|
|
| ..... |
|
1.0" SSDs
1.8" SSDs
2.5" SSDs
3.5" SSDs
19" rack SSDs
1976 - 2011 SSD
history
2011
- SSD look back
2012
- SSD look ahead
About the publisher
After SSDs... what next?
Analysts - SSD market
Animal brands in the
SSD market
Articles
and blogs - re SSD
ASAPs / Auto
tiering SSDs
Backup
software
Bad
block management in flash SSDs
Benchmarks - SSD - can
you trust them?
Best / cheapest
SSD?
Big
market picture of SSDs
Bookmarks from SSD
leaders
Branding
Strategies in the SSD market
Buyers Guide to SSDs |
|
Cables for storage interfaces
CD, DVD and optical storage
drives
Chips - storage
interface / processors
Chips - SSD on a chip &
DOMs
Cloud storage
- with SSD twists
Controller
chips for SSDs
Cost
of SSDs - why so much?
Data integrity in
flash SSDs
Data
recovery (all)
Data
recovery for flash SSDs?
Disaster Recovery
procedures
Disk to disk
backup
Disk sanitizers
Duplicators - optical (DVD
etc)
Duplicators - HDD / SSD
DuraClass - strength
in SSD brands
enterprise
MLC SSDs - how safe?
Encryption - impacts in
notebook SSDs
Endurance - in
flash SSDs
Enter
the SSD market - 3 easy ways
Events
ExpressCard SSDs
Fast purge /
erase SSDs
Fastest
SSDs
Fibre-channel
HBAs
Fibre-Channel SSDs
FireWire storage
Flaky reputation for
consumer SSDs
Flash
Memory
Flash
SSDs
flash
SSD vs RAM SSD
Flooded hard
drives - recovery guide
Future
of enterprise storage (2020)
Garbage Collection - SSD
jargon
GBICs, SFPs
and XFPs
Green
storage
Hard
disk drives
HDD
vs SSD
History
of data storage
History
of disk to disk backup
History of the SPARC
systems market
History of SSD
market
Hybrid
Drives
Iceberg
syndrome - invisible SSD capacity
Imprinting the brain of
the SSD
Imprinting
the brain of the SSD
Industrial SSDs
Industry trade associations (ORGs)
InfiniBand
IOPS - problematic
metric for flash SSDs
iSCSI
Jargon - legacy storage
Jargon - RAID
Jargon - flash SSD
JBODs
Jukeboxes - optical storage
Legacy vs New Dynasty
SSDs
Lightning
- speed in SSD brands
Market research (all
storage)
Marketing Views
Mice and storage
Military storage
MLC - in SSD jargon
MLC in enterprise SSDs
NAS
News page
Notebook SSDs
Online Backup
Optical drives
PATA SSDs
PCIe SSDs
People in storage
Petabyte SSD roadmap
Popular SSDs - 2007
to today
Power loss -
sudden in SSDs
Power, Speed &
Strength in SSD brands
PR agencies - storage and
SSD
PR mistakes
to avoid
Rackmount
SSDs
RAID
controllers
RAID systems (incl RAIC RAISE
etc)
RAM
cache ratios in flash SSDs
RAM memory chips
RamSan - SSD brands
article
RAM SSDs
RAM SSDs versus Flash
SSDs
Recession
- impact on SSD market?
Record breaking storage
Reliability - SSD
Reliability - storage
Removable drives
Routers (storage)
SAN - FC
SAN - IP
SAS storage
SAS - flexibility for
the Data Center
SAS
SSDs
SATA storage
SATA SSDs
SCSI SSDs - legacy parallel
Security
Services
SLC vs eMLC
Software
SSD articles and blogs (popular)
Switches - SAN
Tape drives
Tape libraries
Test Equipment
Top 20 SSD companies
Training
TuffServ - strength
in SSD brands
Tuning
SANs with SSDs
USB
storage
User
Value Propositions for SSDs
VC funds in storage
Videos - about SSDs
Wear leveling (SSD jargon)
What's an SSD? |
.... |
| . |
|
| partial
list of SSD companies |
There are 300+ manufacturers of
SSDs profiled on StorageSearch.com. I've listed some of these below.
