Top 20
SSD OEMs - based on reader search volume in
3rd Quarter
2010 - © STORAGEsearch.com
For more commentary related
to each company's recent SSD activities - click on the company name. |
| rank |
company |
main SSD technology |
comments about this quarter.................................................... |
| 1 |
|
PCIe SSDs |
Same as before.
This is
Fusion-io's 7th straight quarter in the #1 slot. Fusion-io's search volume
was 50% higher than the #2 ranked company, and 4x higher than
the #10 ranked company in this list. Fusion-io epitomizes what I call the
New Dynasty
architectural trend in the enterprise SSD market.
In August 2010
-
Fusion-io
announced
the availability of a new high density
PCIe SSD - which
supplies 1.28TB of MLC capacity on a single card.
See also:-
Fusion-io's news page |
| 2 |
|
SAS SSDs
military SSDs
PCIe SSDs |
Same as before.
STEC has been in
every past edition of this top 10 list.
In September 2010
STEC
announced
it is sampling a new 3.5"
dual port SAS
compatible RAM SSD - the
ZeusRAM SSD - with
8GB capacity and under 23 microseconds average latency and internal flash
backup.
RAM SSDs don't have the
"play it
again Sam... as time goes by" syndrome inherent in
flash SSDs -
because they have genuinely low repeat write latency and can be 10x to 20x
faster. In some applications that's a difference
worth paying for.
See
also:- STEC's news page |
| 3 |
|
flash SSD Controllers |
Same as before.
In
September 2010 - SandForce
announced
it
closed $25 million in Series D funding - bringing the total investments
in the company to $67 million.
See also:-
SandForce's
news page |
| 4 |
|
military SSDs
PCIe SSDs |
Up 1 place since the last quarter.
In
September 2010 -
Foremay announced it is
shipping SATA 3 versions of its
EC188
M-series flash SSDs (2.5" and 3.5" SSDs) - with R/W speeds upto
450MB/s and 350MB/s respectively.
See also:-
Foremay's
news page |
| 5 |
|
1.8"
SSDs
2.5" SLC
SSDs |
Down 1 place since the last quarter.
WD
made no significant SSD announcements in this quarter. WD has in the past
published many whitepapers about aspects of "SSD reliability" (a
subject which was 20th most popular site search on StorageSearch.com in this
quarter).
See also:-
WD's news page |
| 6 |
|
Rackmount SSDs
PCIe SSDs |
Same as before.
Texas Memory
Systems epitomizes what I call the
Legacy
architectural trend in the enterprise SSD market. The company has continuously
marketed SSDs to accelerate enterprise servers longer than any other company
in this top 10 / 20 list. Some other
RAM SSD oems (because
all enterprise SSDs were RAM based in the 1990s) have been in the commercial
erver speedup business for even longer than TMS - but have not sustained
their earlier market prominence.
See also:-
TMS's news page |
| 7 |
|
2.5" SSDs
PCIe SSDs |
Up 3 places since the last quarter.
Like
everyone else in the PCIe SSD market OCZ would like to be where Fusion-io is
now. But even with the assistance of SandForce controllers inside its latest
PCIe drives - OCZ's PCIe SSD products are about 2 years behind the performance
state of the art. Nevertheless not everybody needs
ultimate SSD
performance. And some readers have told me they are very happy with the
speedups which OCZ's SSDs have enabled for their legacy applications at prices
they can afford.
In August 2010 - At the
Flash
Memory Summit OCZ demonstrated a new
3.5" SSD with
what it calls a
High Speed Data
Link interface - which is
PCIe physically
connected via a SAS
connector.
See also:-
OCZ's news page |
| 8 |
|
2.5" SSDs |
Same as before.
In September
2010 -
Intel's SSD
Bookmarks on StorageSearch.com
were updated with new links aimed at "enterprise SSD" users. Intel
is trying to rebuild its image in the enterprise SSD market having had some
embarrassing failures in the past - and having been dumped by some rackmount
oems.
