see also:-
WD
Solid State Storage - editor mentions on StorageSearch.com and
WD's SSD blog
editor's comments:- December 2012 - WD's SSD business is
founded on a complex heritage based on 3 primary roots.
- the acquisition of an
industrial SSD
company called SiliconSystems in March 2009. SiliconSystems - which started
shipping SSDs in 2004 - marketed a high reliability embedded product line
called SiliconDrive which had outstanding data integrity tolerance to
sudden power
loss.
- WD's own developments and experiences in the embedded SSD markets since the
above acquisition - which have included continuing developments of the
SiliconDrive family, evaluating and licensing 3rd party SSD IP and (what I
consider to be) an unsuccessful market experiment in the
consumer market
in March 2010 with the launch of a WD branded MLC SSD called the SiliconEdge
Blue which used 3rd party SSD controllers.
- the acquisition of HGST
(in March 2012) - which brought into WD an enterprise SSD product line including
SAS SSDs, and a
potential launchpad for a future
PCIe SSD product line.
Unlike many other flash SSD companies which started in the
military market, or
with a focus on speed,
or simply lowest cost
- WD Solid State Storage began right from the start to focus on the
user value
proposition of superior
reliability as a reason that systems oems would design its SSDs into
embedded systems to replace hard
drives.
WD has appeared regularly in the quarterly
top SSD companies
list. |
| ... |
|
|
WD's SSD business is founded on
SiliconSystems -
which entered the SSD market in
2004.
In
May 2008 - California based
SiliconSystems
opened its first office in the People's Republic of China. And its founder and
CEO, Michael Hajeck, was selected as a regional finalist for the Ernst &
Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the 2nd consecutive year.
In
August 2008 - SiliconSystems doubled the capacity of its miniature
embedded USB SiliconDrives.
In September 2008 - SiliconSystems announced faster versions
of its 2.5" SATA
/ PATA SiliconDrives -
with upto 50MB/s read / write speeds and the company became a founding member of
the
SNIA's Solid State
Storage Initiative.
In October 2008 -
SiliconSystems
contributed its SiliconDrive II Blade specification to the
Small Form Factor Special Interest Group for
the purpose of creating an official governing standard.
In December
2008 - SiliconSystems published a significant whitepaper -
NAND
Evolution and its Effects on SSD Useable Life (pdf). Starting with a tour
of the state of the art in the flash SSD market the paper introduces several
new concepts (including write amplification and wear leveling efficiency) to
help systems designers understand why current wear usage models don't give a
complete picture.
In -
January 2009 - SiliconSystems announced that its
SiliconDrive Blade
has been selected as a "2008 Best
Electronic Design" technology of the year winner in the embedded small
form factor category. The awards are chosen by the editorial staff of
Electronic Design magazine from
announcements they have received during the year. Editor
Bill Wong
cited SiliconDrive Blade's innovative design as a necessary development in
accelerating wide-spread adoption of
SSDs in embedded systems.
In March 2009 - SiliconSystems' VP of Product Planning, Gary
Drossel - shared his
SSD Bookmarks
with readers of
StorageSearch.com. And the
company also announced it has shipped over 4 million SiliconDrives
integrated with its
SiSMART
technology. SiliconSystems also said it will ship faster versions of its 2.5"
and 1.8" SiliconDrives in the next quarter - with R/W speeds up to 100MB/s
and 80MB/s respectively, and (SLC) capacity upto 128GB.
Also in
March 2009 - Western
Digital entered the SSD market by acquiring
SiliconSystems
for $65 million. Integration into WD begins immediately, with SiliconSystems now
becoming known as the WD Solid-State Storage business unit, complementing WD's
existing Branded Products, Client Storage, Consumer Storage and Enterprise
Storage business units. WD has published a
FAQs page about
this acquisition.
From the time when SiliconSystems first appeared on
our SSD pages in 2004 it was clear that the company was talking in a different
way to the rest of the market. Of the 4 main market segments which I identified
for
SSD market
penetration (published 2005) - I mentioned SiliconSystems as the pioneer in
"High Reliability DAS".
Quoting from that article - "The
customer value proposition of the High Reliability DAS SSD is that the interval
between server failures will be extended by several years compared to HDD
technology."
In recent years the company has avoided being sucked
along the alternative currents of the small form factor SSD market and stuck to
its mission of designing SSDs which are sustainable for customers to own - as
reliable
replacements for hard
drives. The company's acquisition by WD demonstrates that those principles
are valued where it counts - in the eyes of the world's fastest growing hard
disk maker.