ACARD Technology,
Active Media Products,
A-DATA,
Addonics Technologies,
ADLINK Technology,
Advanced Media,
Afaya,
Aitech Defense Systems,
Altec ComputerSysteme,
AMP,
Ampex ,
Angelbird,
Anobit,
Apple,
Apacer,
APRO,
Asine,
Astute Networks,
ATP Electronics, Attorn,
Avere Systems,
Axxana,
Barun Electronics,
BiTMICRO,
Buffalo Technology,
Cactus Technologies,
CoreSolidStorage,
Corsair, Curtis,
Curtiss-Wright,
Dane-Elec Memory,
DataDirect Networks,
Dataram, DDRdrive,
Delkin Devices,
Density Dynamics,
Dolphin,
DTS, Dynamic Solutions Int'l,
EasyCo,
EDGE Tech,
Emphase,
Eonsil,
Extreme Engineering Solutions,
FlashSoft,
Foremay,
Fortasa Memory Systems,
Fujitsu,
Fuji Xerox, Fusion-io,
GalaxyStor,
General Micro Systems,
GIGA-BYTE Technology,
Global Unichip,
Greenliant Systems,
G.Skill
, G-Technology,
GridIron Systems,
Hagiwara
Sys-Com, Hitachi,
HP,
Huawei Symantec ,
Hynix Semiconductor,
IBM,
Imation ,
InnoDisk,
Intel,
ioSafe ,
IO Turbine,
Kaminario, KingFast,
KingSpec ,
Kingston Technology,
Kove,
Lauron Technologies,
Lexar Media,
Lite-On ,
LSI,
Macrotron Systems,
MagicRAM,
Marvell ,
MemoCom, Memoright,
Micron Technology, Microsemi, Micross Components,
Mushkin,
Myung,
Netlist,
Network Appliance,
NextIO,
Nimble Storage,
Nimbus Data Systems,
NVELO, OCZ,
Oracle ,
OWC,
Panasonic,
Pangaea Media,
Patriot Memory,
Phison Electronics,
Phoenix International,
PhotoFast,
Pillar Data Systems,
Plextor,
Pliant Technology,
PMC-Sierra,
PNY Technologies,
PQI,
Pretec Electronics,
Princeton Technology,
pureSilicon,
RAID,
Real Ram Disk,
Red Rock Technologies,
Renice Technology , RunCore,
Samsung,
SANRAD, SandForce,
SanDisk,
Sans Digital,
SeaChange International,
Seagate,
SEEK Systems,
SGI,
Sharkoon,
Shining Technology,
Silicon Power ,
Silicon Storage
Technology, SMART
Modular Technologies,
Solid
Access Technologies, Solidata International
Technologies , Solid
Data Systems,
SolidFire,
Soliware,
Stealth.Com,
STEC,
Storspeed,
Strontium ,
Sun Microsystems,
Superior Data
Solutions , Super
Talent Technology, Swissbit,
Taejin Infotech, Targa Systems,
TDK,
Team Group, Texas Memory Systems,
Third I/O,
Toshiba,
Transcend Information,
Trident Space &
Defense, Unigen,
Vanguard Rugged
Storage, Verbatim,
Viking Modular Solutions,
Virident
Systems, Violin
Memory, ViON,
Virtium Technology,
WD Solid
State Storage, WhipTail
Technologies, White
Electronic Designs, Wintec,
Walton Chaintech,
XLC Disk,
XtremIO
For
more SSD related companies - see
SSD controllers,
rackmount SSDs,
auto tiering SSDs,
iSCSI SSDs,
SSD software,
SSD analysts,
SSD market
history and acquired,
gone-away and renamed storage companies. | | |
| |
 |
| ... |
SSD news - this is not
an RSS feed |
SSD talk with the founder and CEO of Nimbus
Editor:-
February 2, 2012 - I had an interesting
discussion about the enterprise SSD
market yesterday with Thomas Isakovich,
CEO and founder of Nimbus
Data Systems which recently launched its first high availability SAN
SSDs.
