and delivers over 1.4 Million IOPS with 20
microseconds latency.
Editor's comments:- Virident today
updated its website to include a host of new customer endorsements and
performance data. The company's positioning is that it aims to provide
consistent enterprise performance (relative to the variables of block size,
how full the SSD is etc) rather than a product which has speed spikes which
vary across dimensions and time. (Attacking older models from
Fusion-io.)
Virident
isn't unique in having spike free flash SSD performance -
Violin's SSDs have
always had it, Texas
Memory Systems's RamSan-70
delivers it too. Achieving balanced spike-free acceleration in
flash SSDs is done at the
design stage from an optimal mix of
big vs small
architecture, skinny
vs fat cache,
ratio
of over-provisioning,
optimizing the RAID for flash
(for performance and reliability), using fast
controllers and
integration with SSD
virtualization software.
What will the company do with the new
funding? - In the current
SSD market bubble
all PCIe SSD vendors are trying to establish design wins by technical
superiority and market share by revenue growth - but making a profit isn't a
realistic prospect for most of them. So the money will be used to pay
salaries and suppliers and keep the show on the road until the next review
point - which in Virident's case could be another round of funding, IPO, or -
more likely in my view - getting acquired.
OCZ's new fast PCIe SSDs
Editor:- November 9, 2011
- this week OCZ
launched 2 new models in their full height PCIe SSD range - the
RevoDrive
3 Max IOPS (120GB to 480GB costs $549-$1,399) and
RevoDrive
3 X2 Max (240GB to 960GB costs $849-$2,499) with 4KB random write
performance of up to 245,000
IOPS, and
R/W rates upto 1,900MB/s and 1,725MBs/ respectively. Power consumption is
13.5W idle, 14.3W active.
Editor's comments:- these aren't
OCZ's fastest SSDs, and I couldn't find a clear explanation on their site how
the new products were positioned relative to the pre-existing
Z-Drive R4.
I
got this helpful explanation from OCZ's U.S. Marketing Manager, Lisa
Gregersen who said - "The RevoDrive 3 is workstation/consumer which
supports Windows 7 32/64 - while Z-Drive R4 remains our top enterprise drive.
There is no power
fail protection on Revo3 like on our enterprise options."
Editor
again - these new SSDs from OCZ offer fast storage at 10x lower raw
capacity cost than tier 1 network storage SSDs. All the little frills like
FC SAN connectivity and
reliability add up
- as explained in my article
clarifying SSD prices
- and you need to understand every little nuance in an SSD spec before you can
decide if you really need it and are willing to pay for it.
SSDs - what changed in 2011?
Editor:- November 4,
2011 - 3 big changes happened in the SSD market in 2011. What were they? Find
out in my new
article .
Intel would like to be where Fusion-io's SSDs are now...
snuggling up close to the CPU
Editor:- October 11, 2011 - an
article in VR-Zone
discusses a "leaked" Intel SSD roadmap which
indicates the company may enter the
PCIe SSD market in
2012.
It's hardly a revelation - because Intel is member of
technical groups which are
co-ordinating standards in this segment of the SSD market - and until standards
for the Hybrid Memory Cube get
established (which could take another 3 years) - the PCIe SSD market is the
closest attachment that an SSD can make to an Intel server host processor bus.
And PCIe has the additional attraction of not needing 3rd party
storage interface glue -
unlike SATA,
SAS,
FC and
IB - thereby giving
more control to any chip company which does it right. Over 30 companies have
already shipped PCIe SSDs in the past 3 years. This will be a multi-billion
dollar market segment according to StorageSearch.com's long range enterprise
SSD market model.
OCZ nabs PLX team to speed new PCIe SSDs
Editor:-
October 5, 2011 - OCZ
has has agreed to acquire the
UK Design Team
(approximately 40 engineers located in Abingdon) and certain assets from PLX Technology which will
enable OCZ to accelerate the development of its next generation of SSDs -
while also reducing development costs.
Editor's comments:- in
addition to traditional storage interfaces - PLX's special focus in the past
year has been technologies related to faster
PCIe SSDs.
Fusion-io unveils faster cheaper ioDrive2
Editor:-
October 3, 2011 - Fusion-io
announced
that it will sample new faster models in its range of PCIe SSDs in November.
The
ioDrive2
family (pdf) will offer R/W latency of 68 / 15 microseconds for the MLC
models and R/W IOPS of 350k / 510K IOPS (512B) for the SLC models.
