| SSD SoC /
Controller / IP news |
Reliable SSDs are Rocket
Science
Editor:- February 15, 2010 -
NASA's
Solar Dynamics Observatory, launched last week, uses an SSD error
correction architecture designed by ECC Technologies.
Phil
White, inventor of this scheme says - "You can think of the SDO spacecraft
as containing a parallel-transfer, fault-tolerant
SSD that uses DRAM chips
instead of NAND Flash chips. It uses exactly the same PRS ECC that I have
proposed for use in solid state disks. All of the data collected by SDO is
encoded by the PRS encoder, stored in the SSD and decoded by the PRS decoder.
Multiple DRAM chips can fail with no loss of data or performance."
Silicon Motion SSD SoCs - Ready for 20nm
Editor:-
February 1, 2010 - Silicon
Motion announced that its
SSD controller
shipments increased
over
50% year-on-year - in the most recent quarter and now account for
almost 10% of its ($87 million annual) corporate revenue.
The company said - that the vast majority of controllers that are shipping are
for 40nm and 30nm NAND flash and they are on track to deliver controllers for
20nm NAND flash that is expected to be available in the 2nd half 2010. In the
4th quarter 2009 the company also began shipping 3-bits per cell MLC
controllers.
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.
New Error Technologies Required to Scale MLC SSDs
Editor:-
January 18, 2010 - Forward Insights
publishes a new market report this month -
ECC and Signal
Processing Technology for SSDs and Multi-bit per cell NAND Flash Memories.
Bit
errors are becoming more severe as NAND flash memory scales below 40nm process
technology and transitions to 3-bit and 4-bit per cell architectures.
Increased ECC
requirements will be required, however, traditional error correction codes
such as BCH, RS and Hamming code suffer from increased overhead in terms of
coding redundancy and read latency as the number of errors corrected increases.
In addition, the number of electrons stored in the memory cell is decreasing
with each generation of flash memory resulting in reduced signal/noise requiring
enhanced sensing techniques.
Digital signal processing technology has been employed in the magnetic
recording industry since the early 1990's when partial-response
maximum-likelihood technology (PRML) was commercialized. DSP technology is now
being deployed in 3-bit per cell and 4-bit per cell NAND flash memories and a
concerted effort is being made by NAND flash manufacturers and a variety of
startups to employ digital signal processing technology to improve the endurance
and performance of next generation NAND flash memories and SSDs. Signal
processing technology will be essential for the continued scaling of NAND flash
memories.
This research report examines the current state of ECC methods and
explores the technology, roadmap, market, cost and competitive landscape in the
flash signal processing space.
SMART Samples "SandForce inside" SSDs
Editor:-
January 5, 2010 - SMART
is sampling the
XceedIOPS
SATA - SLC and "enterprise grade" MLC flash SSDs in
1.8" and
2.5" form factors
- based on the SF-1500 processor from SandForce.
Performance
is upto 30K IOPS
random read/write. SMART uses a combination of
write attenuation
technologies to attain a 5-year projected lifetime for its 400GB MLC
XceedIOPS SATA model ($2,900 oem qty price) in an environment that demands
250MB/s sustained write and a 40% duty cycle.
"The enterprise SSD market appears to be entering a period of
impressive growth. Well-positioned to satisfy the requirements of enterprise
deployments, we expect our XceedIOPS SATA SSDs will provide low cost, superior
performance, low power, and high capacity flexibility," said Alan
Gulachenski, SMART's VP and General Manager, Enterprise Solid State Storage.
LSI Samples 600k IOPS ROC for SSD Servers
Editor:-
December 16, 2009 - LSI
announced it is
sampling
the LSISAS2208 - a dual-core
6Gb/sSAS
RAID-on-Chip
IC to OEM customers.
It's
intended to support the forthcoming PCIe 3.0 specification, currently under
development and provide performance levels that meet the needs of
next-generation server platforms based on
flash SSD storage
(up to 600,000 IOPS).
A-DATA Joins "SandForce Inside" SSD List
Editor:-
December 15, 2009 - A-DATA
announced today it has joined the growing roster of
SSD makers using
SSD SoCs from SandForce.
