AI is on everyone’s minds these days, and SSD makers have lately been touting certain models, explaining that they have been designed for AI applications. Why would that be? Is there a difference between AI SSDs and those used for conventional applications?
The answers to both questions would be “Yes,” and in this post The SSD Guy will attempt to explain why in a Continue reading “Why Does AI Need Different SSDs?”
At the end of 2024 Western Digital will execute on its long-planned separation in which the flash and HDD businesses will divide into two companies. The HDD business will keep the Western Digital or WDC brand, and the flash business, which has continuously used the SanDisk name as a brand name for consumer flash products, will return to using the SanDisk name for the company and all of its products.
This move was initiated by Continue reading “The Return of SanDisk”
Backblaze is a company that the SSD Guy blog has meant to discuss for some time now, because for the past decade or longer the company has been very openly publishing reliability information on its large fleet of hundreds of thousands of HDDs and SSDs. Backblaze is an impartial observer that provides a very useful way of comparing different manufacturers, different models, and HDD stats vs. SSD stats.
Fortunately, all of the many suppliers and models that Backblaze has Continue reading “How Reliable are SSDs and HDDs? Ask Backblaze”
While listening to the most recent quarterly earnings calls The SSD Guy learned that there’s suddenly a lot of interest in 60-100TB SSDs for the data center. What I didn’t hear was a strong understanding of why that is happening, although four of the five the leading flash companies say that it is driven by AI. (Kioxia hasn’t reported yet.) Some say these SSDs are being used for training applications, while others say Continue reading “New Interest in Monster-SSDs”
Now that Generative AI has hit its stride, the industry is beginning to see new applications of this technology that have previously been out of reach. One such application is the development of the Generative SSD by an Andorran company by the name of SSDystopia, who took the time to brief The SSD Guy about its development.
The Generative SSD comes to the market with a completely different approach to Continue reading “Generative SSDs Coming Soon”
On March 5 Western Digital issued an announcement updating the company’s plan to divide its HDD and flash businesses into two independent companies in the second half of this year.
The flash part of the business will be spun out with current WDC CEO David Goeckeler as “CEO Designate.” No further Continue reading “WDC Stealthily Announces More Details for HDD/Flash Split”
With all the recent interest in CXL, and its ability to connect a processor to any memory, no matter the speed, it’s only natural that someone would try using it for SSDs. This notion is the basis for the Memory-Semantic SSD, or MS-SSD.
But MS-SSDs suffer from the same problem as SSDs, hard drives, and other mass storage. The basic concept requires Continue reading “NVMe-oC: Wolley’s New Take on CXL-Based SSDs”
During the company’s October 30 earnings call Western Digital CEO David Goeckeler started the conversation with the revelation that the company would be split into two, with a new flash-only company to be created in the process. This plan, intended to increase the company’s shareholder value, was the outcome of a process triggered by activist shareholder Elliott in May 2022, which was the subject of a couple of Continue reading “It’s Official: WDC to Split into HDD & Flash Parts”
One of the most compelling keynotes at the Flash Memory Summit last August was presented by SSD controller maker FADU Technology and social media giant Meta (Facebook). These two companies were advocating a new way of managing SSDs called: “Flexible Data Placement.” The SSD Guy believes that these two companies’ findings are pretty remarkable and well worth sharing.
Ross Stenfort from Meta presented a timeline showing that since 2019 Meta and Microsoft (Azure) have been working Continue reading “Flexible Data Placement Means Better SSDs”
Western Digital launched a storage fabric architecture in August that aims to address certain issues that occur with existing storage systems. WDC is furthermore taking a number of steps to try to promote this architecture’s adoption into mainstream storage. It’s an interesting approach that The SSD Guy thought was worth discussion.
The company is working to address the problem of Continue reading “WDC’s Top-to-Bottom Storage Fabric Approach”