"Just
as many competitors gauge success by Fusion-io performance standards, we
developed the ioDrive2 to outperform the original ioDrive on all measures"
said David Flynn,
Fusion-io CEO and Chairman.
the fastest PCIe SLC SSD
Editor:- September 27, 2011
-
Texas Memory Systems
is promoting an independent
PCIe
SSDs benchmark test (pdf) - which illustrates the performance of its -
RamSan-70.
The
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre - which
earlier published similar reports about competing PCIe SLC SSDs - said - "The
RamSan-70 provided by far the best IOPS result we have ever measured..."
Editor's
comments:- I discussed the issues related to this type of report in an
earlier article - the
3 fastest flash PCIe SSDs list.
finally SAN-bound - Fusion-io inside Kaminario's K2
Editor:-
September 13, 2011 - Kaminario
announced
it has integrated Fusion-io's
PCIe SSDs as a new
option in its
K2
FC SAN compatible SSD
product line (which was until now
RAM SSD only) to
provide flash and
hybrid storage
options.
Using the new options the K2 can provide from 3 to 30TB of
non-stop, protected and self healing, blade server based flash storage in 4U
to 12U of rack space with R/W latency of 260 / 150 microseconds at a list price
of $30K / TB. ...click to
read comments and analysis
SANRAD launches front loadable PCIe SSD accelerators
Editor:-
August 31, 2011 - SANRAD
today introduced front loadable PCIe flash SSD accelerators as options in
its
V-Switch storage appliances
enabling upto 4TB of flash, together with
2x10GE networking and
2x8Gb FC, all in a single
1U rackmount appliance (or 10TB in 2U).
The unique front-panel installation allows for quick, easy maintenance
and upgradeability in the data center. It enables a "pay as you grow"
approach, allowing customers to add or replace PCIe flash modules without
opening the appliance, similar to the way
HDDs are added to a
server.
Editor's comments:- one of the disadvantages of
PCIe SSDs has been
that due to the need to open a rack to replace modules - some users will regard
the field replacement unit as being a whole rack - which pushes up the cost of
maintenance and logistics.
SANRAD says their new system is the industry's
1st to provide pluggable PCIe SSD storage - and at a system level that may
be true. But a
year ago OCZ
demonstrated a concept proof demonstrator- which it called
HSDL
- which used a SAS
connector carrying a PCIe interface in a
3.5" SSD form
factor - which a tentative step in this direction too.
will OCZ's new hybrid PCIe SSD be a market game changer?
Editor:-
August 31, 2011 - OCZ
today launched
a hybrid PCIe SSD -
the RevoDrive Hybrid - which integrates 100GB SSD capacity along with an onboard
terabyte HDD and
SSD ASAP / auto hot spot
cache tuning controller capable of 910MB/s peak throughput and upto 120,000
random write IOPS (4K) - all for an MSRP under $500.
"The
RevoDrive Hybrid leverages the best attributes of both solid state drives and
traditional hard drive technology to deliver dynamic data-tiering on a single
easy to deploy PCIe storage drive," said Ryan
Petersen, CEO of OCZ.
Editor's comments:- although
many oems have tried to make a success of
all in one SSD-HDD
hybrid drives - the hybrids which have come to market in the past 6 years
have mostly been failures - as I predicted back in 2005 they would be.
That's
because there's an infinite number of permutations which designers can choose
to blend the mix of interface, SSD and HDD capacity and budget - whereas there
is only a small and finite market in which any such combination of features will
work and be competitive. Many past hybrids have also failed to ignite user
buying chain reactions - because they were too slow - having been designed with
interfaces which were too slow, controllers which didn't work, and not enough
SSD capacity relative to the hard drive storage.
OCZ's new product
therefore is coming into a market which has been littered with the bodies of
past failures from other larger storage oems. What's different - and what
could make a difference in this case - is that the ratio of SSD capacity to
typical desktop RAM is a usable number (it's been much too low in all previous
hybrids from hard disk makers) and the ratio of SSD to HDD looks right too. And
the interface - PCIe means that the controller latencies won't get in the way
between the host and the SSD - which has been a weakness in SATA based hybrids.
Therefore it looks like a balanced design.
Is there a big enough
market for this exact combination of features? OCZ with its track record of
high performance consumer SSD sales is better placed to judge this than most SSD
companies (and most analysts).