9 years ago I wrote an article aimed at publicity experts in
tech companies - called
remember, the web
has no memory! In a fast growing market like SSDs - Intel (and other
companies) don't have to agonize too much about past PR blips - because the
number of new customers coming into the market next year is bigger than those
who were in before. And having never heard those old disaster stories - will be
more trusting that a vendor with a good computer brand knows what it's doing in
SSDs too.
See also:-
Intel's
news page |
| 9 |
|
1.8"
SSDs
2.5" SSDs
3.5" SSDs |
Down 2 places since the last quarter.
In
August 2010 - RunCore
released a video
which shows innovative consumer SSD security features - which oems will
introduce into products soon. These include RFID tag enabling of hidden disk
partitions (for use with external SSDs) and remote kill /
fast purge of an SSD
via SMS text message - if your SSD has been stolen.
In
September 2010 - RunCore announced
significant price reductions on its
ProV
2.5" SATA SSDs - which have SandForce's SF1200
controllers inside - for products ordered via its worldwide distributors.
See
also:- RunCore's news page |
| 10 |
|
Rackmount SSDs |
Up 2 places since the last quarter.
After
an absence of 2 years Violin has reentered the top 10 SSD list - having
discovered a new market niche - of affordable server accelerators. When it
first hit the top 10
list (exactly 3 years ago) its emphasis was purely on speed.
In
September 2010 - Violin
Memory
announced
availability of the
Violin
3140 - a 3U MLC SSD with 40TB capacity
priced at under $16
per GB and $3 per
IOPS.
See
also:- Violin's
news page |
| This is where the
old quarterly top SSD company listings used to end. Now - with a bigger SSD
market - the top 11 to 20 companies are significant ones to look at too. |
| 11 |
|
2.5" SSDs
flash memory |
Down 2 places since the last quarter.
In August
2010 - Micron announced it is
sampling
the
RealSSD
P300 - a 200GB 2.5"
SATA 3 SLC flash SSD with R/W
IOPS of
44,000 and 16,000 respectively.
See also:-
Micron news page |
| 12 |
|
SAS SSDs |
Up 1 place since the last quarter.
In
September 2010 - Pliant
announced it
is sampling MLC
versions of its 2.5" SAS SSD family with upto 400GB capacity and >10K
sustained IOPS.
The company was moving away from its original conservative stance of offering
only SLC SSDs for the server apps speedup market.
See also:-
Pliant's news page |
| 13 |
|
notebook SSDs |
Up since the last quarter.
3
years ago SanDisk was the #1 company in these lists in
Q3 2007. With a
strong technical leadership position in MLC flash and a bright future
anticipated for notebook SSDs what could go wrong? But for various reasons the
company dropped out of the top 10 list, came back in and dropped out again - and
#13 is its best rank in calendar 2010. The SSD notebook market has been
murky due to
a lot of badly designed SSDs being fitted in uncomplimentary notebooks. So the
consumer pull has been less enthusiastic than most
analysts
originally anticipated.
In September 2010 -
SanDisk
announced
that NDS (a tv set top box designer with
with over 30 million DVR units deployed) has successfully has designed SanDisk
SSDs into a new range of lower cost set-top DVRs. (See also
tv SSDs.)
See
also:- SanDisk's
news page |
| 14 |
|
miniature SSDs
notebook SSDs |
Same as before.
Samsung has, in
the past, featured more than once as high as high as the #2 slot in these top
10 SSD lists (in 2009
and 2007).
Samsung
knows it's got to make the SSD market work for it as a strategic business - and
announced this intention back in 2005. Trying hard doesn't always mean
succeeding - however - especially when other companies in the market have the
same idea - or execute their product and marketing plans better. Samsung knows
it needs better technology and has tried various ways to fix these gaps in
recent years as documented in
SSD history.
What Samsung also needs is better SSD marketers. Unfortunately that's a harder
problem to fix.
In August 2010 - Samsung and Seagate
announced
they will jointly develop
SSD controller
technologies to operate with Samsung's 30nm-class MLC NAND. The jointly
developed controller will be used in
Seagate's
enterprise-class SSDs.