A-DATA
says products are now in the final testing stage and will be previewed at
CES next month.
Editor's comments:- I had earlier commented on A-DATA's
weaknesses in the enterprise SSD product space. This collaboration with
SandForce is intended to fill product gaps in this strategic market.
OCZ will show Symwave based USB 3.0 SSD at CES
Editor:-
November 24, 2009 -
Symwave today
announced that
its USB 3.0 controller
has been designed into a new
flash SSD by
OCZ - which will be
shown at CES in January 2010.
Editor's
comments:- Symwave's controller design includes a fully integrated USB 3.0 to
SATA controller
device (SoC with software) - making it easier to adapt existing designs for
SATA SSDs. It's very
fast. In September 2009 - Symwave demonstrated
270MB/s
R/W throughput.
SandForce Announces $21 million C Round Funding
Editor:-
November 10, 2009 - SandForce
today
announced
that it has closed $21 million in Series C funding.
Led by new
investor TransLink Capital, the round also included new
investors UMC Capital,
LSI Corporation, Red Maple Ventures, Darwin Ventures, and A-Data Technology as
well as all of the existing SandForce investors –DCM, Storm Ventures, and
Tier-1 storage OEMs.
"We have made rapid progress into the
marketplace since our launch just 6 months ago, and we are now shipping silicon
to top-tier SSD OEM customers," said Alex Naqvi, president and CEO of
SandForce. "This new funding will help us through our expansion phase as
well as accelerate our new products development that will help us maintain our
market leadership."
Editor's comments:- SandForce has
achieved remarkable brand
recognition for a company which designs
SSD SoCs. Here's a
test... how many other companies in this category can you even name?
Reputation
will become an important factor in buying
SSDs next year. Newer SSD
oems who haven't already established trusted brands in their own right - may
have to start leveraging the reputations of their technology partners.
PS
- SandForce says it's hiring. There are
13 jobs available on its
website.
Unigen Signals 2.5" SAS SSD Intent
Editor:-
November 2, 2009 -
Unigen announced
it will manufacture a new range of
flash SSDs using
SSD processors from SandForce.
The 2.5"
SSDs will be available with
SATA or
SAS interfaces.
GUC takes SSD SoC HeadCount to 23
Editor:- November
2, 2009 -
Global Unichip
announced mass-production of its
ARM7-based
GP5080
series SSD SoC
platform for portable consumer electronics products.
There are 2
different models in this series.
GP5080 is optimized for cost sensitive
applications by removing the need for external DRAM cache (skinny SSDs),
while GP5086 supports DRAM cache for (regular SSD)
applications needing extra extended lifetime (write attenuation).
The complete GP5080 design kit includes SoC samples, evaluation board, reference
design. With the GP5080 series solution,
SSD makers or system
providers can provide quality products for customers with substantially reduced
development cost and time-to-market.
GP5080 series solution is a highly integrated SSD SoC, based on
advanced 90nm process technology. Its architecture has been optimized to fully
utilize the maximum data transfer of NAND flash with minimum operating power.
The 4 independent flash channels deliver excellent sequential and random R/W
performance and support all major vendors' SLC/MLC NAND
flash devices. The
SSD data integrity
is guaranteed by the on-chip hardware BCH-ECC engine which can correct up to 16
bit errors per 512 byte data.
The 32-bit ARM7 processor will provide
high computing capability for advanced SSD management firmware such as Flash
Translation Layer, Bad Block Management,
Wear Leveling
Algorithm, Power Fail Recycling, SMART function, Disk Recovery/ROM Disk,
etc. In addition, it supports PATA and
SATA2 dual interface
to provide extra flexibility and wide temperature range from -40°C to 85°C
for industrial grade applications.
SSD Data Recovery Company Secures $18 million series C funding
Editor:-
November 2, 2009 -
Link_A_Media Devices
has secured $18 million series C funding - enabling it to bring its products
to market sooner.
Lightspeed Venture Partners, a new investor in the company, led the
funding round. Other key investors are ITOCHU Technology Ventures, Keynote
Ventures, SunAmerica Ventures and several strategic partners.
