fusion io | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Sun, 06 Jul 2014 02:34:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png fusion io | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 Samsung remains the world’s largest maker of SSDs – Gartner https://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/anton-shilov/samsung-remains-the-worlds-largest-maker-of-ssds-gartner/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/anton-shilov/samsung-remains-the-worlds-largest-maker-of-ssds-gartner/#respond Fri, 04 Jul 2014 22:58:23 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=201575 The market of solid-state drives is probably one of the fastest growing IT markets nowadays and the competition is pretty tough. While the war on the SSD market will probably oust many companies, including significant ones, several leaders of the market are already clear and they will likely continue to be the largest suppliers of …

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The market of solid-state drives is probably one of the fastest growing IT markets nowadays and the competition is pretty tough. While the war on the SSD market will probably oust many companies, including significant ones, several leaders of the market are already clear and they will likely continue to be the largest suppliers of SSDs in the future.

The SSD market soared to $10.9 billion (£6.3533 billion, €8.0192 billion) in 2013, despite NAND flash chip shortages and stable prices, according to Gartner. Top five SSD makers controlled 65.8 per cent of the market's revenue in 2013, up from 55.4 per cent in 2012. All leading suppliers of solid-state drives had their own NAND flash manufacturing capacities (or co-owned them), which underlines importance of fabs for the flash storage market going forward.

gartner_ssd_revenue_market_share

Samsung, the world’s largest supplier of NAND flash memory, maintained its overall lead in sales of solid-state drives with $3.1 billion in revenue. While the company almost does not supply high-end enterprise-class solid-state drives (SSDs) or solid-state storage solutions (SSSs), the firm managed to boost its revenue share to 28.5 per cent in 2013 from 23.2 per cent a year before (see below for details).

Intel Corp.’s revenue share of the SSD market dropped slightly last year to 13.1 per cent, but the company still maintained the No. 2 position and earned $1.4 billion.

SanDisk managed to rather dramatically boost its SSD revenue last year to $1.3 billion and thus controlled 11.7 per cent of the market. With the acquisition of Fusion-io, SanDisk has all chances to outpace Intel in terms of solid-state storage sales in 2014 and become the No. 2 supplier of NAND flash-based storage devices.

By contrast, Toshiba’s SSD earnings totaled around $600 million last year and its SSD market revenue share fell to 5.6 per cent. Toshiba co-owns NAND flash manufacturing fabs with SanDisk. It is likely that this year the company’s SSD sales will grow thanks to the acquisition of OCZ Technology in late 2013.

Micron Technology was the No. 8 SSD maker by revenue in 2012. In 2013 the company increased sales of various solid-state storage devices (including SSDs and SSSs) to about $800 million and became the fourth largest producer of SSDs in the world.

Gartner observed that 2013 was a remarkable year in flash storage, as evidenced by the most active acquisition frenzy in flash history. The 2014 will likely be a similar year as the consolidation on the market of solid-state storage is actively ongoing.

gartner_ssd_revenue_market_share_2012_2013_1

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KitGuru Says: It will be interesting to see how the market of solid-state storage will evolve in the future. It is obvious that bigger players will continue to control the lion’s share of the market. However, it remains to be seen how important will companies like Seagate and Western Digital be going forward on the market of SSDs. Moreover, SK Hynix, a major maker of NAND flash, still has not really entered the market of own-brand solid-state drives. Since there are at least three significant players who have not yet established their positions on the SSD market, expect them either to aggressively expand, or to acquire existing players.

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SanDisk to acquire Fusion-io for $1.1 billion https://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/anton-shilov/sandisk-to-acquire-fusion-io-for-1-1-billion-to-boost-enterprise-business/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/anton-shilov/sandisk-to-acquire-fusion-io-for-1-1-billion-to-boost-enterprise-business/#respond Mon, 16 Jun 2014 22:51:19 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=198505 SanDisk on Monday said that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Fusion-io, a leading maker of high-performance solid-state drives for enterprise and hyperscale datacenters. The takeover will help SanDisk to enter a new market and gain numerous technologies as well as new intellectual property. “Fusion-io will accelerate our efforts to enable the flash-transformed …

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SanDisk on Monday said that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Fusion-io, a leading maker of high-performance solid-state drives for enterprise and hyperscale datacenters. The takeover will help SanDisk to enter a new market and gain numerous technologies as well as new intellectual property.

“Fusion-io will accelerate our efforts to enable the flash-transformed data center, helping companies better manage increasingly heavy data workloads at a lower total cost of ownership,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk president and CEO. “Customers will benefit from the addition of Fusion-io’s leading PCIe solutions to SanDisk’s vertically integrated business model. We look forward to working with the world-class engineering and go-to-market teams from Fusion-io to provide high-value solutions to customers around the world.”

The acquisition of Fusion-io by SanDisk underlines the growing importance of PCI Express-based solid-state drives in the industry. Such drives are used by large companies like Amazon, Google or Facebook to get maximum performance from their storage.

fusion_io_iodrive_octal

A Fusion-io PCI Express SSD

Fusion-io’s hardware and software solutions offer very high performance and reliability. At present SanDisk’s own SSDs cannot provide anything similar to products by Fusion-io, but with the acquisition of the latter it will be able to serve new customers and markets. Currently Fusion-io has over 7000 customers worldwide, which will be a nice addition to SanDisk’s portfolio of clients.

