Micron Blogs - Storage

Tame the Boot Storm

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:18:00 -0700

If you manage a network of virtual machines, you’ve probably experienced the negative effects of a boot storm too many times. These virtual storms can occur when a large number of users log in to a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) system simultaneously. If the VDI system employs traditional storage, like hard disk drives (HDDs), bandwidth gets overwhelmed quickly. Slow boot times and reduced productivity ensue, often resulting in frustrated and less-efficient users.

Our ultra-high bandwidth PCIe solid state drives (SSDs), including the new P420m SSDs, can help tame these storms. Configure the SSDs to appear as virtual storage devices within the virtual machine’s framework, and the negative effects of boot storms are virtually eliminated. Our internal tests show remarkable improvements when replacing HDDs with Micron’s PCIe SSDs in this manner, including performance on par with a much more expensive network-attached storage (NAS) configuration.

We’ll share more details on our PCIe SSD tests in the coming weeks. In the meantime, learn more from this video about the advantages PCIe SSDs offer for VDI systems.

Why Latency Matters

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:51:00 -0700

When you think about system performance, you have to think latency. In an IT environment, latency affects everything—from efficiency and throughput, to customer satisfaction and operating costs. We are confident that our SSDs can help solve IT latency issues. This video emphasizes the importance of latency using more general, everyday situations.

It’s not often we get to laugh at latency problems. For countless businesses—especially cloud and data center environments—latency is a serious challenge.

Enter our new P420m PCIe SSD. Its ultra-low latency enables fast, predictable system and application response times. But that’s not all. Thanks to Micron's XPERT feature set, the P420m improves reliability and performance—providing the same level of great performance as our other PCIe SSDs, but at a more accessible price point for the enterprise. And it’s built from start to finish with our closely integrated custom-designed controller, 25nm multilevel cell (MLC) NAND technology, DRAM, firmware, and drivers, which makes it an even more reliable, vertically integrated storage solution.

Find out more about the P420m PCIe SSD

It’s a Great Time to Work in Storage

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:40:00 -0700

Flash is revolutionizing how we store data. It is the solution of choice for truly reliable portability in today’s popular smartphones and tablets, and it is gaining momentum as the “performance operator” in the data center. And these two applications are undeniably linked—as we demand more mobility and instant access, we need bigger, faster, and more efficient data centers to serve up the content.

It’s an exciting time for us. As a start-to-finish developer of solid state storage, Micron is in a unique position to capitalize on these exploding trends. More importantly though, the expertise and tenacity of our team members is what sets us apart. They are what makes the difference here at Micron. It’s their passion, knowledge and excitement that will take Micron to the next level. And we’re growing our team!

Watch the video below to see what our team members had to say. Ready to join us? You can browse current openings at micron.com/ssdjobs.

A Fascinating Look at How Micron SSDs Are Made

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:43:00 -0800

Hard drives are giving way to SSDs, which are setting a new standard for storage in laptops, PCs, and other applications.

At Micron, we meticulously manufacture SSDs from the ground up. It all starts with our own Flash media. Every step of the process is handled in-house—from silicon wafers to Flash components, to building out PCBs, to assembling the finished product. We build our SSDs with high-tech precision in pristine cleanrooms, test them rigorously for quality and reliability, and then ship them to customers all over the world.

Get an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the intricate process involved in creating world-class SSDs.

Using SSDs to Accelerate Virtual Environments – A Risk-Free Trial

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:04:00 -0800

What’s the most logical method to extend support of virtual server platforms and VMWare usage models with SSD storage? Software solutions that make the most of the existing infrastructure while adding the least number of complications.

Micron is always on the lookout for great ways to help customers enable NAND-based SSDs in existing platforms. While there are a lot of different Flash caching programs out there, Micron chose to partner with award-winning Proximal Data because their AutoCache™ solution and support seemed like the best choice for working with VMWare.

The creative management schemes embedded in the AutoCache product make the most of existing solutions. It’s also easy: Autocache is provided on a free trial basis, and Proximal Data has offered to directly loan customers a Micron SSD to test and implement this innovative solution in a very efficient and pain-free way. Customers have already begun taking advantage of this program with successful transition from existing HW solutions to a Micron-Proximal Data package.

Partnerships like the one we have with Proximal Data are going to continue to drive innovation and acceptance of SSDs and Flash-based storage solutions in the years to come—stay tuned as we work with our customers to develop a case study on our AutoCache alliance.

Learn more about Proximal Data's sample program.

Stay in the loop on our case studies and future SSD partner programs—register on micron.com for updates or contact us at ssd@micron.com.

Great Tasting and Less Filling?

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:00:00 -0800

Our new P400m Enterprise SSD delivers. Performance? Got it. Endurance? Yup, got it (up to 7PBs worth). Reliability? Sure.

But all at a great price point for the mainstream Enterprise space? Yeah…we’ve got that one too.

Thanks to a combined effort between our NAND and SSD teams, we built the P400m from the ground up—from silicon to fully tested and qualified product. And we designed it with features that set it apart. Features like RAIN, DataSAFE, and ReCAL are part of our new XPERT suite of enhancements—all designed in-house to boost the performance and reliability of enterprise SSDs.

Check out our XPERT Tech Brief to learn how our eXtended Performance and Enhanced Reliability Technology (XPERT) feature set extends performance, enhances drive (and data!) reliability, and gives us the design flexibility to make SSDs that meet exact application requirements.

Introducing the P400m SSD—Customized for the Enterprise

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 07:00:00 -0800

You may have heard that our new P400m enterprise SSD provides workhorse performance and endurance at a competitive price point for data center applications. And, you may be wondering how? The answer is in the custom, onboard MLC NAND Flash. While some enterprise drives offer just one to three drive fills per day, the P400m SSD offers 10 drive fills per day for an entire five-year lifetime. Not satisfied yet? The P400m has a five-year warranty and has already been validated by several OEMs. Watch a brief introduction to this product in the video below.

Dean’s List – Observations from CES 2013

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:02:00 -0800

3,100 exhibitors, 150,000 attendees and 100 breakfast-buffet options. What could it be but the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, an event that surely must be the bane of every stiletto-heeled exhibitor and the boon of podiatrists worldwide? Last week I attended two days of this annual electronics mega-festival and had some time between meetings to catch the spirit of the event and take a peek at some of the promised technology. My feet may never be the same.

First general impression: this show was massive. In two days I could not really do it justice, so I focused on the Las Vegas Convention Center and nearby exhibits. The show was packed. There were many times when I felt more like a part of a herd than a hunter (a technology hunter, that is!). There were a few duds. Among all the rows and crowded booths I occasionally ran across a nearly empty booth. The USB Techzone was an entire area dedicated to no-shows, I guess.

Some of the technologies that caught my eye were OLED displays, 4K and 8K displays, Nvidia and Qualcomm processors and action cameras. Let me explain.

OLED displays. Organic light-emitting-diodes have been the hot, upcoming, display technology for at least three years at CES. This year there were 55” production units on display, and they were pretty impressive. (And pretty!) The colors are really rich on these displays. The screens can also be very thin, in part because they don’t need a backlight. Also very interesting were curved displays from at least three vendors. This works for OLEDs because the manufacturing process doesn’t need to have a flat substrate like a normal LCD panel. I can’t say that the curved displays are really that practical for TV applications, but for mobile applications these could be interesting. Certainly one of the more promising features of a curved OLED is that it might also be flexible, thus ending the era of cracked displays on dropped cell phones.
4K and 8K displays. Yes, you just upgraded your home TV to a 1080p high-definition beauty. Yes, you’ve upgraded your DVD player to a Blu-Ray® player so you can watch your favorite movies in high-definition glory. Yes, you are now officially out-of-date. 4K and 8K are the new ultra-high-definition TV standards that are going to try and get you to open your pocketbook and upgrade your TV again. These screens are truly impressive, and the detail is amazing. A 4K display has twice the resolution in each direction as your 1080p HD display. Correspondingly, an 8K display doubles each of these again. However, when looking at the Sony implementation, I noticed something very distracting. The content they were displaying had a very narrow depth-of-focus, which made most of the image deliberately out-of-focus—which seemed a bit counterproductive!