"I
am very pleased with Link_A_Media's ability to attract new and previous
investors to this round. The interest we generated from the
investment community
is a direct reflection of the huge opportunity for the company in the storage
markets based on our technology leadership," said Dr. Hemant Thapar, CEO
and chairman of Link_A_Media. "Over the past 2 years, we have begun
deploying our leading technologies into custom
SoC products for our
customers to enable their next generation products. Strong customer interest in
our technology is validating the imminent transitions in
data recovery
technology trends for peripheral storage devices, both
HDDs and
SSDs."
Error Correction in MLC Flash SSD Arrays
Editor:-
October 28, 2009 - ECC
Technologies has published a new article which examines
data reliability
issues in RAID systems using MLC flash.
In his survey of
RAID and error correction
related to SSDs the author
Phil White said he thinks that "MLC NAND Flash memories should
implement nonbinary error-correcting codes such as a Reed-Solomon (RS) codes so
that all of the bits from one cell are in one symbol. The communications
industry has been doing that for decades, but the Flash industry has been
implementing a scheme that forces the bits from one cell to be in separate
records (pages) so that one cell failure can cause multiple binary symbol
failures – which seems illogical."
I asked him to expand on
this for our readers.
In reply - Phil said he doesn't think that
most NAND Flash (SSD) companies have a high level of expertise in the field of
error-correcting codes.
"Many of the
NAND Flash controllers
that are out in the market now have ECC Tek's ECC designs in them. None of the
controller companies who have come to us have any idea how to implement binary
BCH encoders and decoders in hardware. I doubt if any of the Flash
manufacturers have that expertise either."
"For years the
Flash manufacturers implemented a simple binary scheme that corrected only 1 bit
in a page. I don't have evidence to prove this, but I believe the NAND Flash
manufacturers simply decided to extend their original scheme to correct N bits
in instead of 1 bit to handle higher error rate devices. I also believe that
they implemented a scheme for MLC NAND Flash to "randomize" the errors
when a cell fails.
"Consider 4-bits/cell. When a cell fails,
0-4 bits may be in error. In order to keep using binary error-correcting codes
that only correct bits, they designed the chips so that all of the bits from
that cell are in different pages.
"To the best of my knowledge, they never considered using RS
codes so that all of the bits from one cell are in one RS symbol. For example,
assume a RS code with 12-bit symbols. Each RS symbol can hold the data from
three 4-bit cells, and if those three cells happen to fail, it will only corrupt
one RS symbol. RS codes can correct t "symbol" errors and s "symbol"
erasures as long as 2t+s is less than or equal to R where R is the number of "symbols"
of redundancy. The most natural and powerful thing to do is to put all of the
bits from one cell in one RS symbol." ...read the article
See
also:- Data
Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design - a recently published article by
SandForce.
Emulex Offers Bridging Hand to SSD Designers
Editor:-
October 13, 2009 - Emulex
is expanding its
InSpeed
chip bridging technology to simplify the job of designing fast native
SAS and
Fibre-channel compatible
flash SSDs.
"SandForce is working
closely with Emulex to enable customers to build enterprise-class SSDs that
connect to Fibre Channel or SAS systems," said Thad Omura, VP of marketing,
SandForce. "Emulex's next generation InSpeed flexible bridging options
enable our SATA-based Enterprise SSD Processor, to be used with either Fibre
Channel or SAS systems. In initial testing, we've found the new InSpeed bridge
technology provides a robust and high performance solution for SSD applications."
SSD Controllers / IP
New article - Data Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design
Editor:-
October 12, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article called -
Data Integrity
Challenges in flash SSD Design - written by Kent Smith Senior
Director, Product Marketing, SandForce.
Since
bursting onto the SSD scene
in April 2009,
SandForce has achieved remarkably
high reader popularity.
How did a company whose business is designing
SSD controllers
achieve this? - especially when the direct market for its products today
numbers less than 1,000 oems.
The answer is - that if you want to know
what the future of 2.5"
enterprise SATA SSDs might look like -you have to look at the
leading technology cores that will affect this market. Even if you're not
planning to use SandForce based products yourself - you can't afford to ignore
them - because they are setting the agenda in this market.
