StorageSearch.com's Top 10 SSD companies list


"leading the way to the new storage frontier"	..


SSD news	..


SSD controller chips	..


SSD history	..


SSD articles & blogs	..

the Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2007 Q4 - 3rd in this series

...

StorageSearch.com is proud to pre-announce the probable future winners in the solid state storage market.

click here for the most recent version of this article

SSDs - reaching for the Petabyte
Where are we now with SSD software?
Are you ready to rethink enterprise DRAM?
the Problem with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs
Data Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design

Who are the top 10 most important SSD manufacturers - the companies which you absolutely have to look at if you've got got any new projects involving SSDs?

A decade ago there was an easy answer. "All of them!"

It wasn't till 1999 that our online SSD directory tipped over the 10 companies mark.

Today (January 2008) there are over 63 active listed SSD oems. Another 4 or so I know in stealth mode, another 10 I'm checking out as imminent maybes and I expect the total number of SSD oems to go north of 100 in 2008. The new storage gold rush is chasing an opportunity for storage systems companies that could eventually be worth 5 to 10 billion dollars a year.

Who's going to dominate this market?

And how can you predict this in advance?

search volume data - is a near real-time and (nearly) reliable way to see which way things are heading in changing markets. I've got strong confidence in this approach having used it as an online publisher for over a decade to help me make predictions about emerging technologies and disruptions in the storage market.

But search volume based market inferences only work if you have high volumes of search in the specific subject. That's why you're here... Because when it comes to SSDs STORAGEsearch.com has delivered millions of article views related to hard SSD content. We've also been discussing the SSD market with nearly every SSD manufacturer (sometimes before they founded their companies) and with analysts and interested readers in a wide range of enterprises longer than any other publisher or analyst.

The Top 10 SSD OEMs

The listing below is based on search volume and pageviews visited on StorageSearch.com.

the Top 10 SSD OEMs - © StorageSearch.com based on reader pageviews in the 4th Quarter 2007
rank	manufacturer	SSD technology	notes....................................................
1	BiTMICRO Networks	Flash SSD	Up 1 place since the last quarter. In November 2007 - BiTMICRO announced plans to sample a terabyte class 3.5" flash SSD in Q108. With 1.6TB capacity and a 4Gbps Fibre Channel interface - it will deliver sustained throughput more than 230MBps and upwards of 55,000 IOPS. ...Later:- see the article:- Why BiTMICRO is Number One
2	SanDisk	Flash SSD	Down 1 place from the #1 slot since the last quarter. In November 2007 - SanDisk launched a PCIe compatible 16G flash SSD.
3	Mtron	Flash SSD	Up 1 place since the last quarter. In December 2007 - EasyCo (a North American distributor for Mtron) published results of performance testing on Mtron drives, both as single drives and in RAID-5 arrays.
4	STEC	Flash SSD	Up 1 place since the last quarter. In December 2007 - STEC started shipping its MACH8-MLC 1.8" and 2.5" PATA / SATA flash SSDs aimed at the notebook market. While the performance is at the middle range of the market spectrum - the new SSDs are available in high capacities upto 512GB (2.5").
5	Memoright	Flash SSD	New entry to top 10. In Q407 - Memoright was shiping one of the fastest 2.5" flash SSDs - with a SATA interface and 100MB/s sustained read / write throughput.
6	Samsung	Flash SSD	Same rank as last quarter. In November 2007 - Samsung started sampling faster versions of its 64G 1.8" and 2.5" SATA flash SSDs with sequential write speed of 100MB / sec and sequential read speed of 120MB / sec. Before that Samsung's SSDs had relatively low performance.
7	Adtron	Flash SSD	Down 4 places since the last quarter. Adtron didn't make any major product announcements in Q407. But later, in February 2008, SMART Modular Technologies announced it was acquiring Adtron.
8	Texas Memory Systems	RAM SSD Flash SSD	Down 1 place since the last quarter. In October 2007 - Texas Memory Systems took part in an 8Gbps Fibre Channel demo at Storage Networking World.
9	Violin Memory	RAM SSD	Up 1 place since the last quarter. In October 2007 - Violin Memory said that an InfiniBand interface for its Memory Appliance was imminent.
10	Attorn	RAM SSD	Down 2 places since the last quarter. Attorn didn't make any major product announcements in Q407.

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.

the 3 fastest PCIe SSDs - click to read article

But in this case you'd be wrong. (I didn't say you'd like the answers, though.) ...read the article

how fast can your SSD run backwards?

11 Key Symmetries in SSD design

How to interpret the rankings?

The most important thing is being included in the list rather than the position within it. Having said that there's a 4x difference in pageviews between companies at the top or bottom. The top 10 companies will vary from quarter to quarter and the rankings will change too. But there's a hard core of companies which are always in the the top 10. You'll be able to see who those are in future quarterly editions of this list and you'll also be able to see if any companies have moved sharply up or down.

You can see below the movements in the top 5 positions.

All the top 5 companies in the last 3 quarters of 2007 were makers of flash SSDs rather than RAM SSDs. However, RAM SSD oems (which tend to offer greater performance but at much higher cost) still occupied 3 of the top 10 slots in Q407. For a comparison of applications, cost and trends see RAM SSDs versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?

Top 5 SSD OEMs in 2007 - © STORAGEsearch.com
rank	the Top 5 SSD OEMs 2007 Q4	the Top 5 SSD OEMs 2007 Q3	the Top 5 SSD OEMs 2007 Q4
1	BiTMICRO	SanDisk	STEC
2	SanDisk	BiTMICRO	Samsung
3	Mtron	Adtron	Adtron
4	STEC	Mtron	Mtron
5	Memoright	STEC	BiTMICRO