One implication for us is that with increased resolution comes a need for increased memory. The 4K display itself will require 4X the internal memory of today’s 1080p HD display. The 8K display will require 16X the memory of today’s 1080p display. Of course, the rest of the system that delivers content to these ultra HD displays needs more memory, too. How much? Probably about 40% more for 4K, because compression standards have improved. Going from 4K to 8K should be a bigger jump. Speaking of Blu-Ray…
Blu-Ray MIA. OK, I’ll admit it: I’ve never been a huge fan of Blu-Ray. Discs get scratched, smudged and cracked. Give me solid-state storage or streaming delivery! For three years now, I have watched portable and automotive disc players for any sign of Blu-Ray. This year even Sony admitted that their future is in content delivery from cell phones or tablets. Score one for NAND!
Application processors. Big and busy. That would describe the booths of Qualcomm and Nvidia. Qualcomm had just released their Snapdragon™ 800 app processor for tablets and cell phones, and it was generating quite a buzz. I don’t recall ever seeing so many people lined up to see a CES silicon demo where there wasn’t some freebie being given away. Nvidia was also showing some of their applications in the automotive arena, where touchscreens are replacing mechanical knobs and dials for dashboard applications.

But back in the Qualcomm booth, tucked away to the side, was a small area dedicated to showing off some of the projects of Qualcomm Labs, an advanced development team bringing cutting-edge technology to market. In past years, this has always been a secret treasure trove, so I make it a point to see what they are cooking up. This year it was shades of George Orwell, with their creation of a software development tool for applications that gives the application all sorts of context information. This context information can be gleaned from the user’s email, text messages, location, numbers dialed, and the like. This is, of course, not unlike what Google does, and as you might predict, the 20-something-year-old whippersnapper describing this to me saw nothing wrong with it. I guess I am truly from another generation.
Action cameras. One of the busiest booths I saw at the show was the GoPro booth. GoPro makes wearable, waterproof, high-definition sports cameras and accessories. But it wasn’t just GoPro that was busy. Some of their competitors were doing quite well, too. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, GoPro must indeed be feeling flattered.
USB Flipperizer™. In the category of “Duh—why didn’t I think of that?” was the USB Flipperizer. This little gadget is a connector that you can plug onto your favorite USB widget, which then allows you to plug into your computer or other USB port either way. That’s right. There is now no right-side-up or -down. As a stand-alone product, it really is about as cheesy as its name, but interesting, anyway…

There really is so much I could continue on with, but let me leave you with a few closing thoughts. First, consumer electronics are alive and well. There is no shortage of innovation in this space, and it is these innovative devices that are enticing people worldwide to open their wallets and part with their euros, drachmas and dollars. Based on this show, it sure seems that the global economy is going to do just fine. Second, our digitization is complete, and it is demanding. Film and analog TV have long since been dead, but what we are seeing now is the explosion of precision digital data. Higher-resolution TVs, knob-free dashboards on self-driving cars, higher-resolution and faster-frame-rate sports cameras, context-aware applications—all of these are just the tip of the iceberg on top of the hidden mountain of digital data that makes it all happen. In the memory world, we can all sleep easier knowing that the demand for memory to move, manipulate, manage, and store this mountain of data is continuing to grow faster than we can imagine.

Transforming the Ultrathin Experience, Part 1

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:26:00 -0800

How do SSDs help your ultrathin be even more ultra-mobile? Two ways: form factor and power savings.

In today’s era of portability, the days of lugging an 8 or 10lb laptop through the airport are over. SSDs come in slim, caseless, and lightweight form factors that take up less space, enabling even sleeker ultrathin designs. Our mSATA SSDs measure in at about one-third the size of a credit card, while our incredibly small M500 M.2 form factor is about the size of a stick of gum!

Speaking of batteries, SSDs also use significantly less power than hard drives, freeing you from being tethered to an outlet for frequent recharging.

Learn how Micron SSDs optimize ultrathins and watch our video, “Rock Solid—Solid State Drives for Ultrathins.”

M500 M.2 SSD – The Secret is Out

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:29:00 -0800

Until now, SSDs have been limited to the same form factors as HDDs—but not for long. This spring, our M500 SSD will be available in the ultra-compact M.2 form factor, which is the size of a stick of gum. Built using our 20nm MLC NAND Flash, the M500 M.2 is offered in high capacities from 120–480GB. It also delivers strong performance, like fast boot and application load times and almost instant wake from sleep.

We’re doing everything in our power to deliver an ideal solution for next-generation ultrathin computers and Ultrabook™ devices. See for yourself in this M500 M.2 preview.

Made for One Another: SSDs and Ultrathins

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:48:00 -0800

As the landscape of personal and mobile computing continues to intersect, our storage devices are becoming smaller and lighter while boosting system performance and adding features.

Ultrathin notebooks are a new breed of mobile devices that boast the portability of a tablet and the power of a laptop. The broad range of the target market, from business people to college students and even children, means that ”the inside” needs to be tough, versatile, and can’t compromise on speed. SSDs have several of these traits and others that make them ideal for ultrathins:

Performance – Because SSDs don’t have any mechanical moving parts to slow things down, they respond at the push of a button, providing instant-on responsiveness and nearly instantaneous application load times.
Battery Life – SSDs require less power to operate, which helps extend battery life.
Rock Solid – Thanks to their simple design, SSDs are rugged, reliable, and resistant to the common drops, bumps, falls, shocks, temperature swings, and vibrations that are inevitable with daily use.
Portability – Smaller and lighter than HDDs, SSDs are designed with mobility in mind.
Peace and Quiet – With no noisy spinning parts, SSDs are silent.

The Ultrathin class of devices is still in its infancy, yet growing rapidly. As the market progresses to undoubtedly lighter and sleeker machines, Micron will continue to meet the demand with industry-leading SSD solutions.


Discover how an ultrathin notebook with a solid state drive can transform the way you work.	Lobbying for a new computer? Don't forget the solid state drive (SSD). SSDs replace hard drives (storing all your files) and make computers faster, lighter, and more power-efficient.

Enabling Business Application Acceleration—Without Changing Existing Software of Data Storage

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:01:00 -0800

Recently Micron chose to work with a few select organizations to support SSD enablement in the market. While doing due diligence and research to ensure the best support possible for our customers and their needs, we were able to find a great partner in the SSD caching software market through Velobit. Velobit recently launched a campaign to support customers with a trial of their software and loaned them a Micron SSD to test, as well. When Micron and Velobit began discussions, it was very much a case where like-minded individuals just hit it off. The goal of both companies is supporting customers with the right products for the right solutions.

Together with Velobit, we decided that it doesn’t make good business sense to have customers go unguided into purchasing a product that may or may not fit their needs, and then forcing them through the hassle and expense of returning it. To encourage the development of more SSD-based storage systems, we thought it seemed logical to implement a “try before you buy” program. Not just a no-hassle return policy, but the complete customer support needed to choose the right solution in the first place—from the NAND media itself all the way to the software. So you can get the combination of the right software from Velobit and the right SSD from Micron on a risk-free trial basis.

At the end of the day, there is more need than ever to ensure proper support, whether through the right software in Velobit, or the correct SSD from Micron (P300 SLC mainstream SSD, P400e MLC enhanced entry-level SSD, or P320h PCIe extreme performance SSD). This new relationship provides customers everything they need to ensure their SSD needs are truly satisfied. To learn more about our SSD enablement activities, please contact us at SSD@micron.com.

PCIe high speed, low latency and easy service? Can you really have it all?