Reliability is the
next new thing
for SSD designers and users to start worrying about. A common theme you will
hear from all fast SSD
companies is that the faster you make an SSD go - the more effort you
have to put into understanding and engineering data integrity to eliminate the
risk of "silent errors." ...read the article
New Edition - Top 10 SSD OEMs
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.
Fast Purge flash SSDs
Editor:- September 25, 2009 -
StorageSearch.com today
published a new directory of Fast Purge flash SSDs.
The
need for fast and secure data erase - in which vital parts of a flash SSD or
its data are destroyed in seconds - has always been a requirement in military
projects.
SMART Chooses SandForce SSD SoC
Editor:- September
22, 2009 - SMART
Modular Technologies today announced it has selected the SandForce
SF-1500
SSD processor for use in its next-generation enterprise-class
SATA SSDs sampling in
both 1.8" and
2.5" form factors
later this year.
Toshiba Sources Flash Controllers from ITE Tech?
Editor:-
September 11, 2009 - A report today in DIGITIMES
said that Toshiba
has ordered flash memory card controllers from ITE Tech to diversify its
supplier base. SSD
Controllers / IP
Our Core is Flash - Says Skymedi
Editor:- August 26,
2009 - Skymedi
wants to concentrate efforts on its
flash controller
business and spin off its multimedia processor division according to a report
today in DIGITIMES
.
Sun Bemoans flash SSD "Lithography death march"
Editor:-
August 18, 2009 - It's rare for me to say something complimentary about Sun Microsystems in the
context of "storage".
But an article published today in
EE Times India quotes some
comments I definitely agree with made by
Sun
flash expert Michael Cornwell - from a talk he gave at the
recent Flash Memory Summit .
The
article interprets Cornwell as saying "NAND vendors are going down the
wrong path by racing each other in process technology—at the expense of
customer needs..."
I couldn't agree more that the needs of the
server market are not going to be solved by what Michael Cornwell aptly calls
"the lithography death march."
In my own opening article for
2009 Year of SSD
Confusion - I said "What we're seeing today in the SSD market is a
renaissance in computer architecture - and genuinely new ways of solving
performance problems. That follows 30 years of predictable developments which
derived more from foreseeable incremental semiconductor process technology
improvements (faster, denser chips) than unforeseeable new ways of designing
digital systems." ...read
the EE Times India article
SandForce's 2.5" 34nm SSDs Now Available
Editor:-
August 11, 2009 - SandForce
announced the availability of the
SF-1000 family
Evaluation 2.5" SSD
featuring 34nm flash from Micron.
"It's
important that we have a tight, collaborative working relationship with the
Flash vendors that we support in order to understand how to best optimize the
total SSD solution," said Thad Omura, VP of Marketing for SandForce. "We're
delighted to demonstrate our DuraClass SSD processor technology (this week at
the Flash Memory Summit )
working with Micron's industry-leading NAND Flash products, showing a high
quality and reliable SSD solution."
Introducing - Fat, Regular, Skinny SSDs
Editor:-
July 28, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
today proposed new terms to describe -
RAM Cache Ratios
in flash SSDs.
It is hoped that the new classification jargon
will be useful to users who have to evaluate lots of products, and useful to
vendors as a shorthand when communicating about different segments
within their flash SSD product lines. ...read the article
Micron Names IDT as IP Partner for PCIe SSD
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.
Report Senses New Ways to Tap MLC
Editor:- July 24,
2009 - Forward
Insights has published a market report -
Key NAND Flash Memory
Design IP (price is $9,999).
Technical innovations in NAND flash
memory design are key enablers of
MLC flash memories,
especially 3 and 4 bit-per-cell technologies.
The report identifies
important intellectual property related to sensing architectures, source voltage
noise compensation, programming algorithms, disturbs reduction, temperature
compensation, high voltage switch, coding schemes and error correction codes
from Hynix, Micron, Samsung, SanDisk, STMicroelectronics and Toshiba.
