| Astute
Networks Provides ATCA Storage for SPARC Blades |
San
Diego, CA - June 12, 2008 - Astute Networks, Inc today announced the
availability of a bladed storage solution for the Sun compatible ATCA
market.
Sun Microsystems and Astute Networks will be
demonstrating a scalable ATCA platform at the
NXTcomm 2008 show in Las Vegas (June
16 - 19). The demonstration is based on Sun's MySQL Cluster database, and is
implemented utilizing Sun's Netra CT900 ATCA bladed server chassis, the Astute
Networks' Caspian R1100 Edge Storage Blade, and the Sun Netra CP3260 UltraSPARC
T2 blade server. ...Astute
Networks profile,
Storage Events
Sun Microsystems Announces SSD Product Plans
SANTA
CLARA, CA - June 4, 2008 - Sun Microsystems today announced it will
ship flash SSD products in its Solaris servers in the 2nd half of the year.
"Flash
SSD is the most exciting innovation to happen to system and storage design
in over a decade. By mid-2009, it will be in the majority of servers and deliver
more capacity than DRAM and far greater overall system performance and energy
efficiency," said John Fowler, executive VP, of Sun's Systems Group. "This
technology will completely change how server and storage infrastructure is
designed and deployed in enterprise data centers."
...Sun Microsystems profile
Editor's
comments:- No surprises here. Sun has unique opportunities for exploiting
SSDs as I explained in my article
Why Sun Should
Acquire an SSD Company. That was published 4 years ago here in the
SPARC Product Directory.
Looking
ahead - see the new article -
Predicting Future Flash
SSD Performance - which is the technology roadmap for this industry.
Themis Brings SPARC T2 CMT to IBM BladeCenters
California
- June 2, 2008 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Themis Computer
today announced that Themis will make and sell blade servers based on Sun's
UltraSPARC T2 CMT processor running the Solaris 10 OS.
The
T2BC Blade Server fits in an
IBM BladeCenter and includes 1 T2 SPARC CMT processor, upto 32GB
RAM and a 500GB
hard disk.
Fibre Channel and
InfiniBand support
will be available via optional daughtercards
The T2BC Blade Server is
available from Themis now, and will start shipping broadly in August. Pricing
starts at $15,000.
"Our T2BC blade server is Themis' first product using the
UltraSPARC T2 processor and continues the long partnership we have had with Sun,"
said Bill Kehret, president and CEO of Themis. "Our customers are always
looking for more performance and lower power, and the UltraSPARC T2 processor's
innovative chip multithreading architecture provides both. As with our other
highly successful SPARC-based computing products, our T2BC blades are designed
to operate seamlessly within a Sun network,"
...Themis
Computer profile
Pillar Beats NAS Bastions for Credit Card Storage
San
Jose, Calif - May 13, 2008 - finance company Preferred Credit has
selected Pillar Data Systems' Axiom 300 storage for its production
environment in preference to competing solutions from Network Appliance
and EqualLogic.
Pillar says this was based on ease of use,
flexibility, lower TCO, and the Axiom's ability to prioritize LUNs - a feature
Pillar calls
Application-Aware
Storage. ...Pillar
Data Systems profile
PLX Technology's PCIe Switches Used on Sun's SPARC Motherboards
SUNNYVALE, Calif -
May 5, 2008 - PLX Technology, Inc. today announced that multiple PLX
PEX 8548 PCIe switches for high-performance PCIe fanout and slot expansion have
been designed to support the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240
servers.
The PEX 8548 is a highly flexible 48-lane PCIe switch. 2
PLX ExpressLane PEX 8548 PCIe switches each interface to a Sun UltraSPARC T2
Plus processor through a x8 PCIe link integrated directly into processor
silicon, which provides fanout to onboard devices and up to 6 x8 PCIe slots for
I/O expansion.
Unique key attributes include a remarkable low latency of 110ns, an
energy-saving low power requirement of only 4.9W (typical), flexible port
configurations (x1, x2, x4, x8, x16), true peer-to-peer communication, and
native Hot-Plug ports ensuring RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability).
"As the market leader in advanced PCIe interconnect solutions,
PLX has delivered the high-performance PCI Express technology requirements of
key customers like Sun," said David Raun, VP of marketing and business
development at PLX Technology. "Sun demands very high-speed connectivity
and quality of service, and we are pleased that they find PLX products are
exceeding all expectations."