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 08:37:00 -0700

PCI Express performance in an Enterprise-class SSD and the serviceability of front of system hot swap as easy as SAS or SATA? Yup—with the Micron RealSSD P320h 2.5-inch SSD, you get both.

Supporting both 175GB and 350GB capacities, the P320h is design to comply with the standard 2.5-inch PCI Express form factor, connector, and behavior specifications developed by the SSD Form Factor Working Group. This game-changing design offers scalability, easy service, portability, and performance in a compact, standards-based design.

Offered in many Dell systems (like the R720 and R820), the P320h is easy to setup, easy to use, and easy to service.

Learn more about the P320h 2.5-inch PCIe SSD

Server Performance Transformed

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 15:03:00 -0700

The I/O bottleneck is one of the biggest limitations of network performance in the enterprise industry today. To alleviate this bottleneck for their servers, Dell looked to Micron’s SSDs as a way to take advantage of the faster PCIe interface. Our collaboration resulted in the Micron P320h 2.5-inch PCIe SSD (or as Dell calls it, the PowerEdge^TM PCIe Express Flash SSD).

This SSD is unique because it takes advantage of the fast PCIe interface while at the same time overcoming the fundamental limitations of serviceability. IT providers using typical PCIe SSDs have to power down their systems and physically take apart the server to upgrade the storage. With the Micron P320h 2.5-Inch PCIe SSD, the drive can be hot-plugged into the server, just like a SATA drive, without any server downtime.

This drive is an example of the groundbreaking results that are possible when two industry leaders on the front edge of innovation work together to develop solutions that meet real market needs.

Micron’s Ed Doller and Dell’s Brian Payne talk about this new enterprise technology and how the two companies’ collaboration is transforming server performance. View the video and visit our P320 2.5-Inch PCIe SSD page for more information.

44 Terabytes in a Pizza Box?

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 15:03:00 -0700

We recently announced the integration of our 20nm NAND Flash storage components into Skyera’s high-endurance, high-capacity Skyhawk enterprise solid state storage system. We talked to Skyera’s CEO, Radoslav Danilak, about the impact that high-performance, high-capacity NAND Flash can have on the mainstream enterprise market and the critical role that a collaborative effort with a storage developer like Micron can play in the successful launch of an enterprise storage system. Watch the video and visit our MLC NAND page to view our part catalog.

Our I/O Virtualization Technology Part 2: Taking Full Advantage of SSD Performance with Micron’s PCIe SSD Sharing Technology

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 08:48:00 -0700

In my previous post, I introduced our new I/O virtualization (IOV) technology, which can provide numerous benefits to data centers. Today, I’m talking about the benefits of PCIe sharing to SSDs.

Micron offers some of the highest-performing SSDs in the industry. Take our RealSSD™ P320h PCI Express (PCIe) drive, for example, with its sustained read speeds of over 3 GB/s and random read IOPS approaching 800,000. While these performance numbers are impressive, a fixed amount of SSD storage for each server is not always the best solution. Large datacenters with high-performance computing needs rarely have static environments. Applications, servers, users, and configurations are constantly changing. And the growing number of hypervisors utilizing virtual machines is adding complexity. Bottom line—predicting the amount of SSD storage required for caching, tiered storage, or even primary storage is nearly impossible. Enter our new PCIe sharing technology, which is the perfect fit for this situation.

PCIe SSDs have high performance and low latency, and any sharing technology must have the same performance attributes in order for servers to take full advantage of the SSD’s capabilities. Ethernet and fibre channel, while providing performance sufficient for SANs, do not have these performance attributes. Our PCIe sharing technology does. It also reduces costs and configuration efforts.

Using PCIe sharing technology to share PCIe-connected SSD resources provides the flexibility of sharing SSDs across multiple servers with the performance and latency of a dedicated PCIe SSD. Data centers get the best of both worlds.

Visit the I/O Virtualization Innovations page to learn more.

New Client SSD Firmware—Even Faster Starts and Lower Power Use

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 08:47:00 -0700

One of the advantages of owning a Micron (or Crucial) SSD is that you often benefit from the continuous improvements we roll in to win new business and meet future design requirements. That’s certainly true with our latest C400/m4 firmware release, which provides multiple speed and power upgrades. This is optional firmware, but users who choose to install this update will benefit from the following enhancements.

Faster Boot Up
Thought your SSD boot times were already great? To meet demanding “instant-on” specifications for Ultrabook™ devices, we improved the C400’s time to ready—the sliver of time between when the power button is pressed and when the drive is ready to accept commands. For our 512GB SSD, we shaved 60% off the maximum time to ready—nearly a second and a half. Total boot-up time is controlled by lots of other factors, but for machines that boot quickly, extra seconds make a significant difference. If your boot-up is already in the 8- to 10-second range, it's a noticeable improvement.
Faster TRIM
The average user can’t measure this, but we’ve improved the efficiency of how TRIM works on the drive. (TRIM is the Windows utility that cleans up after deleted files—an important function for SSDs).
Windows® 8 Certified
This latest firmware has been officially certified to work with the upcoming Windows 8 OS (older firmware revisions can work with Windows 8; they’re just not certified).
Better Power Management
We made some power consumption improvements as well. The first change corrects instances where some systems would bring the drive out of standby prematurely, drawing power unnecessarily. We also identified certain systems that were drawing power during standby. The second change (isolating a particular power pin during standby) stops that power draw. For affected systems, this can extend battery life significantly.

The new firmware update utilities are available on micron.com. Please post if you have any comments or questions. As always, if you’re a Crucial customer, you should download the update at crucial.com.

Ultrabook is a trademark of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

The power of PCIe SSDs in a hot-swappable form factor

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:15:00 -0700

I met with TechFieldDay’s Stephen Foskett at VMWorld yesterday to discuss the benefits fitting the high throughput of PCIe SSDs into a standardized, hot-swappable form factor. This new drive interface is sure to be a popular solution for server-side cache solutions. Watch the video for more, or download our P320h 2.5” Product Brief for more details.

Micron’s I/O Virtualization Technology: Helping to Create a More Manageable and Reliable Datacenter

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 14:14:00 -0700

Back in January of this year, we acquired a company named Virtensys, along with a technology that enables I/O virtualization (IOV) through PCIe sharing. This has been an exciting acquisition for us because of the opportunities that the technology presents to take full advantage of SSD performance in a shared enterprise environment. So for the next couple of posts, I’m going to talk about why this technology is so beneficial to a data center, including an overview of just how PCIe sharing works with this technology.

In a typical datacenter, each server has dedicated I/O cards such as Ethernet cards and fibre channel HBAs that are connected to switches through physical cables. I/O bandwidth is sized according to the peak bandwidth required—even when that peak bandwidth is only required for a very short period of time in a day, or even in a week.

IOV moves the dedicated I/O cards from individual servers into an appliance that allows the cards to be shared by multiple servers. Servers are connected to the appliance through a single high-speed, low-latency PCIe link, reducing the amount of cabling by at least 50%.

In the end, IOV reduces power consumption and cooling costs, simplifies resource management, reduces cabling infrastructure, and improves utilization of resources in the data center. In many cases, IOV also eliminates the need to physically reconfigure I/O resources, which can now be managed using configuration software. The best part is that Micron’s implementation of IOV is fully transparent to the server, so it doesn’t require any changes to server drivers or management tools.

Check out our new I/O Virtualization Innovations page to learn more about the benefits of IOV.

Next up—I’ll talk more about how you can use PCIe sharing technology to take full advantage of SSD performance.

ISC12: insideHPC at the Micron Booth

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 11:08:00 -0700

A week after ISC’12 and the buzz continues! Last Wednesday, after my session on Large Memory, Rick Brueckner from insideHPC caught up with me in the ISC Exhibition Hall at the Micron booth. Obviously, insideHPC tracks the top trends in the High Performance Computing space, so it was natural that they should come to a memory company to talk trends. When looking around the exhibition hall there were a lot of high performance systems on display and most of them had their lids off and were showing off the silicon inside.