If any hybrid SSD is going to provide the kind of user experience which leads
users to spread the word and become part of the sales force - this one might
well just be it.
This product was reviewed later (Oct 2011) in an
article
in HotHardware.com
another million IOPS SSD story
Editor:- August 8,
2011 - Texas Memory
Systems
announced that
its PCIe SSD - the RamSan-70
can deliver 1 million random
IOPS in a
512-byte, 100% read mode with one server.
This is a refinement of
the earlier public statements regarding the product's performance envelope.
Using the more common 4K sector size, the RamSan-70 performs 600K read IOPS. In
write-intensive scenarios, the RamSan-70 will sustain 700MB/s and 175K IOPS
(4KB).
Editor's comments:- the mushrooming of IOPS numbers
quoted by SSD marketers was discussed in a
blog last
December by Woody Hutsell. More is better - but only if
the way it's
measured is similar to the pattern of data accesses in your most overloaded
apps.
OCZ discusses PCIe SSD market
Editor:- August 2, 2011
- OCZ is hosting a
conference call at 5:00pm ET today in which the company's CEO, Ryan
Petersen will provide an overview of the evolving market for
PCIe based SSDs and
will also unveil the company's newest enterprise-class PCIe storage solution,
the
Z-Drive
R4 - which is capable of transferring up to 2.8GB/s and completing over
500,000 IOPS.
A dual SuperScale controller card reaches 5.6GB/s and
1.2 million IOPS. OCZ's software enables user-selectable data recovery and
non-stop configuration modes ensuring enterprise-class data integrity. It
also supports the industry-standard
SCSI command set and
TRIM/SCSI Unmap.
STEC talks about its upcoming PCIe SSDs
Editor:-
July 20, 2011 - STEC
in a conference call on Monday hosted by financial analyst
Stifel Nicolaus STEC said it will sample
its first enterprise accleration PCIe SSD in this quarter - and expects to be
in production in 2012.
STEC's new SSD will consume less than 15W
enabling it to work in a wide range of servers. STEC says it expects to have
price advantages over the current MLC market leader
Fusion-io due to
STEC's ability to use cheaper flash, and also using ASICs instead of FPGAs.
(Fusion-io could also switch to using lower recurring cost ASICs too - so I
think that part of the argument is a red herring.)
STEC says its new
SSD will totally offload flash management and result in 1/10 the number of host
interrupts compared to Fusion-io (in that respect it will be similar to SLC
products from Texas
Memory Systems and Virident
Systems). However, as Jamon Bowen from TMS explained in an
interview last December
- in high performance caching roles the need to overprovision MLC (even the
STEC kind) and the extra complexity of the controller (for MLC instead of SLC)
may reduce the competitive difference of STEC's MLC compared with SLC.
performance?
- STEC said that while other SSD makers talk about
high headline
IOPS numbers - feedback from its oem customers indicates that STEC has the
lowest MLC latency in the industry - which results in more consistent
performance in some types of apps. They aren't the only vendor to make that
claim, however. ...more
highlights from the conference call
...Later:- STEC's 3-4
year market lag in entering the PCIe SSD accelerator market is one of several
weaknesses indicated by the company's Q2 financial results (announced July 28)
- see SSD news for more.
8 out of top 10 SSD companies support PCIe
Editor:-
July 18, 2011 - 8 out of the top 10 SSD companies in
the 2nd quarter of 2011 sell (or have announced) PCIe connected SSDs.
That
compares to 6 companies 1 year ago, and 2 companies 2 years ago. This shows the
growing scale of interest in high performance bus connected SSD acceleration.
world's first PCIe PCM SSD
Editor:- June 14, 2011 -
NVSL ( the Non-Volatile Systems
Lab at UCSD) recently
demonstrated
a prototype PCIe PCM (phase-change memory) SSD - with R/W speeds upto 1.1GB/s
and 327MB/s respectively and 8GB usable capacity.
A spokesperson for
the Moneta SSD design team - Professor
Steven Swanson said "...Moneta gives us a window into the future of
what computer storage systems are going to look like, and gives us the
opportunity now to rethink how we design computer systems in response."
Swanson says he hopes to build the 2nd generation of the Moneta
storage device in the next 6 to 9 months and says the technology could be ready
for market in just a few years as the underlying phase-change memory technology
improves.