SSD rack FAQs you shouldn't have to struggle to answer
Editor:-
February 1, 2012 -
what do you need to know about any new
rackmount SSD? - is a new article published today on our home page.
StorageSearch.com's readership grew 28%
Editor:-
February 1, 2012 - I was pleased to see that the readership here on StorageSearch.com
grew 28% in January compared to a year ago.
Now you may
think that's not so great when the
SSD market is
growing so fast. But I'm more interested in quality than quantity. In the
quantitive SSD bucket - there are thousands of other sites and blogs talking
about SSDs so there's a lot of competition out there for your precious time.
One good thing about this mass of other "out there" SSD
content though is it means I can spend more of my time on SSD thought
leadership issues. Because like most of you - I'm seriously interested in
thinking about and helping to steer the SSD market's direction - so it gets
to somewhere better, faster while minimizing the bumps.
If you want to
read SSD RSS feeds masquerading as SSD headline news - such as for example -
the 45th company which has launched a 2.5" SSD which uses
brand X's
controller, or a processor chipmaker's
Nth annual SSD firmware
recall, or some
throwback
enterprise SSD marketer gushing about their rackmount SSD being so much
faster than a room full of 15K whirligigs - all very important things no doubt
for the companies involved - then you can read about those elsewhere.
You'd
be surprised how many editors of other SSD magazines read the mouse site too.
But we all have different goals and reader demographics. Here - since the 1990s
- it's always been about leading the way to the new storage frontier.
Thanks for your participation in helping to make the SSD market better.
new to SSD? - new report from Forward Insights
Editor:-
January 31, 2012 - Forward Insights
has recently published a new report -
SSD Technology and
Applications: A Primer (88 pages $1,499).
Author Gregory Wong says - "It's
an ideal guide for novices interested in acquiring a basic understanding of SSD
technology and applications as well as a handy reference for more experienced
professionals."
Editor's comments:- Among other things
(see contents
pdf for more details) Greg says the report also provides an overview of the
competitive landscape for SSDs.
See also:- SSD
market analysts.
Nimbus does that "no spof SSD" thing
Editor:-
January 31, 2012 - Nimbus
Data Systems today
announced
its entry into the
high availability
enterprise SSD market with the uveiling of the company's -
E-Class systems -
which are 2U rackmount SSDs with 10TB
eMLC per U of
usable capacity and no single point of failure. Unified interface
support includes 10GbE,
FC, and
Infiniband.
Nimbus
software (which supports upto 0.5
petabytes in a
single SSD file system) automatically detects controller and path failures,
providing non-disruptive failover. The E-Class also supports online software
updates and online capacity expansion. It has
RAID protection and
hot-swappable flash, power, and cooling modules. Pricing starts at $150K approx
for a 10TB dual configuration system.
Editor's comments:-
Nimbus seemed incredulous at my immediate reaction to the preliminary info they
sent me. I said I knew of competing shipping SSDs which were denser, faster
and offered more HA features too. But that's not to understate the value of
what the company does. Instead of being impressed by a bunch of me-too
technical metricals I was rather more impressed to learn that Nimbus is still
profitable. More about that later.
SSD link appears on EMC.com
Editor:- January 30,
2012 - EMC has
launched an
SSD
link (effectively still "under construction") on its
main home page.
I had no
foreknowledge of this when I wrote last week about EMC's stealth mode SSD
business - "When you start seeing a permament flash SSD link on EMC's
home page
- you'll know that the company is taking SSD more seriously."
I
was asked recently if I thought that EMC would turn out to be (in the
Christensen sense) -
like
Kodak (in photography) and
Wang
(in word processing) - yet another example of a company which - while being a
leader in one type of technology - would fail to make a successful transition
through to being leader in a a disruptive technology which would replace it.
Digital electrronics replacing optical film - for Kodak, software and PCs
replacing wordprocessors - in the case of Wang, and SSDs replacing HDD arrays -
in the case of EMC.