One recurring theme in all the different systems was that these systems are chock full of memory modules. Rich asked me a few questions about these modules and what Micron does in this space. So it was a good time and place to talk about DDR3, the new load-reduced DIMMs, upcoming DDR4 and HMC. Then Rich asked me about storage. This turned out to be convenient, since we were standing right in front of our enterprise storage display. I pointed out the enterprise MLC SSDs, the high performance SLC SSDs and the PCIe SSDs (always a favorite!) We’re uniquely positioned providing the range of memory and storage solutions for this HPC market and I think Rich was pretty excited to learn a bit more about Micron. The next morning I was sad to leave Hamburg. Next year’s ISC’13 will be in Leipzig, and I may never return to the beautiful city at the mouth of the Elbe river. But I had four more cities to visit on my European trip, so auf Wiedersehen, Hamburg!

Partnering for Enterprise Flash Innovation

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:46:00 -0700

We’re in Las Vegas this week, taking part in EMC World. Prior to the event, I had the chance to sit down with Ed Doller (our VP of Enterprise Storage Solutions) and Mark Sorenson (EMC’s senior VP of Flash products and technologies) for a two-part talk about the growing impact of Flash memory in the enterprise. Watch the second video in this series below to learn how ongoing collaboration between our two companies has resulted in some compelling enterprise storage solutions.

The Future of Flash in the Enterprise

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:03:00 -0700

Next week is EMC World, and Micron will be at the event talking about the advantages of Flash in the enterprise. Gearing up for the event, I had the chance to sit down with Ed Doller (our VP of Enterprise Storage Solutions) and Mark Sorenson (EMC’s senior VP of Flash products and technologies) to shed some light on this topic. Take a look at the video below to see what they had to say. Also, next week we’ll publish another video discussing the collaboration between the two companies.

Will mSATA and Ultrabook™ devices make your mom want an SSD?

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 05:00:00 -0700

If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you’re pretty savvy about solid state drives; you might even own one (or a few). If you do, you’ve probably tried to tell your less-techie friends and family why they should replace their hard drive with an SSD—and you know that the general population still doesn’t quite get it. That slow public acceptance is true for almost any technology—there needs to be a defining change that sparks the imagination of the average person. When that happens, they may not be any closer to understanding how the technology works (plasma TVs are a great example of this), but they know they want it, and they know why. For SSDs, I think we’re right on the cusp of that breakthrough. Here’s why:

Reason 1: mSATA SSDs will open new PC design potential
We announced an update to our C400 RealSSD™ product line this week; the addition of an mSATA form factor. Micron’s mSATA is built on the architecture of our existing C400 drive, so it delivers the same high performance and Micron reliability. What’s different is the size—it’s about a third the size of a business card, so it weighs just 10 grams, and there’s no case. What’s great about mSATA is that it’s finally unleashing the full potential of SSDs. Up to now, most SSDs have been sold in a 2.5” case—a form factor that was built to make SSDs fit into hard drive slots. With mSATA, we have a standardized form factor that minimizes the storage footprint, allowing for sleeker, high performance laptop designs.

Reason 2: Ultrabook™ platforms will make SSD benefits apparent to average users
If you haven’t seen many ultrathin laptops, you will very soon. Intel launched a massive ad campaign about the platform this weekend, and a lot of other OEMs are creating their own ARM-based or AMD versions of the same concept. While features vary, they share a few general design targets: • High-performance, instant-on responsiveness • Slim industrial design • Ultra-mobile: Lightweight and durable • Long battery life All of these features depend (at least in part) on the key benefits that an SSD provides. When consumers buy these new systems, they’ll be introduced to the advantages of solid-state storage. And if you’ve used a laptop with a good SSD, you know that they won’t want to go back to a hard drive—the user experience is just that much better. The market data we’re projecting supports that growth. As you can see from the charts below, our analysts see ongoing gains for mobile computers, especially tablets and ultrathin devices. Even more interesting is how disproportionately these two categories will drive NAND shipments, largely because tablets and ultrathins depend on the size, power, and performance benefits of Flash storage to do what they do. Needless to say, it’s a great time to be at the world’s leading NAND developer; I’m excited about what’s coming on our roadmaps and how new products like the C400 mSATA will bring the benefits of Flash based storage to an even wider audience. So a year from now, when your mom asks you what an SSD is, maybe you can simply say, “It’s what makes you like your new computer so much.

Ultrabook is a trademark of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

New PCIe Interface is an Enterprise Game-Changer

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:49:00 -0800

Today, we announced a new 2.5-inch PCIe SSD form factor. What makes this form factor big news is how the new interface is going to be used. Our SSD has been selected as a key storage device in Dell’s PowerEdge 12th generation servers, which use innovative, front-accessible backplane designs that accommodate 2.5-inch SATA, SAS, or PCIe devices, so customers can choose the right combination of data storage and caching devices to suit their needs. These new servers and our 2.5-inch PCIe SSD represent a revolutionary change for the enterprise industry because they enable scalable, hot-swappable, performance upgrades. Customers can easily service the drive or scale performance without powering down the server—a luxury that isn’t possible with existing PCIe card solutions. Not surprisingly to us, this new PCIe form factor is already getting noticed and generating interest. In the video below, I provide a quick explanation of the interface and the serious impact we think it will have on enterprise architectures in the near future.

For Data Centers, Consistency is Key

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:35:00 -0700

It’s true that the SSD market puts a lot of emphasis on bigger, faster, better—the largest capacity, the highest IOPs, the highest endurance. But it’s not only about the latest, greatest, pegging-out-the-performance-curve product. Sometimes, it’s simply about doing key things well, over and over again. Dallas, Texas-based SoftLayer Technologies—the world’s largest privately owned hosting company—needed a scalable, reliable storage solution that they could count on across applications, whether they were running data sets or speeding up OS response times. So they ran a lot of tough stress tests with SSDs from multiple vendors, and at the end, our P300 stood out as the steady performer. Watch our interview with SoftLayer’s VP of Information Systems Jacob Linscott to learn more about how our enterprise-class Real SSD™ P300 nailed their performance curve, and where he thinks SSDs are headed for the future. Or read the Case Study.

An Enterprise-focused MLC SSD?

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:21:00 -0700

The enterprise SSD market used to be seen as a single tier in the storage market—a cohesive, expensive grouping above other storage options. That’s no longer true. The enterprise SSD market is also segmenting, largely because SSDs deliver several key features—low latency, reliability, and low power, to name a few—that can make dramatic differences in enterprise effectiveness across multiple applications and workloads, but they’re the most effective when they’re designed for specific applications.

Today we announced a new SSD aimed squarely at the entry level of enterprise solid-state storage. Our new RealSSD™ P400e was built for key server and blade applications, including read caching, DAS, and as a boot drive for virtual desktop infrastructures. It’s a slot that many storage architects previously attempted to fill with client SSDs, which really aren’t meant to handle 24/7, always-on workloads. Our P400e, however, was designed specifically for this space, and its excellent IOPs-per-dollar performance and low TCO makes it an easy choice to replace enterprise hard drives.

In the video below, I provide a quick explanation of enterprise SSD tiers and explain some of the key product features of the P400e SSD. As always, you can learn more about the specs of the P400e drive on micron.com.

A Faster RealSSD™ C400

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 13:49:00 -0700

Like any innovative tech company, we're always searching for ways to make our products better. We've engineered some big read performance gains that will make a noticeable difference for our C400 and m4 SSDs. We're bundling the improvements into our latest firmware release, which is available now for all customers.

