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the Top 10 Solid State Disk OEMs - Q407

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past editions:- top 10 SSD OEMs - Q207, Q307
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Squeak! - the Solid State Disks Buyers Guide
Squeak! - Solid State Disks - Market Adoption Model
Squeak! - SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
Squeak! - RAM SSDs versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?
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Editor's intro:- 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.
Easyco enterprise flash SSD 1U, 2U or 3U silver or black
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Who's going to dominate this market? It's not that easy to predict. But there's already a lot of traction. Stakes have been put in the ground claiming desirable application or technology territories. A handful of SSD pioneers have already exited the market, gone bust or been acquired. Bucking that trend SSD Pioneer EMC announced in mid January 2008 it was re-entering the SSD market after a 20 year absence.
To go back to the question - which are the most important SSD oems to look at right now? There are 2 empirical ways to form such a list based on different market research approaches.

(1) - financial data - looks at revenue and shipping volumes. The problem with this approach in a market that's growing so fast - is that revenue data can be 3 to 6 months out of date when collected and may not sample any data at all from important new companies which have recently entered the market. This traditional approach will probably work fine from about the middle of 2009 onwards. And if you can afford to wait that long before choosing SSD partners / suppliers that's OK. But is it really? I think waiting that long is very risky. Many companies will be at a severe competitive disadvantage if their competitors are using SSD technology first. Faster SSD accelerated ecommerce sites, faster databases and new SSD powered business applications will mean that waiting too long to hit the SSD trail could be damaging to your competitiveness.
SATA flash SSDs with 150M bytes / sec burst read and 80M bytes / sec sustained write time from MTRON - sorry photo  coming soon
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(2) - 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 and our readership is growing fast. 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.
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The Top 10 SSD OEMs

The listing below is based on storage search volume - more specifically - pageviews actually visited of the SSD company profiles on this site. This metric samples strong follow up interest generated by browsing our SSD directories, following up news stories or articles and following links from ads. But it excludes the pageviews of product ads themselves. As we track every manufacturer in the market and any manufacturer can (and does) send us their content related to SSDs - this is a measure of how our readers have reacted to that content.
1  terabyte solid state disk storage with 12x 4Gbps FC ports -  StorageSPIRE - from Solid Data Systems
StorageSPIRE
1 terabyte solid state disk
from Solid Data Systems
Top 10 SSD OEMs - based on reader pageviews in 4th Quarter 2007 - © STORAGEsearch.com
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.
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.
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 Q407 Q307 Q207
1 BiTMICRO Networks SanDisk STEC
2 SanDisk BiTMICRO Networks Samsung
3 Mtron Adtron Adtron
4 STEC Mtron Mtron
5 Memoright STEC BiTMICRO Networks
earlier editions of this article:-
Top 10 SSD OEMs - Q2 2007
Top 10 SSD OEMs - Q3 2007


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