The author, Luca
Crippa is an MLC flash memory designer with more than 10 years of experience
and is the author/co-author of 20 U.S. patents.
Looking for Cheaper Flash?
Editor:- July 17, 2009 - "Future
NAND price reductions will be much less than what we have experienced" -
according the analysis in a new
article
by Lane Mason, Memory Market Analyst at Denali Software.
Lane
Mason analyzes the market assumptions, and historic cost base for SLC and MLC
flash (including x4) for various geometries and suppliers - and discusses the
likely cost per GB upto 2103. ...read
the article , Analysts
- SSD market
Crossing the T's in STEC's SWOT
Editor:- June 23,
2009 - what are the biggest threats to STEC?
The
PCIe SSD market and
server oems designing their own
2.5" SSDs are
among the many topics analyzed in a
new article published
today.
NextIO Unveils Marvell-inside 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.
SandForce Publishes Superficial SSD Article in CTR
Editor:-
June 11, 2009 - SandForce's
VP marketing, Thad Omura published an article in Computer Technology Review called -
Making
MLC Flash Practical for Enterprise SSDs.
It's very superficial
(from the technical point of view) and says much less than the company already
said to our readers when they exited stealth mode.
SMART Leverages Marvell Controller to Enter 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.
OEMs Race to Design Their Own SSDs
Editor:- May
27, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
disclosed today that search volume for
SSD SoCs (systems on a
chip and controllers) has overtaken
1" SSDs (includes
miniature SSD modules) this month for the first time.
Guess that
confirms my sneaking suspicion that a lot of oems want to
design their own
SSDs.
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.
New Standard for 1.8" SSDs
Editor:- May 18,
2009 - JEDEC
today published a
new
standard for 1.8"
Slim SSDs.
MO-297 defines the dimensions, layout and connector
position for 54mm x 39mm SSDs with a standard
SATA connector. Storage ORGs
Article Peers into Nanocrystal NAND
Editor:- May
18, 2009 - a good article published on Semiconductor International called
- Peering
into Nanocrystal NAND - looks at factors affecting the potetial for future
shrinks in flash memory.
The author David Lammers
tackles an issue which I know has been worrying many flash SSD designers. He
starts with this sobering observation... "As the polysilicon floating
gate becomes smaller, fewer electrons are used to store a single bit. Any
rupture in the floating gate allows the electrons to leak away, presenting
reliability
challenges." ...read
the article
Skymedi Enters SSD Controller Market
Editor:- May
14, 2009 - Skymedi
has
launched a SATA
SSD controller aimed at the notebook market.
It supports R/W speeds
up to 180MB/s and 150MB/s respectively and upto 512GB capacity.
That
brings the number of companies listed on our merchant market
SSD controller and IP page
up to 17. This growing SSD ecostructure makes it easier for new oems to
enter the SSD market.
New Guide for SSD Wannabies
Editor:- May 1, 2009 -
StorageSearch.com
published a new article this week called -
"3 Easy Ways to
Enter the SSD Market."
Nowadays it seems like everyone wants
to get into the SSD market. This tells you how to do it. And gives real
examples.
So if you're a
hard disk maker, or
RAID controller company
or flash memory maker who
still doesn't have an SSD product line here's my advice. Stop giving the
press interviews about how you're still - "looking" at the SSD
market from the sidelines and evaluating what you might do next year maybe..."
Some of these storage manufacturers (and you know
who I mean) - have been
singing the same old song for years. And it just sounds pathetic. They should
shape up, shut up, and
get in the game.
I've had early feedback from senior VPs in several SSD companies
already - who think it's a very interesting article.
SandForce Unveils New flash SSD Controller
Editor:-
April 13, 2009 - SandForce
today
emerged
from stealth mode and unveiled its
SF-1000 family of SSD
Processors - aimed at oems building SATA flash SSDs.
Its 2.5" SSD
reference design kit is the fastest 2.5" SATA flash SSD on the market -
with 250MB/s symmetric R/W throughput and 30,000 R/W IOPS.