Like any firmware release, we built in the usual stability and reliability improvements that our testing team identified over the past months. But the real news is that the new code provides a significant boost in read performance across all capacities. Sequential reads are up by 20% for all drives (85 MB/s increase), putting the C400/m4 over the 500 MB/s mark. Random 4k reads are up, too. And PCMark scores—which we believe are one of the better measures of real-world usage—are up by 15%.

The table below summarizes the basic spec changes.

	Original	With New FW
Sequential READ	415 MB/s	500 MB/s	20% faster
4k Read IOPs	40k	45k	12% faster

Of course, to appreciate these changes, you'll need to be running the SSD on a system that provides a SATA 6 Gb/s connection (since SATA 3 Gb/s systems cap out at less than 300 MB/s).

Micron customers will be notified of the code change (and how to upgrade) through our usual PCN process. If you're a retail customer, you can find instructions to download the latest code on Crucial's website.

Our client SSDs are already a favorite among users who value stability, reliability, and good performance at a great price. This upgrade makes the C400/m4 SSDs an even more compelling choice, and is a great way to thank all of our customers for choosing Micron. Enjoy!

750,000 IOPs from a Single SSD?

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 14:43:00 -0700

As promised, the video below is a live demo of the phenomenal performance you can get from our P320h PCIe SSD. It’s a simple and straightforward IOMeter measurement, but we wanted to show you how much of a leap our card makes over current solutions—the random reads output of the P320h is more than twice as fast as the nearest competitor. It all hinges on the tight integration we’ve been able to make between our custom controller and high-performance SLC NAND. I’m looking forward to keeping you posted on what our customers are be able to achieve with it. Enjoy the video.

Our PCIe SSD—Out of the Lab and Into Production

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:22:00 -0700

If you’re an SSD fan who’s been following our blog for a while, you know that we posted a from-the-lab teaser video of a prototype PCIe SSD some time ago. Our design team has been hard at work on an ideal solution, and I’m happy to tell you that today we have production product to show you. Of course PCIe drives aren’t anything new to the market, but I think you’ll agree that our solution offers some new breakthroughs in performance and efficiency. In the video below, I walk through some of the features of the P320h (you’ll quickly see why I’m so excited about this device). And stay tuned; we’ll have more performance numbers and a demo posted soon.

For Anyone Who’s Ever Tried to Compare SSDs…

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 09:00:00 -0700

Micron's Senior Applications Engineer, Doug Rollins, is participating in Storage Switzerland’s “How to Compare SSDs” webinar this Wednesday, March 30. Doug will talk about the importance of establishing "specsmanship"—or industry-standard terms and tests—for SSDs. Listen in as he debunks SSD myths, defines important SSD terms, and highlights standardized testing methodologies that work. Register today to attend the Webinar on Wednesday, March 30 at 11:00 a.m. EST.

C400 SSD Benchmark Results—Yeah, It’s Fast

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:31:00 -0700

Several of you have been asking to see additional benchmark results from the C400. Micron’s product engineering teams tailor their performance testing suites to OEM requirements, which focus on IOMeter and PCMark® Vantage data.

But we know most of you are interested in seeing a wide variety of tests. Our Crucial team runs many of the tests popular with reviewers, and I’ve included screen shots from AS SSD, ATTO, and CrystalDiskMark for the Crucial m4 SSD (the consumer version of the C400 OEM drive). Enjoy. You can see why we believe the C400 and m4 will be one of the most compelling client SSD designs of the year; great performance, leading 25nm NAND, and Micron’s thorough quality and reliability testing. More in-depth performance tests will be available from all your favorite reviewers in a couple weeks.

AS SSD

ATTO

CrystalDiskMark

How to Build a Solid 25nm SSD(and how not to)

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 14:30:00 -0800

Some of the early attempts at 25nm NAND SSDs have created some negative perceptions about the quality the NAND itself, which is really misplaced. It is possible to build great SSDs with 25nm NAND; but you do have to be deliberate about your process and objectives (it also helps to have inside knowledge about how that NAND works). I want to use today’s blog to lay out some of the key principles that guided the development of the RealSSD™ C400—our own 25nm SSD (the retail version will be branded as the Crucial M4 SSD):

Label Capacity Must Equal User Capacity
There’s nothing wrong with over-provisioning (reserving some of the NAND capacity for better performance and durability), but the drive label must state the capacity the user has access to. This is basic marketing honesty. The entire hard-drive industry got sued for this years ago and established standards for user capacity as a result. Micron follows these standards—we always market our drives at the true user capacity. In the case of the C300 and C400, the user capacities are identical—64, 128, and 256 GB (the C400 also offers a 512 GB).

Performance Must Not Degrade
We’ve taken a long-term view of the market; each new generation of drives must haveequal or better performance than the last. New NAND designs do present challenges, but because Micron leads NAND development, our SSD team has early insight into new products, and we start work early to make sure our SSDs make the best use of that NAND. The C400 is proof of that. As shown in the chart, it’s noticeably faster than the C300.

Keep Endurance High
SSD Enthusiasts are aware that new NAND designs start out at lower endurance cycle counts than the previous generation, and are sometimes wary of next-generation SSDs as a result. But cycle counts don’t necessarily translate 1:1 to drive endurance specs—good NAND management (via the firmware and controller) is the key. We specify SSD endurance in total bytes written (TBW). The 25nm C400 offers the same endurance as the C300 for the 128, 256 and 512 GB models—72 TB TBW. This is equivalent to 40GB per day every day for 5 years, and far exceeds the patterns of any PC user. The 64 GB drive endurance is rated at 36 TB TBW—that’s 20 GB per day over the same time period, which still exceeds typical consumer use patterns. We take the reliability of the C400 very seriously and have gone to great lengths to develop advanced firmware algorithms that manage the NAND. Again, being NAND developers gives us the unique ability to design end-to-end SSD quality as a complete system, alongside our NAND design team. I hope you don’t let these early attempts at 25nm SSDs dampen your enthusiasm about this new technology. The SSD market is going to change dramatically in the next few years, and leading-edge NAND (and SSDs from the companies that make that NAND) is what will make it possible. Crucial’s M4 SSD will hit the shelves in mid-March. There’s a lot to be excited about; you’ll see proof in the C400/M4 reviews in a just a few weeks.

C400 Delivers Remarkable Performance

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 09:30:00 -0800

It's true, the RealSSD™ C400 delivers some pretty impressive performance (415 MB/s reads and 260 MB/s writes). But all those IOPs and sequential performance specs are over the head of most consumers. To speak to them, we set up this simple demo of a C400 and stock hard drive running the same programs in identical laptops. Of course the demo itself isn't a novel concept by any means, but we think you'll agree that results are staggering.

Tech Talk: RealSSD™ C400 and the 2011 SSD Market

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:21:00 -0800

Dean Klein, Micron’s Vice President of Memory System Development, discusses the new RealSSD C400 drive and how SSDs will grow in 2011 with the influx of ultra-mobile notebooks. Dean also discusses how the leading-edge performance and capacities of the C400 are poised to serve this market.

The RealSSD™ C300 Ranked #16 on PCWorld’s 100 Best Tech Products of 2010

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 10:06:00 -0800

PCWorld recently published its list of top technology products of 2010, and coming in at No. 16 out of the 100 best in the world is the RealSSD C300 solid-state drive. In a year that has seen a fair share of breakthrough technologies – Apple’s iPad and iPhone 4, the latest version of the Amazon Kindle, and Google’s Android 2.2 smartphone operating system, just to name a few – earning a spot in the top 20 is a notable achievement. And in the Best of 2010 subcategory of “Storage and Useful Gadgets,” the C300 came in at the very top of the list. In its description of the product, PCWorld noted that the C300 “is the first SSD we've tested to support 6-gigabits-per-second SATA, which enables faster write speeds because it can push more data through the pipe” and that it “delivered top-flight overall performance and the best write performance.” PCWorld’s editorial staff evaluates hundreds of tech products throughout the year, spanning the full range of offerings from smartphones and PCs to software and storage and beyond. Only the best of the best make it onto the prestigious top 100 list each year, underscoring the truly standout capabilities of the RealSSD C300. Some of the other products joining the C300 in the top 20 include Samsung’s Galaxy Tab PC (#5) and Epic 4G smartphone (#8), Google’s Chrome Web browser (#14) and Microsoft Office 2010 (#19). Make sure to read the full article for a complete list of PCWorld’s 100 Best Tech Products of 2010.