Editor's comments:- in a white paper
Protoype
PCM Storage Array (pdf) the team outlines the design and architecture of
their PCM SSD prototype and also compares aspects of performance with entry
level PCIe flash SSDs from
Fusion-io. In a
recent article
I warned that you should not pay too much heed to comparative PCIe SSD
benchmarks - because from different arbitrary selected angles they can "prove"
different arbitrary performance rankings. I wouldn't be surprised if some
investors take fright that a PCM SSD scored higher than a Fusion-io SSD in some
of the published graphs. But for those who understand SSD architecture it
doesn't reveal anything new.
In my view this prototype clearly
demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of PCM as an SSD technology.
PCM SSD strengths vs flash
The granularity of writes
in PCM is smaller and faster - which means that small R/W operations have higher
IOPS. If you have apps where that is important you can simply buy
SSDs with various
ratios of integrated RAM cache. That would give you small block IOPS
better than PCM - end of story. PCM has higher
endurance
than SLC - which means that the
SSD controller
overhead applied to endurance can be lighter than in most flash systems. Hence
potentially faster latency through to the media.
PCM SSD
weaknesses vs flash
The prototype PCIe SSD card provides capacity
which is similar to RAM SSD
density - but with a large block R/W throughput which is much lower than
flash arrays. This
implementation used 16MB PCM chips.
Flash allows higher capacity writes
to a single chip - and this gives better peak performance results than PCM when
exploited in parallel architecture arrays. You can't get those flash peak
performance numbers from a PCM array in the same board footrpint - because many
PCM chips have to be written to concurrently to achieve the same capacity R/W
as a single flash chip. That means with today's technologies - flash SSDs
have a higher proportion of ready to write memory chips in the same chip count
population as PCM SSDs.
For more about alternative SSD technologies -
see SSD's past phantoms.
SANBlaze ships PCIe to 1.8" SSD RAID adapter
June
13, 2011 - SANBlaze
Technology is shipping a new
rear
transition module which connects upto 8x
1.8" SSDs to
PCIe with
RAID options.
Micron samples its first real PCIe SSD
Editor:- June
2, 2011 - 30 months after
pre-announcing
its intentions to enter the
PCIe SSD accelerator
market - Micron
today
announced
it is sampling the first products in a new family which will ship in the 3rd
quarter of this year.
The company says its
RealSSD
P320h drive delivers upto 750K / 341K R/W
IOPS, and
3GB/s / 2GB/s R/W throughput. It uses Micron's own 34nm SLC ONFI 2.1 NAND
flash and has on-board
RAM cache.
Micron says it manufactures most of the chips used in the new cards a
customized SSD controller.
Editor's comments:- if it lives up
to its promise - this new SSD range from Micron could be
among the fastest PCIe
SSDs around.
From the viewpoint of a semiconductor memory maker -
PCIe SSDs are attractive because they have high added value. That's the
theory. In practise - to make an enterprise SSD business work you also have to
invest a lot in continuing technical design,
compatibility testing,
customer support and
marketing. The
true test of Micron's new product therefore is not so much what it's like when
it ships to users at the end of this year - but whether Micron decides to stay
the course 2 to 3 years down the road.
Dell expands SSD take-up from Fusion-io
Editor:- May
10, 2011 - Fusion-io
today
announced
that more of its PCIe SSDs
(including 640GB ioDrives and the 1.28TB Duo) are
now available
from Dell - which is also extending the number of server platforms
supporting these accelerator options.
EMC will enter PCIe SSD market
Editor:- May 9, 2011
- EMC today
announced
new strategies related to the
SSD market.
Among
other things EMC said it has created a flash business unit and will enter the
PCIe SSD market later
this year. The company indicated that its run rate of shipping flash storage
array capacity in 2011 is approximately 3x the level it had achieved in
2010.
the top 20 SSD companies shows advance of PCIe SSDs
Editor:-
April 11, 2011 -
StorageSearch.com recently
published the 16th quarterly edition of the top 20 SSD companies
- based on reader search volume in the 1st quarter of 2011.
With new
commentaries for each listed company and related market analysis the article
is a useful introduction to the companies who will dominate trends in the SSD
market in the coming years.
StorageSearch currently tracks over 300 SSD
companies - which is 6x more than when this series started - and 30x
more than when we started publishing real-time updated SSD vendor lists here
in 1998.