Editor's comments:- PCIe provides a low cost way to many high
performance upgrade options such as
PCIe SSDs.
Sun Buys x86 Chip Company
Editor:-
April 24, 2008 - an article in the Register says that Sun Micro
has acquired the assets of a portable chip company called Montalvo Systems.
Montalvo, which burned
its way through $100 million funding, was working on x86 multi-core designs for
notebooks. The Register article speculates that Sun's interest relates to the IP
of asymmetric processor cores - which could be useful in special purpose SPARC
chips.
SPARC T2 Gets Carrier Grade Linux
SAN JOSE, CA - April
16, 2008 - Wind River Systems, Inc. today announced it will port its
Carrier Grade Linux and Workbench development suite to Sun's
UltraSPARC T2 processor.
This will be the first carrier grade
Linux for Sun's CMT processors. Sun's Netra Carrier Grade rack servers and ATCA
blades will be the first CMT systems to run Wind River Carrier Grade Linux.
...Wind River
profile,
Operating Systems
for SPARC servers
Editor's comments:- in
SPARC's 20 year
history Linux software hasn't had much close contact with SPARC hardware -
and mainly featured as a competitor.
Despite that, I was surprised to
see that the word "Linux" appears on 24% of pages in
the
SPARC Product Directory.
That's more than I thought but probably 4x less often than in other
"Unix" publications.
In August 2003 (which was not a very
optimistic time for the SPARC market) I wrote an article -
What's the Trigger
Event that will Turn Around Sun's Revenue Decline? - in which I explored
all the technology and business options that could make a significant
difference to how the market viewed and reacted to Sun's SPARC products.
The
analysis in that article is just as relevant now and still makes good reading.
And I haven't changed a single word in this conclusion from that 5 years old
article.
"The future availability of a strong SPARC/Linux product
family will be beneficial to Solaris users - there will be a bigger market for
processors, and so faster SPARC processors will come out sooner and at lower
cost. It will cut down the arguments for users to migrate away from SPARC. It
will also offer a credible platform for Sun to attack HP and IBM. It will be
good for Sun, good for current and future SPARC users, and good for competition
in the computer market."
3 years after that article was published
HP wrote an (anti-Sun) article -
The
Real Story about Linux on Sun's SPARC - with some amusing and interesting
points about what they referred to as Sun's "on again, off again"
approach to Linux. That, and the stats quoted by HP may all be true, but I
think the new combination of SPARC T2 with Linux is going to reduce the bonuses
paid to many HP server sales people in the next year or so.
Sun Doubles SPARC Server Density (Again)
SANTA
CLARA, Calif - April 9, 2008 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Fujitsu
Limited today introduced the first dual-socket UltraSPARC T2 Plus based
servers.
The SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240 servers feature up
to 128 compute threads in 1U or 2U and deliver up to 16x higher
compute density than competitive dual socket x86 systems.
Meeting the
threat of Solaris
Migration offerings from competing vendors Sun has also addressed the issue
of customers with legacy applications running older versions of Solaris who want
to take advantage of lower cost / faster hardware. Sun announced 2 new offerings
which provide virtualization services to run Solaris 8 and Solaris 9
applications and help enable the simple transfer of applications to the latest
CMT systems running the Solaris 10 OS.
With these new products,
Solaris 8 and 9 Containers for the Solaris 10 OS, multiple Solaris 8 or Solaris
9 environments, or a combination of the two, can be hosted on a single
SPARC-based system. As a result, customers can streamline IT operations,
maximize datacenter space, and save on power, cooling and support costs.
The
move to the latest hardware is now de-coupled from the need to move directly to
the Solaris 10 OS.
Themis Founder, Bill Kehret, Joins VITA's Board
FREMONT,
California - April 3, 2008 - Themis Computer announced today that the
company has joined the VITA organization's board of directors.
William
E. Kehret, president and CEO of Themis Computer was appointed to the VITA board
of directors effective March 1, 2008. William "Bill" Kehret will fill
a position in VITA's expanded board membership. The appointment of Bill Kehret
reflects the organization's desire to strengthen its executive ranks and Bill's
vision will help VITA to continue its leadership role in the embedded computing
market.
