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| leading the way to the
new storage frontier | |
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what's RAM really?
Top SSD Companies
how fast can your SSD
run backwards?
are we ready for
infinitely faster RAM?
40 years of thinking
about nvm endurance
data recovery for SSDs -
a timeline of stories
4 ways
to split SSD history into "before and after" |
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| strategic
bifurcations in SSD market history |
Editor:- October 29, 2018 - there's a new article
on StorageSearch.com
Strategic
Bifurcations in SSD Market History.
 It's
about 4 ways to split the long messy timeline of SSD history into "before
and after" to help the understanding of now. ...read
the article
Editor's comments:- maybe you've got your own
ideas about what these strategic splits should have been. And maybe you would
have thought of a better title too. This may be my last major article about
SSDs - so I packed in as much as I could. | | |
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| DRAMeXchange says -
supercycle of DRAM price hikes is over |
Editor:- October 9, 2018 - DRAMeXchange today
reported
how it's interpreting memory pricing and supply trends.
Re DRAM
- DRAMeXchange says:-
- DRAM products have begun to see a weak price trend, showing only a 1~2% QoQ
hike in contract prices for 3Q18 due to the continued oversupply, despite the
coming of holiday sales season. DRAMeXchange expects the quotations of DRAM
products to decline by 5% or more QoQ in 4Q18, terminating the super cycle of
price growth for 9 consecutive quarters.
- DRAM manufacturers all expect a high possibility of oversupply in 2019.
Therefore, they have tried to postpone or slowdown the capital expenditure and
capacity expansion.
- For 2019, DRAMeXchange expects the annual bit output to increase by nearly
22%.
re nand flash - DRAMeXchange says:-
- nand flash experienced a price drop of around 10% in 3Q18 and expects a
steeper drop of 10~15% in the fourth quarter, considering the impacts of trade
war. Contract prices of 3D TLC NAND Flash chips in the channel market may even
drop by more than 15% in 4Q18.
- The nand flash market is influenced by the sluggish demand for consumer
electronics, while demand for the more profitable Enterprise SSD from servers
and data centers remains stable. However, the competition among Enterprise SSD
suppliers will become increasingly fierce; hence the prices of Enterprise SSD
are very likely to continue decreasing in 2019.
- On the supply side, nand flash suppliers have raised their output forecasts
as they have expanded their production capacity and improved the yield rates of
their 64/72-layer 3D NAND production.
|
See also:-
storage market research
directory
Clarifying SSD Pricing
- where does all the money go?
a simple
guide to semiconductor memory boom-bust cycles | | |
|
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|
| SSD news
headlines in past 12 months or so |
November 2017 -
IntelliProp demonstrated a memory controller for the emerging Gen-Z memory
fabric.
December
2017 - Diablo Technologies - which had been the first company to ship
predominantly flash memory based SSDs and memory accelerators compatible with
DRAM DDR3/4 bus slots - ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy.
January 2018 -
Foremay announced the availability its new "Immortal" brand of
radiation hardened SSDs for the military and aerospace markets.
February 2018 - The
Gen-Z Consortium announced that the Gen-Z Core Specification 1.0 was publicly
available.
March
2018 - Nimbus announced it was sampling 3.5" 100TB SAS SSDs with
unlimited DWPD.
April 2018 - STT
announced a breakthrough design improvement to MRAM. STT's Precessional Spin
Current (PSC) structure lengthened retention time by a factor of over 10,000.
May 2018 - Micron
began sampling the industry's first SSD built on quad-level cell (QLC) NAND
technology.
June
2018 - GridGain began beta sampling its in-memory cache as a cloud
service.
July
2018 - Intel and Micron agreed to a parting of the ways on future
3DXPoint development.