Only 2 out of the top 10 companies aren't engaged in the
PCIe SSD market. In contrast - when the series
started - 4 years ago
there were no PCIe SSDs in the market at all - and 7 out of the top 10 companies
in 2007 made 2.5"
SSDs. ...read
the article
Virident does that 1 million IOPS thing in 1U SGI server
Editor:-
April 4, 2011 - Virident
Systems today announced
that working with SGI
they demonstrated 1 million IOPS performance in a 1U server rack using just 2
of its tachIOn
PCIe SSDs at a system
list price of less than $.05 per IOPS.
Editor's comments:-
among other things Virident says "this solution needs only 800GB of
operating storage to achieve 1 Million IOPS, versus up to more than 5TB in some
other solutions."
What this alludes to is that the more
flash memory chips you've
got in an SSD array the easier it is to juggle the
controller design to
ensure an adequate population of "ready for write" chips - which in
turn gives you faster
write IOPS.
By not having to over
provision the SSD storage users can save space, electrical power and
money. Having said
that -Virident like TMS
- and unlike Fusion-io
- only uses (more expensive)
SLC flash in
their enterprise SSDs.
Finally a note about performance.
"million
IOPS SSD" has been the common currency of SSD marketers on this site
for over 8 years. What matters is whether you can afford that performance and
how well its behavior correlates with the demands from your own apps and
in your own servers.
...Later:-
a day later - Virident issued another press release with quotes from
various other oems and integrators who are using its tachIOn SSD - which should
appear soon on its own news
page.
Marvell flies a kite for DragonFly accelerator
Editor:-
April 4, 2011 - Marvell
today unveiled a PCIe
compatible SSD ASAP.
Marvell claims 10x speedups can be realized using its new
DragonFly
Virtual Storage Accelerator - which is designed to reduce
write amplification
to external storage arrays and acts as an OS agnostic multiprotocol storage
cache for NAS,
SAN or
DAS storage arrays.
The product - is expected to sample in Q3.
Editor's comments:-
more than 20 companies have launched similarly impressive sounding accelerators
in the past 2 years in form factors ranging from cards to racks. Based on the
track record of the SSD industry in this particular segment I think it would be
realistic for users to think about a timescale which is more like another
year than another quarter before application software issues are resolved
in this new product - and the speedup ratio quoted may or may not be sustainable
too.
analyzing the alchemy in Fusion-io
Editor:- March
25, 2011 - it's rare for companies to say complimentary things about their
competitors -
but a new
blog about Fusion-io - written by Woody Hutsell
who (until a year ago) was head of Texas Memory Systems
does just that.
Woody's new article asks how did Fusion-io become
such a successful enterprise
SSD company? (Despite all his best efforts to the contrary.) ...read the
article
Intel publishes new standard to increase efficiency of PCIe SSD
market
Editor:- March 1, 2011 - Intel published
version 1.0 of a new proprietary standard for designers of
PCIe SSDs in systems
which use Intel processors - the
NVM Express Optimized PCI
Express SSD Interface.
The interface efficiently supports
multi-core by ensuring thread(s) may run on each core with its own queue &
interrupt without any locks required. For enterprise class solutions, there is
support for end-to-end data protection, security & encryption capabilities,
as well as robust error reporting and management capabilities.
Intel
says that more than 70 companies have contributed to the standard - which will
make it easier to write software drivers which support multiple vendors. The
new standard will also make it easier for oems to adopt new SSD products from
alternative vendors which implement a consistent feature set.
Super Talent's new PCIe flash SSDs
Editor:- February
21, 2011 - Super
Talent Technology announced imminent shipments of its
2nd
generation PCIe flash SSDs which uses an
SSD controller from
Marvell.
With
upto 64GB capacity, sequential write speeds are 80MB/s for
MLC and
220MB/s for SLC.
Read performance is 350MB/s for both flash types.
Editor's
comments:- compared to server
PCIe cards the performance is unbelievably slow - but the critical thing
about this product is that it will also be available as a mini-PCIe card - which
will fit some notebooks.
PLX ready to play part in PCIe SSD growth
Editor:-
March 16, 2011 - PLX
Technology today
announced it's
working with system partners worldwide to accelerate adoption of PCIe SSDs.
PLX
has been providing PCIe switches to manufacturers of both
HDD and
SSD based storage solutions
for years and has 65% market share in this segment. PLX is a founding member
of the (Intel led)
enhanced Non-Volatile
Memory Host Controller Interface (NVMHCI) Work Group whose goal is to enable
the broad adoption of SSDs
using PCIe.