The thought had occurred to me too - and it has
given solace to many SSD company founders - who compete with EMC - because it
has behaved like a company which is "clueless" from the SSD
leadership perspective - despite having had the benefit of many intensive
evaluations of leading enterprise SSDs.
Nevertheless - some of the
same SSD companies which have enjoyed the ease with which they have grown their
SSD petabyte market
share at the expense of the SSD clueless EMC - would possibly change their
tune if EMC would deign to acquire their companies or oem their products.
I
told my inquirer that I hadn't quite written EMC off in the SSD market -
because as long as they retained enough loot from their rotating storage empire
they still had plenty
of time to pursue a strategy which was a blend of home grown with
oemed and acquired
SSD technologies.
The name chosen for its new SSD launch is the same
as that of another well established
SSD brand -
Lightning - from SanDisk.
But that's just a confusing coincidence - because EMC's new PCIe SSD product
will instead be based on LSI's
WarpDrive.
HA enterprise SSD arrays
Editor:- January 26, 2012 -
due to the growing number of oems in the high availability rackmount SSD market
StorageSearch.com today
published a new directory focusing on
HA enterprise SSD
arrays.
In my past 20 years of publishing enterprise buyers guides
- I've developed an instrinct for judging when the market is ready for a new
focused directory. Sometimes I've been too early - but with the momentum in the
enterprise SSD market and the number of HA SSD vendors already dipping into
double digits - I think this is exactly the right time for such a new
directory.
will rental break through the indecision barrier for SSD ASAPs?
Editor:-
January 26, 2012 - One of the business development obstacles facing
enterprise SSD ASAP
/ caching vendors in the past few years has been that users have mostly
thought of them as being HDD array accelerators.
And even if a user is
interested right now - and even if they are happy with their try before you buy
results - they often hold off making a purchase - because they think (after
reading web sites like this one) that one day they'll be ripping out their
rotating RAID systems and
replacing them with SSDs - so it might be silly to buy an SSD cache appliance
right now - if it only speeds up HDDs.
Now in reality - most users
won't replace their entire HDD storage as quickly as they might like to think -
and ASAPs do have a permanent role in the pure SSD datacenter too. Some
vendors' marketing materials talk about that - while others are still
harping on
about hard disks and the "superiority" of SSD - even when their
technology roadmap works just as well for SSD.
Seemingly breaking
through the user indecision barrier - Dataram today
published a customer story about their
"no
long term commitment" - Acceleration on Demand - leasing program. It
sounds like a good idea - but I don't know the exact terms and conditions
involved.
Fusion-io's revenue nearly trebles, but...
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 - but I have
written an article below 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 investor climate.
What follows includes pure speculation on my part which may be entirely wrong.
like the weather - VCs have changing climates
Because
of their pedigree the founders of Intel had
easy
relatively acces to venture capital but they aimed to be profitable as soon
as possible because the business culture of startups was very different in the
late 1960s and early 70s than it is today. Intel's early success meant
that some VCs were more receptive to the computer / semiconductor industry. But
it still wasn't easy for the company which created the first mass market for
PCs -
Apple
- when they went shopping for money in 1976 . And although the VC tech funding
climate warmed up in the early 1980s - it was still tough on founders as you
can see in this video about
Compaq. But things
were getting easier - and by the mid 1980s anyone with a good product,
strong partner(s) and a business plan could get a couple of rounds of VC
funding (including yours
truly). It was getting almost too easy - so some VCs got picky in the mid
to late 1980s with the JAW generation -
Just
Another Workstation.
dotcom lemmings
In the mid to
late 1990s in the
dotcom bubble (pdf)
I saw investors seemingly lose their sense of perspective and ability to reason
as they over funded too many nutty dotcom businesses which had no prospect
whatsoever of being profitable - based on the wild notion that growth was worth
getting if you got enough eyeballs on your site.