Upto that point Micron had seen minimal revenue
from 3DXPoint whereas the potential of developing a software ecosystem centered
around this technology had strategic lock-in attractions for Intel regardless of
near term memory sales. Zsolt Kerekes - founding editor of StorageSearch.com
suggested "the memoryfication of processors and the flattening of latency
by SSD infrastructure means that traditional complex multi level cache server
processors are wasteful... and that due to trends in memory accelerators for the
memory
defined software market... memory and processor companies (like Intel and
Micron) will in future have more reasons to become competitors rather than
collaborators in strategic designs in the cloud."
August 2018 -
Marvell began sampling the first NVMe-oF SSD Converter Controller. aimed at
a EBOF (Ethernet Bunch of Flash) applications.
September 2018 -
SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) entered the computational storage
market. |
more SSD history | | |
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| If you could go back in
time and take with you a factory full of modern memory chips and SSDs
(along with backwards compatible adapters) what real impact would that have?
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| are we ready for
infinitely faster RAM?
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StorageSearch.com /
SSD history
/ more pages
like this |
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re Micron's "soft-announcement" of
a DRAM replacement SCM
Editor:- October 30, 2018 - A new
article -
the
Divorce - Micron and Intel See Different Futures - by William
Tidwell - who is a regular memory market commentator on
SeekingAlpha.com - discusses among
other things:- the need for in-memory processing and signs that
Micron is working on a
new SCM memory architecture.
Re the interdependency of memory and
processor architecture Tidwell says - "...memory in today's system
architecture is locked in a fatal embrace with the CPU. It is stranded."
And
as part of a multi-page analysis and detailed speculative look ahead as to
what Micron will do with the fabs it gets from buying out Intel's stake in the
joint IMFT venture - Tidwell says - "Under promise, over deliver - is the
right strategy for Micron in the wake of Intel's 3DXPoint misadventures. I
believe this is what they are doing and that gives investors reason to hope that
the New Memory will be commercialized in FY '21." ...read
the article
See also:-
what's RAM really?
what's Metadata-as-a-Service got to with SSDs?
Editor:-
October 24, 2018 - There's a small number of new companies which attract my
attention because of the impact which one or more their founders has had on the
SSD market in the
past.
So although it's not strictly speaking an SSD company - and I'm counting down
the weeks to my retirement in 2019 - and trying not to start too many new
strands of content which I can't complete tidily - I was very interested to see
these stories about a new company called Hammerspace
which provides a sequel to the question of what happened next to one of the
esteemed co-founders of Fusion-io and Primary Data -
that person being David Flynn
who has probably done more work on figuring out and managing the intricacies of
data and the latency and repurposing cost-benefits of legacy and new dynasty
architectures scrambled in the archeological mix of big data infrastructuer than
anyone else on the planet. Here are the links.
See
also:- SSDs in the cloud,
re SSD everywhere software,
memory
defined software
Violin acquires X-IO Storage
Editor:- October 16,
2018 - Violin Systems
today
announced
it has signed a letter of intent with X-IO Technologies to acquire
X-IO Storage, the
division of X-IO Technologies that developed the Intelligent Storage Element
(ISE) flash and hybrid storage array product lines. Financial terms were not
disclosed.
See also:-
acquisitions in the
SSD market
hybrid
storage arrays and flash caches - timeline 2010 to 2017
$100 million AI investment fund launched by Micron
Editor:-
October 10, 2018 - Micron
announced
that it will invest up to $100 million in startups with a strong focus on AI and
machine learning through its strategic investments entity, Micron Ventures.
And in a related announcement, the Micron Foundation launched a $1 million grant
for universities and non-profit organizations to conduct research on AI.
See
also:- VCs in SSDs
memory defined
software
what's the
value of infinitely faster RAM?
controllernomics -
joins the memory latency to do list
after AFAs -
what's the next box? - cloud adapted memory systems
Kaminario reports on the success of its switch to software
business model - and an investment from Western Digital
Editor:-
October 9, 2018 - Kaminario
(which had been a thought leading
rackmount SSD company
but which
announced
in January 2018
it was no longer supplying hardware systems directly itself) today announced
that it grew its topline software business more than 55% during the first 9
months of 2018, relative to the same time period in 2017.