"Enterprise SSD
products have attracted significant interest over the past few years," said
Michael
Yang, principal analyst for memory and storage at
iSuppli. "...PCI
Express-based products will be the primary catalyst for the segment with 40%
compound annual growth rate in shipments through 2015."
Now you see it. Now you don't.
Solaris support for
Foremay's PCIe SSDs
Editor:- February 14, 2011 - I
recently I had a complaint from a reader who said that our editorial indicated
that Foremay -
a manufacturer of PCIe
SSDs
- supported SPARC Solaris.
But the reader told me that when
they asked about Solaris support they were told by Foremay they'd have to pay
a very significant sum to get it developed sooner. Had I misunderstood
something?
If so I was not alone. Confusingly similar - but
incompatible SSD models and numbering and the lack of a clear technology
roadmap are some of the issues at the heart of this problem. ...click to read more
test report for LSI's PCIe SSD
Editor:- January 3,
2011 - Demartek
has published a
test
report (pdf) which evaluated the performance of a single
PCIe SSD made by
LSI (300GB
WarpDrive - $11,500) in a simulated high traffic web server environment in
which the activities were mostly reads.
The test compared performance,
rackspace, electrical power and cost of the SSD based system compared to a
conventional HDD based system and showed that for high traffic websites the SSD
solution is significantly better in all respects. ...read
the article (pdf)
re multi-million IOPS SSD marketing - new blog from Woody Hutsell
Editor:-
December 22, 2010 - Woody Hutsell
- who for a decade led the enterprise SSD marketing business at Texas Memory Systems
- and who recently joined ViON
has recently started a blog about SSDs.
His first article bemoans the
current trend of marketers to
quote
ever higher millions of IOPS - a marketing tactic - which he freely admits
he started back in his days at TMS.
In this entertaining and thought
provoking article Woody says - "One million IOPS. Yawn! Is that all
you've got! In fact, I would argue if the extent of your marketing message is
your IOPS you don't have enough… marketing talent." ...read
the article
RunCore unveils 2TB PCIe SSD
Editor:- December 8,
2010 - RunCore
today entered the PCIe SSD
accelerator market with a 2
slot wide module with upto 2TB capacity and replacable flash storage
modules.
This announcement didn't include performance data. When I
get it - I'll update this post. RunCore launched a
3U CPCIe\PXIe SSD card
for the test systems market in January 2010.
MLC inside financial servers - new interview with Fusion-io's
CEO
Editor:- December 7, 2010 - Fusion-io today
announced that it has been
working closely with Credit
Suisse to integrate ioMemory SSDs with its
Advanced
Execution Services trading platform to improve its data access performance,
maximizing the effectiveness of its low latency trading platform architectures.
Editor's comments:- trading banks using SSDs isn't new. So my initial
inclination was to ignore this news story. But I'm glad I didn't - because I
learned a lot when I spoke to Fusion-io's CEO
David Flynn yesterday.
Click on
this link to see the interview.
NextIO demos 4 million IOPS 4U rackmount SSD
Editor:-
November 16, 2010 -
NextIO
demonstrated over 4 million IOPS and 10TB capacity in a 4U SSD system attached
to 3GHz Opteron servers at Supercomputing
2010 today.
The new
vSTOR S200 -
which has 16x Fusion-io
ioMemory cards inside will be generally available in early 2011.
Editor's
comments:- it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that all you need to
do to design a fast SSD box is to stuff a box with
fast SSDs. But if
the internal bandwidth and latency isn't right - the incremental performance
you get from adding each SSD can drop considerably. NextIO specializes in
designing scalable PCIe accelerator boxes.
Yes that was a good idea - new SSD group
Editor:-
October 28, 2010 - there's another new
ORG for SSD form factors
the SSD Form Factor Working Group
.
Among other things - it will make over
2.5" SSDs with
PCIe interfaces.
Perhaps it should have been called - the "we think
OCZ is a jumped up upstart"
group.