I was publishing a
buyers guide to dot-in-dotcom
compatible servers at the time - and I couldn't understand why people
couldn't see that many of the startups which bought these servers and never even
unpacked them - were flaky. Didn't people realize that while it was good to get
visitors to your web site - it wasn't so clever if the true cost was $100
per click. I - on my part - didn't appreciate that in a bubble it's making money
along the way which is the driving force for most investors - not actually
arriving at the end. Following the dotcom bust at the end of the 1990s those VCs
who still had money avoided most new digital investments - except Google -
like the plague.
How about the SSD market?
2 years
ago I said that we were starting an
SSD Bubble.
Nevertheless tangible benefits are being delivered to users along the way
and at the end of the rainbow will be a
huge market for SSDs.
So there are bubble elements - but some chewy goodness too. How does this relate
to the many companies in the enterprise SSD market today who are growing
revenue - but not necessarily profitable - like Fusion-io?
My view
about Fusion-io's rolling losses is that part of this is due to the
continuing investment (in technology, sales and marketing) which any similar
company has to make in a fast changing. fast growing tech market - but another
factor in its profit equation may the high proportion of its business which goes
to a small number of big customers. It's just a fact of life that when
storage companies sell to server oems and super users they have to sell at a
lower price than if they're selling to other types of customers - because there
are competiutors out there who will also buy this business opportunity. But even
in the dearth / absence of profit in such deals- the high sales volumes which
result - speed up positive outcomes in other factors which can be healthy
for future business development.
It is to be hoped that at some point in the future - as the innovation curve
flattens - and the technology creator's brand strengthens and the product
becomes a sticky standard supported by compatible 3rd party partners - the
margins in the product itself and in the channel mix may change for the better.
(Licensing deals
too are another possibility for extracting more profit from high volume oem
customers.) There are no guarantees in any competive market but that's my way
of trying to make long term sense of what's going on in some hot spots in the
SSD market today.
Intel buys InfiniBand line from QLogic
Editor:-
January 24, 2012 - Intel
yesterday
announced
an agreement to acquire the
InfiniBand
40Gbps (pdf) related product lines, IP and business assets of QLogic.
Editor's
comments:- if you're not familiar with
InfiniBand - it was
originally proposed in 2000 as a standard for remote CPU R/W with small packet
sizes and ultra low latency to support arrays of CPUs over many cards and racks.
In the early days - InfiniBand evangelists and some storage analysts believed
the standard would go into the commercial server mainstream.
Instead
what happened was that fatter multi-core CPU chips, and faster GbE wiped out
the volume market need for IB technology - because they could do the same job
cheaper and incrementally for smaller clusters of CPUs. So the IB market
nowadays is mainly a niche market for scientific research and high performance
computing.
Some of the
fastest SSD benchmarks
have been recorded in IB environments. And at one time (before 2008) I thought
that IB might be a significant and natural upward path for high performance
SSDs. However, PCIe SSD
systems also support remote array connections - so IB's role remains that of
occupying the narrow turf of clustering hundreds to thousands more CPUs than
Intel or others can pack into a single chip.
Another way to think about
it is this. You can't have viable HPC without SSD. But you can have a healthy
SSD market where HPC is a small niche.
There's no doubt that SSDs are
an enabling technology which make it realistic for CPU designers to think
about what they could do with hundreds of cores on a single chip and over 1,000
cores on a single server card. I discussed that blue sky concept with
processor designers nearly 10 years ago. But does the mainstream market need
such servers?
In the
SSD
data driven factories of the future - the answer is yes. But that could be
another 5 years in the future - because there are still closely related
standards to firm up - such as Hybrid
Memory Cubes. And
storage history
shows that new standards
take years to get into the market. In the meantime - if you're not in the HPC
market - but still need very fast CPU performance - keep an eye on what the
leading PCIe SSD makers do - and you won't go far wrong.
Violin video re visibility advantages of home grown controllers
Editor:-
January 23, 2012 - I commented recently that the
top 10 SSD companies in
Q4 2011 all had one thing in common (apart from the fact they make SSDs) -
they all had their own proprietary
SSD controller
architecture which they could use to optimize products for some application
markets (even if some of them also used other controllers too).