In
addition, Kaminario said it has been operating with positive cash flow for the
quarter ending Sept. 30. Kaminario also announced that it received a strategic
investment from Western Digital Capital, the strategic investment fund of
Western Digital Corp.
Editor's comments:- Kaminario's change of
business model was in line with the market adjustment trends I had predicted
in my 2015 article -
drivers,
mechanisms and routes towards consolidation in the enterprise SSD market along
with some other outrageous and dangerous ideas. Its software can now be
viewed as a fault tolerant platform for SSDs supplied by Western Digital.
This was a pragmatic affinity after a long journey in flash which
may have had some original germ of a root in a conversation I had with
Kaminario's CEO in March 2011 - when Kaminario (which had emerged from
stealth as a RAM SSD
company) was looking for a flash partner. Kaminario - which had always
regarded its software as being the unique branding ingredient in the IP mix of
its systems - grew closer over many years of relationships with a succession
of leading enterprise SSD companies which were later serially
acquired and
absorbed within WD.
Silicon Motion ships > 750 million NAND controllers / year
Editor:-
October 5, 2018 - Silicon
Motion says "We ship over 750 million NAND controllers annually
and have shipped over 5 billion NAND controllers in the last 10 years, more than
any other company in the world."
They might have been saying that
for some while but I only noticed it today when looking in the footnotes of
their Q3
2018 preliminary press release which warned that "revenue is expected
to be within the lower half of the original guidance range of $136.0 million to
$142.9 million that the company issued on August 1, 2018." (Maybe that's
what happens if markets adjust to a smaller supply of more expensive than
anticipated memory chips - we'll have to wait to see Si Motion's analysis
on October 30, 2018.)
Editor's comments:- the shipment numbers for
controllers show how large the SSD market has become.
new website for Xccela Consortium - developing new local bus for
embedded memoryfication chips
Editor:- October 4, 2018 - A new
website to support a new storage
ORG was
announced
today. The Xccela Consortium (at
www.xccela.org) now has 12 member companies working to promote the Xccela Bus as
an open-standard digital interconnect and data communications bus suitable for
volatile and nonvolatile memories as well as other types of ICs.
From
the technology page..."In
its first iteration, the Xccela Bus is a high-speed, high-performance Octal SPI
bus that uses 8 data lines for command and data transfer. It is fully compliant
with the JEDEC xSPI standard. The bus is synchronous and supports both
single-data rate (SDR) operation, where one byte of data is transferred every
clock cycle, and dual-data rate (DDR) operation in which two bytes of data are
transferred every clock cycle. The Xccela Bus supports clock frequencies up to
200MHz and data transfer rates up to 400MB/sec (3.2Gbps).
bold claims are back from the newly confident sounding
Violin
Editor:- October 3, 2018 - Violin made a huge
splash with the readers of StorageSearch.com 11 years ago when they entered the
the Top 10 SSD OEMs
list - 2007 Q3 soon after exiting stealth mode.
By June 2011-
Violin Memory (as it was then called) was confidently talking about being on
its way to building a billion dollar company in this once simple market (when
fastest was a
prime value
proposition and SAN had been a good enough business plan (FC SAN
customers had money) until SSD accelerators from
Fusion-io sweet
talked their way into server slots with
PCIe in 2007/8) and
even after that there were plenty of
market
opportunities for rackmount enterprise flash but it was not the same simple
market it had once been.
The enterprise SSD market was a business I
knew well and its strategic nature and size attracted huge numbers of
competitors offering more software bundling options, latency bands and
confusing
price points than any single technology platform or company could
realistically master.
