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It is always an exciting time when a new controller makes it’s way on to the SSD scene.  It is like seeing a new contender in any sporting event and predicting their success, or lack of, based on the balance of strength and inexperience. Our analysis today examines the new Link A Media (LAMD) 6Gbps controller found within the Corsair …

Kingston Technology, a major player in the consumer SSD segment, has recently released a new version of LSI/SandForce’s Series 5 firmware for their Hyper x/Hyper X 3K drives. The new 5.0.3 firmware apparently fixes the TRIM functionality, which was not working,in its entirety, in previous versions. Hopefully, Kingston will be only the first of many to adopt this crucial fix …

Integrated Device Technology (IDT) did well this week at Flash Memory Summit, demonstrating their 16 channel NVMe 1.0 standard PCIe SSD controller. The first publicly seen device of it’s type, the IDT controller is on the leading edge of the new NVMe standard. IDT is interested in selling their controllers to third parties rather than selling their own SSDs, but to …

With all of the new technologies and products being shown in Santa Clara at FMS 2012, there were some products you might not have heard about. A personal favorite of mine wasn’t a fancy new enterprise product or hip new data center solution. Instead, it’s a machine that does something fairly pedestrian — it merely puts labels on SSDs. Able …

Marvell already has a hand in just about everything. The silicon company makes practically everything, including some of the most popular SSD controllers around. We had a chance to get our eyes on another Marvell product, the DragonFly. The DragonFly platform should ship in a few slightly different flavors, but the one we saw was based around the idea of …

Hitachi Data Systems, well known for their high performance storage solutions, has stated their intent to bring a new, high performance SSD controller to market. This appears to be a completely homegrown design, and not a result of its joint venture with Intel. Also announced was their new VSP (Virtual Storage Platform) solution, which will enable enterprise customers to achieve …

If you happened to be at the Flash Memory Summit, you might have caught Kent Smith, the LSI SandForce Senior Marketing Director, delivering presentation on the virtues of over-provisioning. Over-provisioning is the process of setting aside additional capacity to help with SSD performance and longevity, and Kent’s message is don’t be afraid to take advantage of it.  Let’s take a look …

Toshiba is adding some new enterprise SSDS to the mix. Slotting in below their high end SAS MK4001GRZB, the new siblings are armed with lower cost eMLC Toggle. Holding down the high-performance end, the PX02SM SSD uses Toshibas 24nm eMLC Toggle NAND together with a dual-port 12Gbps SAS interface. Capacities of 200GB to 1600GB have been promised, though 12 gig …

I am sorry but whoever thinks that using incredible beauty to attract customers doesn’t help is just wrong. In fact, I am even preparing for the backlash on my return to home base when my better half questions the necessity of my emphasizing the point with ‘incredible’. Nevertheless, lets look a bit further and see what Smart Storage had to …

You may recall that we recently reviewed the Intel Series 910 PCIe SSD, in both 400GB and 800GB configurations, and it deservedly received the Editor’s Choice Award.  This year at FMS, Intel decided to step up the performance just a bit and show just what four Intel 910’s could do in a RAID configuration. Although pushing just over one million …

Today at FMS, Toshiba demonstrated it’s new Hybrid Drive and took the opportunity to run it against a SSD and hard drive in boot comparison.  As we would expect, the start times of the Hybrid versus the hard drive showed the Hybrid as the clear winner and, admittedly, it started in about 12 seconds and just behind the SSD.  We …

Marvells new ARM-based microserver is a look at one possible future “ a super-scalable series of low-powered ARM processors harmoniously mated with flash. Leveraging several Marvell properties, including a series of quad-core ARM processors, the new tiny approach to servers could become a big thing in the future. Making all this possible is the Marvell Armada XP SoC. Geared toward …

VeloBit, a provider of high-performance SSD caching software, is announcing a trial sampling program via a bundle that will feature PCIe and SATA SSDs from Micron Technology, Inc.  Potential customers will be able to receive a 60-day free trial to evaluate the use of VeloBit’s HyperCache software bundled with certain PCIe and SATA SSDs from Micron.  Customer looking to integrate …

This morning at the Flash Memory Summit, we were lucky enough to get a pre-screening of the new Kingston DataTraveler Workspace, a completely bootable operating system using Microsofts new Windows To Go technology.  The demonstration was run by LSI’s own Monika Kloudova and LSI SandForce deserves a great deal of credit as, without their Flash Storage Processor (FSP), this may …

BIWIN displayed a new PCIe card at the Flash Memory Summit that was one of the first we have seen to allow for the use of up to eight mSATA SSDs. This card is a PCIe 2.0 x8 device and will be available in capacities from 240GB all the way up to an amazing 2TB.  Performance for the card is …