In
a
recent
video - Violin's,
CTO Software Jonathan Goldick
talks about the benefits they get from having their own controller.
I
like it because it also echoes themes I discussed last year in my
big versus small
SSD architecture article - and also because it's short - less than 250
seconds. ...watch
Violin's SSD video
Server Side Caching article
Editor:- January 20,
2012 - "What can a CIO do to improve VMware performance without forklift
upgrades?" - is a question posed by Woody Hutsell ,
Sr. Director of Product Management at Fusion-io in his new
blog about -Server Side
Caching.
See also:-
Woody's earlier enterprise SSD blogs,
more SSD articles
and SSD ASAPs.
Micron follows SSD software acquisition trend
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.
WhipTail gets more funding
Editor:- January 17, 2012
- WhipTail
today
announced
it has secured a Series B funding round led by RRE
Ventures, with Ignition Partners
and Spring Mountain Capital
also participating.
The new funds will be used to increase resources in
sales and marketing.
WhipTail says over 100 customers have installed
its enterprise SSD arrays and over 1/3 of the company's revenue comes from
repeat business.
See also:-iSCSI
SSDs, rackmount
SSDs and VCs
STEC prospecting for more enterprise SSD business
Editor:-
January 17, 2012 - STEC
announced that industry veteran Vaughn Miller has joined the company's
Systems and Software Group as VP of Business Development.
Mr. Miller
is responsible for developing business opportunities with OEMs and ISVs that
focus on enterprise
applications.
During the past 16 years, Mr. Miller held various key
management positions in business development for
Cisco Systems,
NeoPath Networks,
Acopia
Networks (acquired by F5 Networks, Inc.),
NetApp and
Auspex Systems. Prior to
his roles in business development, Mr. Miller served as an engineer for
Landmark
Graphics (a Halliburton company) and
Modcomp.
Editor's
comments:- if you're unfamiliar with the earlier companies in this virtual
cv - before we get to the storage companies - the themes are "real-time"
and "big data analysis", the world's first
NAS company (Auspex) and "virtualization".
I've said for years that STEC didn't put enough effort into
enterprise business development. The company lost market share in the
enterprise SSD market in
2011.
Better late than never to grab a map and shovel in
this year of the
Enterprise SSD Goldrush.
BiTMICRO's new SSD controller design
Editor:-
January 17, 2012 - BiTMICRO
has named its new SSD
controller - which has just gone through
tape-out.
It's called TALINO-DE
- Translation and Linking of I/O Nodes -Device Edition. - Not very catchy - but
all the best SSD
names have gone.
The multi-core TALINO-DE is
big SSD
architecture (manages hundreds of flash chips) and includes full data path
protection, end-to-end
data integrity,
embedded AES engines for data
security, embedded XOR engines for delivering faster transaction processing
in RAID configurations,
power
management, and other resource optimization.
Editor's
comments:- the new controller appears to be in a similar conceptual class
to those which have been shipping in some
PCIe SSDs from
TMS and
Virident for
example - although these in turn are very different - starting at the
RAM cache
basics (TMS designs range from regular to fat, whereas Virident is skinny.)
If
the new BiTMICRO controller lives up to its promise - and if it's marketed as a
merchant chip set - it could lead to a commoditization of PCIe and rackmount
SSDs similar to the effect
SandForce had on the
enterprise 2.5" SSD
market.
Huawei Symantec publishes SPC-1 results for Dorado2100 SSD
Editor:-
January 12, 2012 - Huawei
Symantec has published an
SPC
Benchmark report (66 pages pdf) for its high availability FC SAN rackmount
SSD - the
Oceanspace
Dorado2100.