The acquisition will be an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.1 billion, net of cash assumed. Under the terms of the agreement, SanDisk will commence a tender offer for all outstanding shares of Fusion-io for $11.25 per share in cash. SanDisk will fund the acquisition with cash available on its balance sheet. The transaction, which has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies, is subject to customary closing conditions, including clearance from relevant regulatory authorities and the completion of the tender offer.

It is expected that the transaction will close in the third quarter of SanDisk’s fiscal 2014 and be accretive to non-GAAP earnings in the second half of SanDisk’s fiscal 2015.

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KitGuru Says: The acquisition of Fusion-io is clearly a logical move by SanDisk. The popularity of Fusion-io’s products will only grow over time since the demand for high-speed storage is increasing.

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Supermicro prepares to render more of Hollywood https://www.kitguru.net/professional/workstation/bill-smyth/supermicro-prepares-to-render-more-of-hollywood/ https://www.kitguru.net/professional/workstation/bill-smyth/supermicro-prepares-to-render-more-of-hollywood/#respond Tue, 25 Mar 2014 07:27:13 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=182951 One of the biggest releases of 2014 will be the Hollywood extravaganza Jupiter Ascending. With a special effects budget likely to be larger than the GDP of some small countries, you might be wondering what kind of hardware sits in the background to make it all possible. KitGuru got some idea from Super Micro's Dev …

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One of the biggest releases of 2014 will be the Hollywood extravaganza Jupiter Ascending. With a special effects budget likely to be larger than the GDP of some small countries, you might be wondering what kind of hardware sits in the background to make it all possible. KitGuru got some idea from Super Micro's Dev Tyagi over at CeBIT 2014.

Back toward the end of the Pentium 4's life, there was a move to smaller, simpler, more parallel computing units that came from the Banias development team in Israel. Although clocks and power draw dropped, the overall effect was a significant boost in performance. For 2013, Intel had 5 server CPU launches scheduled and two of them were for Atom-based processors. At CeBIT 2014, Supermicro was showing off the kind of systems you can create when you use a lower wattage CPU and simply pack a huge number of them together into the same chassis.

For those outside the server workspace, when you see ‘U', it means a single unit of space that you would buy/rent in a server farm. How much compute power you can pack into each U that you pay for, determines your costs/profitability.

On that basis, if your processing requirement needs an absolute stack of i86 cores, then Supermicro's 6U 112-node MicroBlade could be interesting. It's an extreme-density, ultra energy-efficient micro server system loaded with Intel Atom C2000 series SoC processors, each of which can have up to 8 cores. This modular Blade architecture is designed to maximises rack utilisation by offering 112 independent power-conserving nodes – with each one dropping as low as 10W.

That means, in a 42U rack, you can enable up to 784 servers.

If you think that's a lot, then you'll be impressed to know that it's also possible to double that density – with 224 Intel Atom-based nodes.

In July 2014, a new Hollywood blockbuster will hit our screens. Jupiter Ascending has a stellar cast – and is a Wachowski twins epic – so special effects are part and parcel of the overall experience.

By continuously innovating – constantly adding in more power per node – the time taken to render a section of film will reduce. Which decreases costs and increases productivity.

Super-Micro-Avoton-CeBIT-2014-KitGuru

“Our latest server innovations are leading the industry for energy efficiency, density, and manageability for maximized performance per watt, per dollar, per square foot,” said Charles Liang, President and CEO of Supermicro. “Our new Intel Atom based platforms including the 6U 112-Node MicroBlade and 3U 24-Node MicroCloud are defining the future of green computing with solutions that support a wide range of workloads in Enterprise, extreme scale-out Data Center, Cloud and SMB applications. Additionally with next generation platforms supporting NVMe, 12Gb/s SAS3 and native 10GbE/40GbE, Supermicro offers the world’s most extensive range of advanced power conserving server, storage and networking solutions on the market”.

“The rate at which we're able to increase the power available within these systems is amazing”, said Dev Tyagi, General Manager at Supermicro (right, below). “The innovation never stops and the systems just keep on getting faster”.

Dev-Tyagi-Super-Micro-Marius-Tudor-Fusion-IO-CeBIT-2014-KitGuru

Supermicro's work in this field is absolutely adored by Intel.

Shannon Poulin, Intel vice-president and general manager of Data Center Group marketing told us, “Supermicro is taking maximum advantage of Intel's latest innovations to offer their customers compelling solutions optimised for today’s diverse set of application workloads, space and budgetary requirements”.

But, within any system, you will still have bottlenecks.

Also on the Supermicro stand we caught up with Marius Tudor (left, above), who heads up Strategic Partnerships for a company called Fusion-IO. From what we can tell, Fusion-IO has never seen two components joined together without thinking “Hey, bet we can make that faster by adding memory some memory”.

Marius told us, “Flash memory optimises industry-standard servers to deliver maximum application performance and system efficiency”.

If you're an IT professional and wondering just how much better Fusion-IO can make your world, Marius' company offers a free tool called ioTurbine, which helps you model the performance improvements that you're likely to find by installing various Fusion-IO products around your system installation.

One of the physical products that Marius pointed out was his ioDrive Octal product which can add more than 5TB of memory to a system, using a single PCI Express slot.

Impressive.

Going back to Hollywood, while there's no guaranteeing the plot for Jupiter Ascending, the enormous amount of special effects are likely to shine, rendered with some help from high-end Supermicro kit.

Jupiter-Ascending-Mila-Kunis-KitGuru

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KitGuru says: The enthusiast community tends to focus on single CPU systems where ‘expensive' is anything over £2,000. The kind of technology that Hollywood is using for rendering is absolutely amazing. We can't wait to see the final results when Jupiter Ascending gets released in July.

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