In June 2009 -
Western Digital
Solid State Storage announced that it has begun shipping its new
SiliconDrive III
SSD product family which includes 2.5" SATA and PATA and 1.8" Micro
SATA products with target read speeds up to 100MB/s and write speeds to 80MB/s
in capacities up to 120 GB.
In March 2010 -
WD Solid State
Storage began shipping a new range of
2.5" 128GB
SATA
SLC
SSDs - for
high reliability
24/7 embedded markets - called the
WD
SiliconDrive N1x. R/W speeds are upto 240MB/s and 140MB/s respectively.
Write endurance
is quoted as 701GB/Day - compatible with 5 year limited warranty. And
data integrity
(non-recoverable error rate) is better than 1 in 1015 bits read.
Also
in March 2010 - the company was featured in a character role in a
futurological article
- SSDs - reaching for
the Petabyte.
In March 2011 -
WD announced it
will acquire Hitachi GST
for approximately $4.3 billion. Although the primary motive is
hard drives - the
companies said they would put more resources into SSDs too.
In
March 2012 - WD
completed
its acquisition of HGST
- which will retain its brand identity and operate as a wholly subsidiary. |
|
| |
| WD invests in Skyera |
Editor:- March 12, 2013 - WD was one of the recent
investors in Skyera
- it was
announced
today.
“We see companies like Skyera as offering a dramatic
improvement over traditional approaches to emerging storage challenges”
said Steve
Milligan, president and CEO, Western Digital. | | |
| . |
| now where was I - before I
was so rudely interrupted? |
Editor:- February 21, 2013 -
WD has recently
published a new white paper -
the
Art of SSD Power Fail Protection (pdf)
If you've read up on the
subject of Surviving
SSD sudden power loss you may already be aware that the WD team has been
working on this theme for over 9 years - and even promoted educational
whitepapers on this subject
using banner ads in
2005.
In 2004 I was told that getting the SSD
data integrity
to work reliably even when the SSD is subject to unexpected rapid power rail
disturbances was one of the starting points of the original SiliconDrive
designers - due to one of the founders having had a bad experience with an
earlier prototype flash drive failing such a test at an oem presentation while
at another company.
So what can WD tell us about this subject that's
new?
Well - without mentioning names - there have been many examples
of other SSD companies who have got this factor wrong - and some of the reasons
why simplistic power protection schemes fail are mentioned in this paper.
The
key to validating a reliable SSD design is testing:- with variable types of
applied power line disruptions which are applied at any time in the SSD
software. WD aren't going to reveal all their hard won patented design
secrets in this white paper - but you can learn a lot from it which may help
you better evaluate other products too. ...read
the article (pdf) | | |
| ... |
| temperature related data
rot in flash SSDs... a blog by WD |
Editor:- July 26, 2012 - A
good analysis of temperature affects on flash data integrity can be seen in a
recent blog - about
intrinsic
temperature related data rot in flash SSDs - by Eli Tiomkin,
Director, Business Development,
WD Solid State Storage
who says (among other things) - "Over time, NAND cells may lose enough
charge and flip enough bits to overwhelm the ECC capability of the drive
controller and cause data loss."
Eli Tiomkin's useful table lets
you look up the SSD storage temperature and see how much more quickly the
native flash will corrupt - if a suitable
controller or healing
process isn't in place to detect changes and fix them....read
the article | | |
| ... |
| "As NAND flash
approaches physical limits for lithographies below 20nm (or 1xnm) at least 4
new technologies are striving to extend MLC/SLC-based flash...." |
| Eli Tiomkin,
Director, Business Development, WD Solid State Storage - from his (March 2012)
blog -
NAND
Evolution and the Future of SSDs | | |
| ... |
| EMC arrays
will have WD SAS SSDs inside |
Editor:- March 5, 2012 - Hitachi GST today
announced
that its 2.5"
SAS
SLC SSD
product - the
Ultrastar
SSD400S - is now shipping in EMC's
VNX
iSCSI arrays.
Editor's
comments:- after more than a year of waiting -
WD said this week
that it has obtained all required regulatory approvals for its acquisition of
HGST which will close this week. |
 |
That will beef up
WD Solid State Storage.
The exact arrangements of how the business units will operate will be disclosed
soon afterwards. | | | |
| .... |
|
|
| |