Choosing the Right Enterprise SSD

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:45:00 -0700

We just concluded a busy few days at the fall Storage Networking World in Dallas. Not surprisingly, a lot of the discussions centered on doing more with less. Nearly everyone is interested in what SSDs could do for their enterprise, but they’re cautious too, and not sure they know enough about this new technology to choose the best SSD for their application. So how do you know which SSD will work best for you? Unfortunately, it’s not such a simple question. All SSDs are not created equal, and you can’t rely solely on the quoted specs to tell them apart. If you do that, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Quoted specs are typically based on fresh-out-of-box (FOB) performance—the best performance the drive will ever achieve. Instead, you should look at steady state performance—the level the drive achieves once it fills to the point where write performance varies little over a relatively long period. Often, it’s at a significantly different level than the FOB performance numbers.

Why the difference? As the drive begins to fill, performance is impacted by a SSD phenomenon called write amplification—a multiplying effect that results from having to rewrite user data on the SSD. Inefficient garbage collection and wear leveling algorithms can further increase the write amplification of a SSD. You can compare the steady-state performance differences between our enterprise P300 drive and competitors in the benchmarks we posted back in August. Steady state performance is an important matter that deserves more attention and education. That’s why one of my colleagues devoted much of his time here at SNW to conduct a hands-on lab that demonstrated how to set up an Iometer test that showed significant differences between the steady-state results of client and enterprise SSDs. We believe that the more people know about the specifics of SSD performance, the better the likelihood that they’ll make an educated choice and be pleased with the results they get. We’re working on a whitepaper that explains more about the technical details behind SSD performance states.

If you’d like to be on our mailing list when it comes out, sign up for a micron.com account (be sure to select an interest in SSDs).

Hitachi-LG Data Storage Uses Micron 25nm NAND in New Hybrid Drive

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 07:50:00 -0700

Micron today announced that our 25nm NAND is being used in a new all-in-one storage and media solution from Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS), called Hybrid Drive. The innovations Micron has made in NAND flash memory continue to spark new and compelling end-product designs from our customers – the Hybrid Drive being one of them. We wanted to learn a bit more about the Hybrid Drive, so we asked a few questions to HLDS’ Jack Lee, Senior Manager, and here’s what he had to say:

What exactly is a Hybrid Drive? How does this new product fit into the HLDS product line?
The Hybrid Drive is an Optical Disc Drive (ODD) with embedded NAND Flash memory, providing a combined storage configuration of an ODD+HDD+Flash Storage in the same platform architecture. It’s primarily targeted at the thin & light notebook PC applications. In standard notebook applications where there is still an HDD or SSD used for longer-term storage, the Hybrid Drive would be used for caching and launching applications, which provides an increase in system performance.

What are the performance advantages of the Hybrid Drive?
The Hybrid Drive provides approximately a 50 to 70 percent performance improvement for PC booting, multitasking and application loading times when compared to a standalone HDD. And within the same solution, we are offering high-quality DVD media management.

Why did you choose Micron’s 25nm NAND?
The high-performance, high-capacity and small form factor of Micron’s 25nm NAND played an important role in design of the Hybrid Drive.

Were there specific market demands or other drivers that necessitated this design approach?
The primary market driver was improving PC performance without disrupting current motherboard designs. With this in mind, we focused on creating a solution that provided an all-in-one storage and media/Blu-Ray solution in an ODD form factor.

P300 SSD Demo Highlights Key Performance Advantages

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:15:00 -0700

It’s easy for me to talk about the advantages that our P300 SSDs can deliver for server systems—but it’s even better when I can show someone. At the Flash Memory Summit, I used a side-by-side comparison of similar systems, one using a single P300 solid state drive versus another using 12 SAS hard drives, to highlight some of the key advantages—one of the most notable being a 3X difference in IOPs delivered. See for yourself.

UBM TechInsights Takes a Closer Look at the RealSSD C300

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:49:00 -0700

As mentioned in our post last week, we asked the analysts at UBM TechInsights to write a blog post that goes into more detail on their recognition of the RealSSD C300 with an Insight Award. We are honored to be recognized by such a renowned analysis firm, and are proud of the hard work our engineers put into designing this award-winning SSD. Read on to learn why UBM TechInsights chose the RealSSD C300 as “Most Innovative SSD Technology.”

Taking a closer look at the RealSSD C300 By Tarek Alhajj, Engineering Analyst, UBM TechInsights

UBM TechInsights analyzed the 256GB Micron RealSSD C300 SSD when the device was nominated for an Insight Award for Most Innovative SSD Technology. To better understand what we were analyzing, we decided to review datasheets before diving into any teardown or benchmarking activities. The 256GB Micron RealSSD C300 SSD offers a higher-level performance compared to other commercially available SSDs. This is especially the case with its read speeds, which surpass what SATA-2 (3Gb/s) connectivity can offer. Some of the details of this innovative SSD design, which was the first to feature a SATA-3 (6 Gb/s) controller for next-generation SATA connectivity, will be discussed followed by a summary of results from our benchmarking efforts. Our analysis of the 256GB Micron RealSSD C300 consisted of a teardown for a board and chip investigation as well as an analysis of the NAND flash arrangement. The single board inside contains the following main components: a controller, NAND flash, and the SDRAM. These devices are all BGA packaged devices which would likely cost more from a manufacturing perspective but will keep parasitic and lead inductance down (as compared to a standard TSOP-48 package). Further, it allows for more efficient use of board space.


Micron RealSSD C300 Board Bottom	Micron RealSSD C300 Board Top

Inside the RealSSD C300 The controller is a Marvel 88SS9174, which is a relatively new chip. It provides the RealSSD C300 with next generation SATA-3 connectivity at 6Gb/s to accommodate for its extremely fast read speeds that overwhelm SATA-2 (3 Gb/s). This controller has two ARM9 processor cores that operate in parallel to balance the load on the drive, with one core handling host requests and the other handling requests to read and write to the NAND flash devices. The controller uses the Micron DDR3 SDRAM for caching data to more quickly and efficiently manage traffic.


Marvell Controller	Micron DDR3 SDRAM

Micron NAND Flash	Micron 34nm, 32Gb NAND Die

Each NAND flash package contains four stacked Micron 34 nm 32 Gbit MLC NAND flash die. There are a total of eight parallel NAND flash channels, where each channel consists of two NAND flash packages, thus giving a grand total of 16 NAND flash packages. Having this many channels for the controller to utilize plays a major role in achieving its high read and write speeds; and based on the results of the read and write tests, the controller is able to manage the traffic to the appropriate channels quickly and efficiently. This SSD has a clean layout of high-end BGA packaged devices and a highly parallel configuration of NAND flash devices. When we began our investigation of the capabilities of the RealSSD, our test results returned some impressive results.