As Violin progressed to IPO in
August 2013 its
earlier arguably plausible leadership advantages had already eroded and it
was clear that wanting it all wasn't the same as getting it. This was a market
which was moving towards a
more
customer rather than technology dictated model where it was better to be
excellent at one thing than above average at too many. In the 3 years after
its IPO Violin slid towards the cliffs of being acquired or bankrupt - the
latter case occurring in
December 2016.
So
after all the words I had already written about those
bubble years of
rackmount SSDs I've been cautious about writing overmuch about the new Violin Systems too-soon.
But
I have noted more caution and more measured tones of outlook on their web site -
even when I haven't written about them here.
This week I saw that
Violin's old confidence is back - in a press release about its new boxes with
NVMe over 32Gb FC - and the headline -
the
fastest enterprise storage in the world just got faster!
That just
made me smile.
It's good to see such confidence emanating from this
direction once more.
And another reason I smiled was because in 2002
I was running ads for a company called
Texas Memory Systems
to promote - "the World's Fastest Storage" - which at that time was
the RamSan-210 .
When
Violin rev 1.0 emerged in 2007 and for the next several years afterwards they
and TMS were the 2 companies which dominated the fastest SAN compatible
rackmount flash SSD segment.
The competitive swot blurred later when
TMS entered the PCIe SSD market (which Violin wasn't engaged in early enough to
leave a mark) and the 2 companies were less often head to head when Violin
defocused from a latency-centric offering and began bundling software as a
feature into its boxes. (TMS had long made a virtue out of its non server
rooted silicon rich
memory array
controller architecture - and even when it was later acquired by IBM - in
October 2012. - its RamSan boxes grew accretions of limpet-like surrounding
software boxes as there was no natural roosting perch for the software to do
anything inside the original boxes.)
Going back to Violin rev 2.0 and "the
fastest enterprise storage in the world"...
From today's
perspective it's not clear to me that you could get a concensus of expert
opinion as to what constitutes "fastest enterprise storage"
and what shape, interfaces and capabilities and applications value it should
have. But I like the idea that "fastest" claims are still hard
currency in SSD marketing.
See also:-
after AFAs -
what next?
what's the
value of infinitely faster memory systems? | |
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Megabyte went through
his
Michelangelo phase.
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I like the idea that "fastest" claims are still
hard currency in
SSD marketing
commenting on Violin Systems - October 3, 2018 | |
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Octobers of yore in SSD market history |
- October 1998 - StorageSearch.com was
launched. This soon
after encompassed the entire storage market from storage cables and chips to
tape libraries. Among the launch directories was the first regularly updated
guide to the SSD market.
- October 2000 - Viking siad it would ship the industry's highest capacity
CompactFlash cards to resellers nationwide. The 256MB components were for
digital cameras, MP3 players, portable computers and PDAs.
- October 2002
- Platypus Technology named customers and announced lower pricing for its
fast (50,000 IOPS) QikDATA M-series redundant solid-state storage
accelerators. The PCI bus 8GB model cost approximately $12,500.
- October 2003
- Memtech said its Wolverine 2.5" military SSD (8GB 12.5mm high) was
available with 8 years warranty.
- October 2008
- IMEC started research on Resistive RAM (RRAM) cells as a potential candidate
to replace conventional flash memory.
- October - 2009
- Seagate - which had previously been hostile and dismissive about the
importance of the SSD market -
disclosed
it was sampling its 1st SSD product to major oems.
- October 2010
- OCZ said its manufacturing capacity was increasing to 140,000 SSDs /
month.
- October 2011
- Viking began shipping an 8GB DDR3 NVDIMM - which provided 8GB RAM backed up
to SLC flash. The memory power was held up by an external 25F supercap pack
during backup to flash.
- October 2012
- OCZ released a version of its VXL caching software which provided fault
tolerant support for arrays of PCIe SSDs.
- October 2013
- McObject showed how resilient its in-memory database could be when working
with NVDIMMs. Among other things this included rebooting a server while it was
running intensive transactions.
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