Leading OEMs
are expected to release both SLC and MLC flash-based SSDs using SandForce
single-chip SSD Processors later this year
"With a deep
understanding of both system- and silicon-level issues, we've integrated the
right balance of reliability, performance, power, cost, and time-to-market in
our SSD Processors while supporting multiple flash vendors' technology,"
said Alex Naqvi, President and CEO of SandForce. "Our products combine key
processing elements with hardware automation to efficiently address the
traditional shortcomings of flash memory. This allows OEMs to provide
enterprise-class SSDs to the mass-market using both SLC and lower-cost MLC flash
devices while delivering peak read and write performance throughout the drive's
lifecycle."
Editor's comments:- I asked SandForce's President & CEO,
Alex Naqvi, for more details about the various package of technologies which
are bundled in the company's "DuraClass Technology" - which achieves
impressively high IOPS without relying on over-provisioning or large external
RAM caches. In particular I wondered what part, if any its choice of processor
SoC (from Tensilica) had to play.
Alex
Naqvi explained - DuraClass performance doesn't come from the choice of
processor - but in the way that they have integrated various design techniques
with very fast hardware (proprietary chips) which the company has designed to
accelerate the core bottleneck functions of a flash SSD controller.
In
concert with other techniques, such as the ability to reorder data before it
is written to flash (thereby attenuating write endurance by 2 orders of
magnitude), RAID like internal protection and very fast garbage collection
SandForce's DuraClass Technology results in small form factor enterprise class
flash SSDs which have no daily write limits for MLC flash and symmetric R/W
IOPS.
new home page for - SSD SoCs
Editor:- April 7, 2009 -
StorageSearch.com today
launched a new directory of merchant market SSD SoC vendors.
Traditionally
in the SSD market - oems designed their own proprietary controllers to manage
the RAM or
flash media in their SSD
products. That was partly due to necessity - because the market was small and
there were no established standards. And also to protect the many
secret ways they
dealt with reliability
and performance
issues.
In recent years, however, as the
size of the
SSD market opportunity has become clearer, the supply of IP related to
designing flash SSDs
has, itself, become an attractive market.
In datamining our online
content I discovered that the number of companies which market SSD SoCs,
already listed on these pages, has already reached double digits. And - for
growing markets - that's always been the trigger point to create a new
directory. It will make them easier to find, defragment related news and
provide a home page for articles.
Product marketers who are in such
companies, and who are not already listed, should contact me
by email - with the subject line "SSD
SoCs".
How Good SSD Controllers Manage Flash Data Integrity
Editor:-
April 3, 2009 - SNIA
has published a new white paper -
"NAND
Flash Solid State Storage for the Enterprise - an in-depth Look at Reliability."
(pdf)
It's co-authored by:- Jonathan Thatcher
Fusion-io, Tom
Coughlin Coughlin
Associates, Jim Handy
Objective
Analysis and Neal Ekker
Texas Memory Systems.
The
article contains the best integrated explanation I've seen of the design
trade-offs for error correction schemes and how they affect bit error rates
compared to the raw uncorrected results. It goes on to explain the
importance of the SSD controller and memory architecture (dispersing data
among many chips) and how these can improve data integrity by managing read
disturb errors. It also discusses wear-leveling and write amplification which
have been well covered elsewhere. ...read
the article
See also:-
SSD Reliability -
Understanding Data Failure Modes in Large Solid State Storage Arrays
How 3D Memory Stacks Up - New Market Report
Editor:-
April 1, 2009 - Forward Insights
has released a new 70+ page report (price $5,499) called -
How 3D Memory Stacks
Up.
3D memory technologies offer the promise of continued increases
in storage capacities and lower cost per bit necessary to enable emerging
applications such as solid
state drives. Among the candidates: stacked NAND technologies employing
charge trapping technology, vertical memory cells etched in a pillar and
stackable cross-point memory arrays. This report explores the feasibility of
each of these alternatives as a candidate to replace NAND
flash memories within the
next 4 years.
RRAM Steps Closer to Commercial Fabs
Editor:- March
10, 2009 - 4DS
announced
additional funding
as part of a multi-million dollar equity investment to port its
RRAM
technology to existing semiconductor fabs.