Testing the RealSSD C300
Testing began with the development of a testing rig to conduct our analysis. The test rig consisted of an Intel 2 GHz Core 2 Duo PC running Windows XP with an Asus U3S6 PCIe card to provide SATA-3 connectivity. For comparison, the results for the Intel X25-M V2 (2^nd generation) 160 GB SSD are also presented. After formatting both drives and filling them with various types of data up to 25% of their total capacity, HD Tune, ATTO and IOMeter were used to test the drives. The RealSSD C300 provided sequential read speeds between 280 MB/s and 380 MB/s and sequential write speeds of 185 MB/s to 195 MB/s, while the X-25M provided 209 MB/s to 255 MB/s and 100 MB/s to 105 MB/s sequential read and write speeds, respectively. The X25-M had a slightly faster access time at about 0.06 ms, as compared to the C300 at about 0.12 ms, but overall, the overwhelmingly fast read and write speeds of the C300 put this SSD well ahead. Our next test involved checking out the Input/Output operations per second (IOPS). The sequential and random 4 KB read IOPS for the RealSSD C300 were 42182 and 7298 with respective speeds of 162 MB/s and 29 MB/s, while the IOPS for the X25-M were 36102 and 5966 with speeds of 141 MB/s and 23 MB/s. The sequential and random 4 KB write IOPS for the C300 were 26712 and 1830 with speeds of 104 MB/s and 7.2 MB/s, and were 13819 and 8473 for the X25-M with speeds of 54 MB/s and 33 MB/s. The C300 comes out ahead for the most part here, but it is worth noting the X25-M random 4 KB write IOPS performance. The teardown analysis and test results show that the Micron RealSSD C300 is a very well designed SSD that features industry first SATA-3 connectivity and provides leading-edge performance, especially with respect to its incredibly high read speeds.

New Accolades for the RealSSD C300

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:01:00 -0700

Our RealSSD C300 has garnered some impressive industry accolades since its introduction back in December. Recently, the RealSSD C300 was awarded the Most Innovative Solid-State Storage Technology from UBM TechInsights, beating out both Intel and Toshiba’s drives. This award is great validation for Micron’s C300 design since TechInsights’ selection process includes a rigorous product tear-down and in-depth technical analysis. (Side note, in the coming weeks we’ll be featuring a post from an analyst at TechInsights that provides more information on the benchmarks that went into review of the drives they tested. Stay tuned!)

We also continue to see great feedback from reviewers and press—we’re excited about some recent reviews and rankings from Tom's Hardware and PC World. The analysts at Tom’s Hardware noted that the C300 “remains the very best choice these days.” While Melissa Perenson at PC World states that the C300 offers “top-flight overall performance, and the best write performance we’ve seen.” So my question is, do you have a C300? If not, you should. I have one in my MacBook Pro and the difference is night and day. Visit Crucial.com to order yours.

Why SSD Testing Standards are Important

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:55:00 -0700

One of the great benefits of the Flash Memory Summit is the opportunity to interact with other people and companies that are serious about advancing Flash technology. One of those is Eden Kim, CEO of Calypso Systems—a company that builds SSD testers and is helping lead the push for standardized test methods (you might remember our recent post on their P300 performance testing results). On Wednesday, I interviewed Eden about what his company does, how their testers work, and why standards are so important. He also shared his thoughts on how our P300 SSD did against the competition.

Take a look:

Setting A New Benchmark for Enterprise SSDs

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:49:00 -0700

Today we announced our RealSSD™ P300 drive for enterprise applications. Like the C300 before it, the P300 is an incredibly fast drive built to take advantage of the bandwidth available via the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. In fact, it outstrips the bandwidth of a typical SATA 3 Gb/s connection in both reads and writes.

But comparing against a drive designed for client applications doesn’t really make sense. After all, the P300 is built with our high-performance, high-endurance, ONFI 2.1 SLC NAND and was designed with features tailored for enterprise applications (ultra-high endurance, high write-cache-disabled performance, and industry leading steady-state performance, to name a few).

To give you a good idea of where this drive comes in against other enterprise SSDs, we enlisted the help of a third-party testing firm, Calypso Systems, an experienced testing company that’s working with standards bodies to define consistent testing and reporting methodology for all SSD manufacturers (something we’re eager to see happen). Not surprisingly, they used SNIA-compliant test specs when they ran the P300 alongside two competitors in their “RTP 2.0” test platform.

The charts below show how the P300 fared against two of the best SATA-based enterprise SSDs on the market: Intel’s® X25-E and the Samsung® SS805. When you see the results, we think you’ll agree that the P300 sets a new bar for SSD performance in enterprise systems.

The RealSSD P300—Dramatic Performance Improvements for Enterprise Apps

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:45:37 -0700

I had the chance to sit-down with Dean Klein, Vice President of Memory System Development at Micron to talk about the RealSSD™ P300 solid-state drive that was announced today. We had a good conversation about the drive, how it compares competitively, and why it’s important to be a NAND manufacturer in SSDs. Take a look at the video and if you have any questions, let us know. I’ll bring Dean in to answer a few!

The 64GB RealSSD™ C300: Compelling Performance, Affordable Price

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:50:00 -0700

Lexar Media today introduced the 64GB RealSSD™ C300, extending its award-winning portfolio to offer a high performing and affordable SSD option. Like its predecessors, the 64GB RealSSD C300 natively supports SATA 6Gb/s, offering the industry’s most compelling consumer SSD solution for capacity, price and performance.

We thought our readers might want to know more about the newest entry to the RealSSD line of products, so we sat down with Ben Thiel in Micron’s SSD group to shed some light on these new drives and trends in market adoption.

Thanks Ben for talking with us. With Lexar Media introducing the 64GB version of the RealSSD C300 for consumers (available at www.crucial.com), will Micron be introducing this product for OEMs as well?

Yes, the 64GB C300 is available to Micron customers directly and through our key distribution partners.

What are the target applications for this product?

The 64GB C300 is built on the same platform (NAND design and controller) as our initial 128GB and 256GB C300 capacities, and the target applications are the same—notebook/desktop computers. The drive is designed and optimized for these personal computing applications, however; we have seen a good level of interest in the 64GB capacity from customers in the industrial/embedded market as well as the server space. Although these weren’t the initial target applications, the dollars per gigabyte and relative performance of the drive are well suited for these types of applications.

There’s been a pretty strong push for these lower capacity, aggressively priced SSDs recently; do you have any insight on the receptivity in the market? Why is this class of products coming back around? What’s been the market uptake?

Initially, performance and cost were the primary gating factors to SSD adoption. Now with the technology’s significant performance gains over hard drives and drops in pricing, we’re seeing increased interest and greater market demand for SSDs.

While mainstream capacity SSDs (128GB/256GB) may still be too pricey for some cost-conscious system designers or end-consumers, these lower capacity SSDs (30GB to 64GB) provide an attractive alternative. Their reduced cost per gigabyte price and improved performance/reliability over hard drives make them a good option for those that want some of the performance gains of SSDs without the premium price. While these lower-capacity SSDs don’t offer the same performance as their higher capacity counterparts, they are finding a nice niche, particularly in the consumer space, as a fast boot drive. And as a result of NAND's ongoing process shrink, SSD prices will continue to drop bringing this technology to a price point where mainstream adoption is possible.

Why is there a write performance differential from the 256GB, 128GB and 64GB capacity drives?

The reason is parallelism. As we add more NAND die to the C300 platform, the drive can perform more parallel transactions, which increases write performance. The other capacity-specific difference is the amount of over-provisioning that is available. Over-provisioning essentially refers to “spare area” that is reserved for background operations that are fundamental to the drive’s performance. NAND natively has around 6 percent over-provisioning built in, so as SSD capacity goes up so does the corresponding percentage of over-provisioning. This increase in “spare area” results in greater performance in the larger capacity drives.

Thanks for taking time to discuss this with us, Ben. If our readers are interested in getting more information on the 64GB RealSSD where should they go?

OEMs can go to Micron.com/realssd to see our part catalogs, tech notes and other documentation, and of course, consumers can visit Crucial.com.

It’s Earth Day. What Role Do SSDs Have in “Greening-Up” the Data Center?

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 10:53:00 -0700

In recognition of Earth Day, we thought we’d publish a post on a certain “green” topic that we’re passionate about around here—the power and performance efficiencies achieved by using SSDs in enterprise servers. As you know, Micron has a lot to say on the topic, so we decided change it up a bit and bring in a longtime storage industry veteran to provide a different perspective. (BTW, we’ll have more to say on Micron SSDs in the enterprise here soon ... stay tuned.)

