An SSD You Can’t Wear Out

Infinity symbol overlaid on a Nimbus ExaDrive DC SSD photoThere’s something really odd about Nimbus Data’s colossal 100 terabyte ExaDrive DC SSDs, and it’s not their sheer capacity (although that’s pretty remarkable by itself!)  The strange thing is that they can’t be worn out.  It’s physically impossible.

At first glance that may seem wrong-headed.  NAND flash wears out, and that was the cause of a lot of Continue reading “An SSD You Can’t Wear Out”

Replacing Tape with Flash

Photo of 1960s Computer Tape ReelIt’s not that often that a new technology comes as a complete surprise to The SSD Guy, especially one that is only a year away from shipping, and that promises to revolutionize the world of storage.  Yet, today a new start-up arrived that promises all of this.  It has really captured my attention.

This technology is aimed at the market for long-venerated Continue reading “Replacing Tape with Flash”

Whatever Happened to “Hero” SSDs?

Bodybuilder with the insides of an SSD superimposedIt seems not so long ago that there were frequent press releases, and showings at trade shows, of “Hero” SSDs.  These demonstration models (which weren’t always released as products) always had some unique and impressive attribute.  They may have had a higher capacity than any SSD known to humankind, or perhaps they had phenomenal endurance.  Some broke the IOPS barrier.

The SSD Guy doesn’t remember anyone Continue reading “Whatever Happened to “Hero” SSDs?”

Using 176-Layer NAND for High-Capacity Data Center SSDs

Chart with a line that goes pretty flat from 1.5 to 2ms latency 0 to 350K IOPSMicron recently briefed The SSD Guy on its new 7450 SSD series, a range of high-capacity data center SSDs offered in an impressive number of capacities and form factors spanning M.2, U.3 and E1.S. The 7450 is a mainstream drive targeted at a wide variety of data center applications, including common, mixed, and random workloads.

The 7450 series is an evolution of Micron’s 7400 series which was first introduced at 96 layers and was based on Continue reading “Using 176-Layer NAND for High-Capacity Data Center SSDs”

Should WDC Acquire Kioxia?

Single star from the post's second chart.Over the past couple of months rumors asserted that Western Digital (WDC) was in talks to acquire joint venture partner Kioxia.  This is not the first time such rumors have emerged.  In November of 2020, when Kioxia was expected to make its initial public offering, WDC was rumored to be in such talks, and before that, in early 2017, when Toshiba first started to plan to spin off its NAND flash and SSD business, WDC was rumored to Continue reading “Should WDC Acquire Kioxia?”

Solidigm, SK hynix’ New SSD/Flash Subsidiary

Solidigm LogoWhile many of us, The SSD Guy included, were preparing for our New Year’s celebration, SK hynix, on December 30, closed the first phase of the company’s takeover of Intel’s NAND flash and SSD business, and created a new subsidiary that has been named Solidigm.

This is the first of two phases of the acquisition, which the companies agreed to in October 2020.  With this move, SK hynix has Continue reading “Solidigm, SK hynix’ New SSD/Flash Subsidiary”

Micron’s Big Product Launch: The 7400 Series

Photo showing all seven form factors of Micron's 7400 series of SSDMicron announced last week (6 Oct., ’21) a family of datacenter SSDs, the NVMe 7400 series, in a roll-out that includes more product versions than The SSD Guy ever has seen in a single announcement.

Micron calls this product series: “the broadest selection of Continue reading “Micron’s Big Product Launch: The 7400 Series”

WDC Rearchitects the HDD

Pretty sketch of an HDD with a lightningbolt representing NAND flashWestern Digital today announced a change to the architecture of HDDs that the company showed can increase an HDD’s capacity and performance without changes to the heads, media, or mechanics.   Since the design, called OptiNAND, involves a good bit of NAND flash, The SSD Guy decided that it warranted discussion here.

That, and the fact that the company said Continue reading “WDC Rearchitects the HDD”

Computational Storage Hits the Mainstream

Chart showing two lines on a graph of performance vs number of SSDs. With "Scale In" the performance is proportional to the number of SSDs. With a standard server the performance diesn't change. With 16 SSDs the performance is 4 timeas as much, and with 32 SSDs it's 8 times as much.There’s an idea that has been kicking around for a number of years, and it seems now to be gaining traction.  The idea is to use the inherent smarts and high available bandwidth within an SSD to perform functions that would normally be done by a server’s processor thereby reducing the load on the processor while minimizing the amount of data that needed to make a round trip from the SSD to the processor and back for some trivial function.

Such data movement is said to consume a very Continue reading “Computational Storage Hits the Mainstream”

Why Did Intel Sell its SSD Business?

Intel recently sold its NAND flash business, which was mainly producing SSDs, to SK hynix, a Korean competitor.  Some people have asked the SSD Guy why did Intel do this? The company had highly-regarded products that could command top prices.  Since Intel’s NAND flash fab is in Dalian, China, one person even asked if the divestiture could have been in response to the US-China trade war.

A better question is: “Why did Intel Continue reading “Why Did Intel Sell its SSD Business?”