As founder and CEO of Themis Computer, Bill Kehret brings a strong
technological background to the VITA board. Bill Kehret is also a member of
Themis' board of directors. Prior to founding Themis in 1989, he spent over 20
years in the embedded computing market, most of it managing the several
companies he helped found.
...Themis
Computer profile, Storage
Industry Trade Associations,
Storage People
Editor's
comments:- as someone who integrated over 100 different types of VME cards
in the late 1980s I never thought that VME would last so long. I didn't think
that SBus would be successful at first either. But within a few years of Sun
launching its SBus
in 1989 - it became a bigger market in revenue than VME.
VME always
supported multiple CPU architectures and operating systems, and it evolved and
has survived to the present day. SBus was never adopted outside the SPARC
market and Sun
transitioned SBus in 1997 in favor of PCI which first made its appearance
in a SPARC system in the SPARCengine Ultra AX.
SPARC Product Directory
featured VMEbus SPARC SBCs from over 10 oems in SPARC's history. These
were:- Auspex Systems, DTK Computer, Force Computers, General Micro Systems,
Integrated Micro Products, Ironics, Men Mikro Electronik, Solflower, Solbourne
, Sun Microsystems and
Themis Computer,
the last of which is the only company to have stayed the VME SPARC SBC course.
SSDs are as hot a subject
today as SPARC was in the blazing years of the dotcom boom. 7 companies make
VMEbus form factor SSDs. I added a new entry for another VME SSD in our
SSD Buyers Guide
only a few days ago.
On the subject of
SSDs and things that have
been around a long time - Texas
Memory Systems celebrated 30 years making SSDs this week.
the Top 10 SSD OEMs in Q1 2008
Editor:- April 2, 2008 -
STORAGEsearch.com today published the 4th edition of - "the Top
10 Solid State Disk OEMs."
Covering the quarter ending
March 31, 2008 - the article also looks at market milestones and comments on
changes since the earlier quarters.
Inevitably - over 60
SSD oems couldn't make it
into the top 10 SSD list (and that includes
enterprise rackmount
SSD wannabe EMC which
lay just outside at #11.)
If you're choosing
SSD suppliers or strategic
partners - this is the must-see predictive list of the top companies that
matter - based on hundreds of thousands of readers searching for SSD content
on the site rated most highly by SSD companies themselves. ...read the article | |
| . | |
Astute Networks
Provides ATCA Storage for Sun Blades
Sun Microsystems Announces SSD
Product Plans
Themis Brings SPARC T2 CMT to IBM BladeCenters
Pillar Beats
NAS Bastions for Credit Card Storage
PLX's PCIe Switches Used on Sun's
SPARC Motherboards
Sun Buys x86 Chip Company
SPARC T2 Gets
Carrier Grade Linux
Sun Doubles SPARC Server Density (Again)
Themis
Founder, Bill Kehret, Joins VITA's Board
earlier news - archive |
|
|
| . |
| Are MLC SSDs Safe
in Enterprise Apps? |
This is a follow up
article to the popular
SSD Myths and
Legends which, a year earlier demolished the myth that flash memory
wear-out (a comfort blanket beloved by many
RAM SSD makers)
precluded the use of flash in heavy duty datacenters.
This new
article looks at the risks posed by MLC Nand Flash SSDs which have recently
hatched from their breeeding ground as chip modules in cellphones and morphed
into
hard disk form
factors. |
 |
It starts down a familiar
lane but an unexpected technology twist takes you to a startling new world
of possibilities.
...read the
article | | |
| . |
| Z's Laws - Predicting
Future Flash SSD Performance |
A a reader asked me a
very good question.
"Is there an industry roadmap for future
flash SSD
performance?"
That prompted other questions like...
- How fast are flash SSDs going to be in 2009?, 2010? or 2012?
- What are the technology factors which relate to flash SSD throughput and
IOPS?
- How close will flash SSDs get to
RAM SSD performance?
There wasn't a simple answer I could give at the time. Clues lay
scattered all across this web site
and in my many one on one discussions with readers about the market... |
 |
But I agreed there should be
a single place on the web where these answers could be found.
Forget
Moore's
Law. That gives you the wrong answer, and this article explains why. ...read the article | | | |