"PPP's investment
during a very tepid investment climate is testimony to the strength of our
technology and strategy," said Kurt Pfluger, CEO of 4DS, Inc. "We have
demonstrated the leaps in performance, flexibility and cost from our proprietary
process that will help enable a variety of compelling future memory
applications. With this additional investment from PPP, we are better positioned
to bring this technology to market."
Linkvast Unveils SSD Controllers
Editor:- February
25, 2009 - Linkvast
Technologies unveiled a family of
4 channel
(32bit/32CE) and
8 channel
(64bit/64CE) SATA flash SSD controllers that will ship in June, 2009.
The
controllers support all mainstream SLC & MLC
flash memory devices. The
external DRAM architecture enhances SSD performance and can reduce flash
wear out. Package is 279-Balls 15mm x 15mm LBGA.
Hyperstone Launches CF SSD Controller
Konstanz,
Germany - February 19, 2009 - Hyperstone launched a controller
chip for oems designing industrial grade CF compatible SSDs. |
 |
| The F4 provides safe power-fail
handling, error detection and correction and static wear leveling. Data
transfer rate to the attached
flash memory array (16
chips) is upto 80MB/s. Sustained R/W via the CF interface is upto 50MB/s and
40MB/s respectively. Alternatively oems can add a
SATA bridge, or
RAID controller for
other markets. ...Hyperstone
profile |
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| Are MLC SSDs Safe
in Enterprise Apps? |
This is a follow up
article to the popular
SSD Myths and
Legends which, a year earlier demolished the myth that flash memory
wear-out (a comfort blanket beloved by many
RAM SSD makers)
precluded the use of flash in heavy duty datacenters.
This new
article looks at the risks posed by MLC Nand Flash SSDs which have recently
hatched from their breeeding ground as chip modules in cellphones and morphed
into
hard disk form
factors. |
 |
It starts down a familiar
lane but an unexpected technology twist (which arrived in my email while
writing this article) takes you to a startling new world of possibilities.
...read the
article | | |
| . |
| Can You Trust Your Flash
SSD's Specs? |
Editor:- I've noticed is that
the published specs of
flash SSDs change
a lot -from the time a product they are first announced, then when they're
being sampled, and later again when they are in volume production.
Sometimes
the headline numbers get better, sometimes they get worse. There are many good
reasons for this.
The product which you carefully qualified may
not be identical to the one that's going into your production line for a
variety of reasons... ...read the article | |
| . |
| Why Consumers Can Expect
More Flaky Flash SSDs! |
Editor:- August 10, 2009 - a
new article published
on StorageSearch.com
explains why the consumer flash SSD quality problem is not going to get
better any time soon.
You know what I mean. Product recalls, firmware upgrades,
performance downgrades and bad behavior which users did not anticipate from
reading glowing magazine product reviews. And that's if they can get hold of
the new products in the first place.
The new article explains why it's
happening and gives some suggested workarounds for navigating in a world of
imperfect flash SSD product marketing. ...read the article | | |
| . |
| Z's Laws - Predicting
Future Flash SSD Performance |
A reader asked me a
very good question.
"Is there an industry roadmap for future
flash SSD
performance?"
That prompted other questions like...
- How fast are flash SSDs going to be in 2009?, 2010? or 2012?
- What are the technology factors which relate to flash SSD throughput and
IOPS?
- How close will flash SSDs get to
RAM SSD performance?
There wasn't a simple answer I could give at the time. Clues lay
scattered all across this web site
and in my many one on one discussions with readers about the market... |
 |
But I agreed there should be
a single place on the web where these answers could be found.
Forget
Moore's
Law. That gives you the wrong answer, and this article explains why. ...read the article | | |
| . |
the Fastest Solid State
Disks
Speed isn't everything, and it comes at a price. |
But if
you do need the6speediest
SSD then wading through the web sites of over 140 current
SSD oems to find a suitable
candidate slows you down.
And the SSD search problem will get even
worse. |
 | |
| I've done the research for you
to save you time. And this page is updated daily from
storage news and direct
inputs from oems. ...read
the article, | | |