A 1 terabyte (approx) usable protected (mirrored) SSD
system (2.4TB raw) delivered over 100K SPC-1 IOPS at a market price of$0.90/SPC-1
IOPS. Click
here for summary (pdf)
Editor's comments:- these
SPC
reports are very technical and the $ per SPC-1 IOPS headline
figures include a lot of detailed factors including 3 years of 4 hour on-site
response warranty etc. But the documents also include market prices for
everything which goes into these calculations. From which we learn that a
2.4TB Dorado2100 SSD system with 16x 8Gbps FC ports costs about $52,000. See
also:- SSD pricing
OWC may enter PCIe SSD market
Editor:- January 12,
2012 - OWC has
partially
unveiled a new PCIe SSD aimed at the Mac market.
notebook SSD ASAP shipments may grow 100x
Editor:-
January 12, 2012 - iSuppli
says that the use of SSD as cache in ultrabooks (SSD notebook ASAPs)
will grow from just under a million units in
2011 to
nearly 26 million in 2012
and then may
continue
growing to 120 million units by 2015. See also:-
notebook SSDs
SSD flash capacity iceberg article floats into view
Editor:-
January 11, 2012 -
2011 SSD market
milestones is the 54th most popular SSD article seen by readers this month.
More interesting however - from my point of view - is that the
SSD flash
capacity iceberg article - published last May - has finally crept into the
top 66 articles list. It describes the clever ways that designers leverage
unusable flash capacity into performance and reliability.
And the
big versus small
SSD architecture has also crept into the list too.
With
so
many SSD articles here on the mouse site - it's hard for any new article to
get into the top
SSD articles list - because it can take years before enough people care
about new technology topics.
In 2006 I never thought that more
than a few thousand people would be interested in SSD endurance - but over a
million readers have read just
one of the
many articles I've written about that subject. And it's clear from many emails I
get that many people still don't realize how flaky raw flash is - and how much
technology it takes to
transform naughty
flash chips into reliable enterprise storage.
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.
Memoright unveils 7mm SATA 3 notebook SSDs
Editor:-
January 10, 2012 - we haven't heard anything interesting from Memoright for a long
time.
4 years ago they were
top of the pops and
shipping some of the fastest
2.5"
SATA SSDs - then
SandForce came along
and recalibrated expectations in that market - and Memoright became one of many
SSD me-toos.
But Memoright is still around. This week they unveiled
new
7mm
ultrathin SATA 3 SSDs for the
notebook SSD
market.
IDC confirms SSD market revenue doubled in 2011
Editor:-
January 9, 2012 - worldwide SSD revenue doubled and reached $5 billion
in
2011 -
according to a
report by IDC.
IDC expects client SSD
prices will fall below $1 per gigabyte in the 2nd half of 2012, which they
say will boost adoption in the PC market. See also:-
SSD market analysts.
OCZ turns to Marvell controller for 5th generation PCIe SSD
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.
pureSilicon launches 1.6TB 2.5" SATA eMLC SSD
Editor:-
January 9, 2012 - pureSilicon
launched a 1.6TB
usable
(2TB raw) 2.5" SATA eMLC SSD.
The
Nitro N2 has average latency under 100
micro-seconds, R/W speeds upto 540/520 MB/s and upto 130k random
IOPS. The N2
uses a proprietary design and is protected against
sudden power
loss.
Editor's comments:- in some ways this is an "I
can do it too" announcement - because
SMART's
Optimus
- launched in August 2011 - also offered 1.6TB in a 2.5" form factor -
in that case with a harder to design
SAS interface. But it's
a long time since we've heard from pureSilicon which was the 1st company in
SSD history
to pack a terabyte into a 2.5" regular height SSD. So I thought I'd
mention it.
SSDs. the micro and the internet
Editor:- January 9,
2012 - SSDs are 1 of the 3 most important technical developments in the
electronics and computer market in the past 40 years - as wrote recently in
my blog on the home page.
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.
Steve Wozniak, Fusion-io's Chief Scientist said - "...As
an engineer, what really excites me about extensions to our core technology such
as ACM are the possibilities introduced when flash is utilized as a new memory
tier. Instead of treating flash like storage, where data passes through all of
the OS kernel subsystems that were built and optimized for traditional storage,
our core ioMemory technology offers a platform with new programming
primitives that can provide system and application developers direct access
to non-volatile memory."