PhotoFast launches low cost terabyte PCIe SSD
Editor:-
October 8, 2010 - PhotoFast
is taking orders for a new 960GB
PCIe
MLC flash SSD - which - with an onboard 512MB RAM buffer - delivers upto
1,500MB/s write speeds - and costs approx $4,300. |
|
| SSD market
history | | |
auto-tiering SSDs
the SSD Buyers Guide
the 3 fastest flash
PCIe SSDs
2012 - Year of the
Enterprise SSD Goldrush
enabling
PCIe SSDs - a PCIe chipmaker's view
don't all PCIe SSDs
look pretty much the same?
if Fusion-io sells more
SSDs (PCIe) does that mean Violin will sell less? (racks) |
| . |
|
|
| . |
| PCIe SSDs (and their descendants) are one
of the 3 main SSD building blocks of the the future datacenter storage
architecture - described in my article -
this way to the
Petabyte SSD. The enterprise PCIe SSD market itself can also be segmented in
the following ways
StorageSearch.com has tracked the PCIe SSD market since the first products were
launched in the summer of
2007. For more
about the PCIe SSD market scroll down this page and also see
SSD analysts, and
PCIe
SSD editor mentions. | |
| . |
|
|
| ... |
| "This is a tsunami warning
event for SSD vendors addressing the enterprise server acceleration market." |
...editor's comments (September 24, 2009 ) when
I alerted readers and vendors to the fact that search volume for PCIe SSDs
had surpassed that for 2.5" SSDs for the first time.
This
type of search spike had been a reliable advance
predictor for new
interfaces - such as SATA
and iSCSI - in earlier
phases of storage
history - and search volume has also been a good predictor for
successful SSD companies
too. | | |
| . |
|
|
| . |
| the 3 fastest flash
PCIe SSDs - list / lists |
Are you tied up in
knots trying to shortlist flash SSD accelerators ranked according to
published comparative benchmarks?
You know the sort of thing I mean -
where a magazine compares 10 SSDs or a blogger compares 2 SSDs against each
other. It would be nice to have a shortlist so that you don't have to waste too
much of your own valuable time testing unsuitable candidates wouldn't it?
StorageSearch's long running
fastest SSDs directory
typically indicates 1 main product in each form factor category but those
examples may not be compatible with your own ecosystem.
If so a
new article -
the 3 fastest PCIe
SSDs list (or is it really lists?) may help you cut that Gordian
knot. Hmm... you may be thinking that StorageSearch's editor never gives easy
answers to SSD questions if more complicated ones are available.
|
 |
But in this case you'd be
wrong. (I didn't say you'd like the answers, though.) ...read the article | | | |
| . |
|
|
| . |
| How Big is the Market for
PCIe SSDs? |
In
Q1 2011 - PCIe SSDs were ahead of all
2.5" SSD related
searches on StorageSearch.com for the 7th consecutive quarter.
In 2010
more than half of
the top 10 SSD companies
sold PCIe SSDs.
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. These issues are discussed in my articles -
Market Trends in the
Rackmount SSD Market, and -
a new way of looking
at the Enterprise 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 have made it look like a voluptuous haven 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.
Already more than 30 oems have announced PCIe compatible
SSD cards and systems - although not all products are equally good. Some
products - like those initially unveiled by
Angelbird and
Micron Technology - were
little more than advanced prototypes. Whereas companies like
Fusion-io and
Texas Memory Systems
have years of experience accelerating mission critical enterprise apps with
SSDs.
If you're interested in quantitative predictions or educated
guesses about PCIe SSD market size by revenue and unit shipments - see
SSD market analysts. | | |
| . |
| 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." | | |
| . |
| World's 1st
PCIe rackmount SSD |
In August 2007 -
Violin launched the
world's fastest 2U SSD.
This was the 1st time that a
PCIe connected
rackmount SSD
had been featured on StorageSearch.com.
Earlier SSDs with a claim to
ultra speed fame had included
FC,
SAS or
InfiniBand
interfaces.
There were 2 things which stood out when this product was
launched.
1 - the high density (compared to other
RAM SSD products), and
2 - Violin's promise to follow up with a later flash SSD model with
the same interface and form factor. That promise was made good in
November 2008 -
when the company announced a 4TB SLC flash 2U model with over 200K random Read
IOPS and 100K random Write IOPS (4K blocks). | | |
| . |
|
|
| . |
| the Problem with
Write IOPS in flash SSDs |
Random "write IOPS"
in many of the fastest flash SSDs are now similar to "read IOPS"
- implying a performance symmetry which was once believed to be impossible.
So
why are flash SSD IOPS such a poor predictor of application performance?
And
why are users still buying
RAM SSDs which cost an
order of magnitude more than SLC? (let alone
MLC) - even
when the IOPS specs look superficially similar?
This article
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 | | | | |