While at Storage Networking World last week, we had the chance to meet up with Ray Lucchesi, president and lead storage analyst with Silverton Consulting, as well as blogger extraordinaire for RayOnStorage.com. We asked him to shed some light on the role of SSDs “greening-up” the data center:

Thanks for talking with us. To kick off the discussion, let’s look big picture at the challenges facing data centers today. Could you provide a little insight for our readers on what the top issues are for data center managers?

I think the problems facing data centers today center around 3 main themes:

Doing more with less: Mainly this is due to the realization that all business functions need to provide value to the bottom line but recent economic troubles have accelerated this trend. The emergence of server virtualization is just one manifestation of this trend.

Being more responsive: Businesses today need to respond faster to opportunities in order to survive, and this need has been accelerating over time. Opportunities pass by quickly and often can be very profitable, but if you don't capture them your competition will certainly be happy to try.

Reducing energy use: Businesses need to reduce energy consumption to deal with rising energy costs but climate change is yet another reason to do this. Some data centers have limited ability to increase power at their present locations and as such, cannot add new equipment without shedding equivalent energy use elsewhere.

How do you see solid-state drives playing a role here?

SSDs can help with many of today's data center challenges. First, SSDs provide higher performance which allows companies to better respond to opportunities when they appear. Second, SSDs use less energy on a performance and per unit basis and thus, can reduce power consumption for any given workload. Finally, hard disk drives are often over-deployed in order to obtain better subsystem performance, dividing storage workload over more spindles. But because SSDs can perform so much better than disk drives, data centers can often reduce their spindle counts dramatically just by deploying SSDs.

What has been the primary barrier to adoption of SSDs in the enterprise? It seems the power and performance benefits are obvious.

SSD cost is a significant barrier to adoption in enterprise data centers. High $/GB cost makes justifying SSDs much more difficult. Also, application performance gain is often hard to predict ahead of time which makes SSD return on investment calculations even harder to believe. But once you have passed those hurdles, deploying SSDs today takes analysis to determine which data to place on them to optimize data center return. Sophisticated storage subsystems are starting to introduce migration capabilities which automatically and non-disruptively migrate data to or from SSDs to optimize performance. For example, IBM's Easy Tier and EMC's FAST both provide data migration between disks and SSDs to maximize storage performance.

Have you performed any comparative analysis on real-world usage of SSDs in the enterprise, i.e. power savings and/or performance improvements? What were your findings?

There is plenty on my blog about SSD performance and energy use. Specifically, one post I wrote last year reported on SSD vs. Drive energy use which showed a significant difference in peak versus nominal energy use between hard drives and SSDs. This energy use difference was insignificant for SSDs but was very significant for hard drives. As such, data center energy use should not spike as much with more demanding workloads when data resides on SSDs. In addition, every month I report on storage benchmarks such as SPECsfs(R) 2008 from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation that often show significant performance advantages from the use of SSDs or flash based subsystem caches.

What are some trends you see in the green IT movement?

There is interesting work going on to provide more efficient cooling. For example, I saw a specially designed rack enclosure last year that was optimized server rack air-flow/cooling. Also I recently read of data centers deploying new cooling capabilities to reduce energy use such as, using night-time power to freeze some material and then using that material to cool their data center during daylight.

Also many data centers are moving to server virtualization technologies which allow them to boost utilization of server and other IT infrastructure. Systems such as VMware and Microsoft's Hyper-V allow multiple application workloads to co-exist on the same physical server increasing utilization significantly.

Finally, the whole trend to using less energy is moving from the consumer space into IT. Processors, networking and storage are all on an energy diet. It's common nowadays for storage companies to tout recent power consumption reductions that come with the latest versions of their subsystems. Blade servers and newer processor chips also announce energy savings along with performance improvements. Similarly, networking follows this trend by providing more bandwidth while at the same time using less energy.

Consequently, IT's energy use is dropping overall as well as on a per application basis and thus, provides for a much more sustainable data processing environment. Such trends should enable data processing to grow while lessening its energy and carbon footprints over time.

P300 SSD Preview from SNW 2010

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:15:00 -0700

I attended Storage Networking World this week in Orlando, Florida where I had the chance to talk with Kevin Dibelius of Micron’s SSD group and learn more about their enterprise SSD initiatives. Take a look at the video for your “sneak peek” at the RealSSD P300.

RealSSD C300 Demo: MacBook® Side-by-Side

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:27:00 -0800

We've seen a lot of interest in our C300 SSD from Apple users, so we put two identical MacBooks side by side to show the huge performance gains possible with a RealSSD C300 drive. There are a lot of thorough performance benchmarks out there—our effort here was to create a simple video that shows what differences you might expect to see in everyday applications when you install a RealSSD C300. We cloned the factory hard drive onto a Micron C300 SSD and ran a few simple tasks.

Crucial Launches RealSSD™ C300 Drives

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:52:00 -0800

Now available through crucial.com—the RealSSD C300 client drive that everyone’s talking about. Crucial is offering the 2.5” drive in 128GB and 256GB densities (priced at $499.99 and $799.99, respectively). Visit crucial.com for more information.

RealSSD C300—The Mac Experience

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:02:00 -0800

I haven't used a Macintosh that didn't have an internal hard drive since I played around with a Macintosh Plus in 1986. Now the 13" MacBook Pro that I use here at the office is missing one ... and I couldn't be happier.

We've had a fair number of questions from folks on YouTube and our blog about how the RealSSD C300 would work in a Mac—and I've been lucky enough to get my hands on one of our first 256GB drives as we near production. Needless to say, it didn't stay in my hands long before I got it installed in my MacBook.

The installation process was quite simple for a 13" unibody MacBook Pro. I connected the RealSSD C300 to the Mac with a SATA-USB external drive casing and formatted it using Disk Utility. Then, using Carbon Copy Cloner (great piece of software—free and worth the donation they request), I cloned my hard drive to the SSD. Installing the drive was just as easy—just remove 10 screws to detatch the bottom casing. From there, it was a simple matter of removing the bracket that keeps the hard drive snug in the case, switching the mounting screws from the hard drive to the SSD and putting things back together.

Now, I knew going into this that the drive was fast—I've seen it in action in the benchmark tests we've run and have demonstrated here on our blog. But It's one thing to read about how the C300 can deliver over 50,000 IOPs—it's another thing to start seeing the kind of performance the drive delivers in real life. I have been amazed by how it has sped up what I thought was a pretty zippy computer.

Boot-up time is one-third what it used to be.
Applications load amazingly fast—I have yet to see more than one "bounce" in the dock.
I don't remember the last time I saw a "spinning beachball" that I used to run into at times when switching applications or starting a new process.
Drive-intensive applications like Photoshop and Parallels are incredibly responsive.

It's clear that the RealSSD C300 provides a very noticeable improvement in performance—it's helped make this machine more responsive than I've ever experienced with any other type of hardware upgrade. In fact, it feels faster than the much beefier iMac I have at home. And keep in mind, this isn't a fresh install of the OS on an empty drive; I've got the drive well cluttered with 190GB of data—I cloned the content straight from the HDD. I did have to make one minor tweak, though—it just didn't feel right looking at that "Macintosh HD" text and icon in the Finder.

Bottom line? I can conclusively say that the C300 feels right at home in this machine. I know you're probably itching to get your own. You have just a few more weeks to wait; retail drives will be available from Crucial by the end of the month.

Just How Small is 25nm?

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:02:00 -0800

Technology moves fast. It was only 14 months ago that we went into production with our world-leading 34nm process NAND, and we’ve already moved on to 25nm NAND. In this brief whiteboard video, I explain just how small 25nm is (3,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair) and why our ongoing quest to shrink process technology is vital to the future of storage.