David Flynn, Fusion-io Chairman
and CEO said. "This breakthrough is not something that could be
achieved with hardware alone. Intelligent software that optimizes NAND flash
as a low latency, high-capacity, non-volatile memory solution for enterprise
servers can transform the way organizations process the immense amounts of data
that powers our lives today."
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."
Samsung enters fast erase SSD market
Editor:-
January 5, 2012 - Samsung
has entered the fast
purge SSD market - which currently numbers about 25 companies.
The
company says that models of its PM810 2.5" SATA SSD family with its Crypto
Erase technology deletes targeted data in a couple of seconds regardless of the
overall volume of data or the capacity of the SSD. These models have been
validated for compliance to
NIST
FIPS 140-2
SandForce joins LSI's new Flash Components Division
Editor:-
January 4, 2012 - LSI
today
announced
it has completed the acquisition of SandForce.
"Customer
response to the announcement has been very positive and we are pleased to now be
able to fully demonstrate the benefits of the combined technology capabilities
of LSI and SandForce," said Jeff Richardson,
executive VP and COO. "Together, we offer the broadest storage technology
portfolio in the industry, and are well positioned to help customers manage
their growth and the explosive growth in data across enterprises and the cloud."
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
LSI - 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.
Make no
mistake about it. This acquisition is about developing better tools for the
enterprise SSD goldrush.
And the truest seams that vendors are looking for are the user server caverns
that will be stuffed with
PCIe SSDs. Billions
of dollars of revenue will be the prizes for the lucky strikers.
Opening the SSD market in 2012
Editor:- January 3,
2012 - Happy New Year.
What's the comparative state of the SSD market
in 2012? - In a previous article I already said it would be the
Year of the Enterprise SSD
Goldrush.
In a new
article today - I compare the SSD market with checkpoints in 2 earlier
disruptive markets - the microprocessor and the internet.
Later this
week there will be updates from the Storage
Visions 2012 Conference and new articles about the status of the SSD
market in 2012 - which I
expect will be a fantastic growth year for the enterprise SSD market.
The
new edition of the top
SSD companies - based on search metrics in Q4 2011 - will be published on
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| "I waste my time so
readers don't have to waste theirs." |
| ...Editor:- explaining
to a reader what he does for a living. And why being the 49th SSD company in a
particular form factor didn't rate a mention on StorageSearch.com's news page
recently - even if it was widely reported on RSS fed pages. | | |
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manufacturer takes product quality seriously. When an SSD manufacturer
tries to downgrade Nand Flash to lower the price and impress consumers, they
also pass on the risk of data loss to consumers." |
| ...Email from
Renice Technology
- (September 2011) warning about buying SSDs from oems which don't test
and qualify the quality and compatibility of their raw flash suppliers. | | |
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| "...My advice re
SSDs for database acceleration has always been - try before you buy.
That's because the performance model which you have in your head may not be the
same performance model which is at work inside your system." |
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to a reader in mid August who asked about the interplay of enterprise
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process in at-rest data stored in bulk storage flash SSDs reduces the risk
of accumulating uncorrectable
data integrity
errors which would otherwise arise from charge migration and cosmic ray
effects. If you're familiar with
tape library management -
an imperfect analogy is - spooling the tape..." |
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roadmap to the
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idea - SSDs could make your apps go faster. Problem is - you're not in an
industry where you can stuff raw low latency and high IOPS in one end
of your business sausage machine and expect to see increased revenue and
dollars streaming out the other end..." |
| ...Editor:- in
the need for auto tiering
SSDs / SSD ASAPs | | |
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| Surviving SSD
sudden power loss |
Why should you care
what happens in an SSD when the power goes down?
This important design
feature - which barely rates a mention in most SSD datasheets and press releases
- has a strong impact on
SSD data integrity
and operational
reliability.
This article will help you understand why some
SSDs which (work perfectly well in one type of application) might fail in
others... even when the changes in the operational environment appear to be
negligible. |
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