See also:- Samsung's SSD
news page |
| 15 |
|
PCIe SSDs |
Seagate's previous best rank in SSD reader
search volume was #12 in
Q1 2010. At that
time the list was the "top 10 SSD companies" - so Seagate only got a
brief mention at the end of that article.
Although it may be galling
for the company who for so many years has been the #1 biggest
hard disk maker - any
listing in the top 20 SSD oems at this stage of the market for Seagate is more
than it deserves.
Seagate started as a very reluctant participant in
the SSD market - and like someone who doesn't want to be invited to dance at the
county ball - its earlier participation in this market included many incidents
which the company would like us all to forget.
Seagate said and then
unsaid - so many silly things about the SSD market - before it had been to the
SSD dancing lessons - about how its shoes didn't fit - about how balls were so
silly anyway - about how it was going to be the belle of the ball next time
when it had a new dress.
As an editor I got so exasperated with this
company which started with such an anti-SSD-industry position and whose
management was in SSD denial that in April 2008 I published an article -
Why Seagate
will Fail the SSD Challenge - which starkly stated that whichever damn dress
the company decided to wear - it wasn't going to be the belle of the ball by
taking that attitude - and that by sitting out the SSD ball year after year - it
may have missed its best chance to meet
Mr
Darcy.
One of the advantages of extending the top 10 SSD oems list
to 20 companies - is that readers will get better future visibility of what's
happening below the SSD ball event horizon.
See also:-
Seagate's news page |
| 16 |
|
Rackmount SSDs |
This is the company which launched the world's
first SAS solid state
storage systems in 2005 (2 years before STEC had a SAS SSD. For most of the
company's 8 year history their products were very fast
RAM SSDs. But in May
2010 they extended their product line downwards to also include flash.
See
also:- Solid Access Tech's
news page |
| 17 |
|
2.5" SSDs |
You may be surprised to learn that Memoright held
the #1 position in these lists for 3 straight quarters - starting in
Q2 2008. There were
only 77 oems in the SSD market in those days and for a while Memoright was
shipping the world's fastest 2.5" SATA flash SSDs.
Since then the
2.5" market has become much more competitive - and Memoright (which designs
its own controllers) has refocused on the embedded industrial segment. This is
a market in which companies who design sound products (which work) don't
suffer from the same dizziness as those chasing the latest consumer or
server slots.
In July 2010 -
Memoright announced
a new authorized distributor for their SSDs in the US -
First Commercial
Technologies based in Beverly Hills, CA.
See also:-
Memoright's
news page |
| 18 |
|
PCIe rackmount SSDs |
NextIO's SSD rackmounts are a good example of a
new strand in the
SSD rackmount
market within the "open"
architecture segment - which uses arrays of COTS
PCIe SSDs.
In
September 2010 - NextIO announced an
exclusive distributor
for the Japanese reseller market.
See also:-
NextIO's news page |
| 19 |
|
1.8"
SSDs
2.5" SSDs |
The last time Toshiba appeared in the top 10 SSD
list was Q2 2008.
Since then the company's SSD products have mostly failed to inspire - being
mostly in the me-too notebook SSD market.
See also:-
Toshiba's
memory news page |
| 20 joint |
|
1.8"
SSDs
2.5" SSDs |
In September 2010 -
Super Talent
launched
a range of 1.8" and 2.5" PATA SSDs for industrial temperature
operation - and with secure erase.
See also:-Super Talent's news
page |
|
|
Rackmount SSDs |
EMC has never appeared in the top 10 SSD lists.
EMC integrates FC SSDs from
STEC and now SATA SSDs
from Samsung into
storage arrays. For customers with large data sets the reliability blanket which
encapsulates these SSDs is hard to replicate with lower cost and much faster
competing SSDs. But this reassurance comes at a high cost penalty - which makes
EMC's products uneconomic for many
new dynasty SSD
driven applications like video
servers. As the SSD market grows I expect EMC will become a smaller and
less relevant part of it - until the emergence of
bulk storage SSDs
which could involve market and technology dynamics more suited to EMC's business
culture.
See also:- EMC's
news page |
