the SBus Product Directory

the SSD Buyers Guide - click to see article

the fastest SSDs - click to read article


Marketing Views	..

SPARC Product Directory - since 1992

from the makers of StorageSearch.com

Fusion-io fast SSDs - click for more info

world's fastest production PCIe SSD
from Fusion-io

the Fastest SSDs
the SSD Buyers Guide
the Top 10 SSD Companies
Predicting Future Flash SSD Performance
SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
Are MLC SSDs Ever Safe in Enterprise Apps?
RAM SSDs versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?

the SBus Product Directory

by Zsolt Kerekes, editor and publisher

In 1992 I published an independently researched buyers guide called the SBus Product Directory which included details of every SPARC compatible card, notebook, workstation, server and blade (we called them SBCs in those days) from every company in the Sun compatible market.

To research the book I contacted hundreds of computer companies worldwide and asked them about their intentions in the Sun market.

I had previously worked for about 5 years in the Sun market and had already used, benchmarked, integrated or evaluated products from many companies as part of a high performance systems integration business.

In many of our systems - an embedded Sun workstation was the cheapest (and slowest) piece of hardware.

I didn't plan to be a publisher and I thought the first edition of the book would be it. But I realized that the SPARC market was growing and I might be able to make a living by continuing to research and sell new editions of the book - and the worldwide database of Sun resellers and integrators that I had researched along the way.

Customers of these information services included Sun themselves - who used it in every sales US sales office to support customer questions about 3rd party hardware. At the time I would have preferred it if all customers bought their own books. Some did. (The bigger ones.) But most alas didn't.

It was difficult making money from directly marketing a printed book worldwide. And I kept it up to date - producing new editions at every print run.

Selling SPARC mailing lists helped to cross subsidize my book - but it was the web which changed everything.

In 1996 I set up a web site at www.sparcproductdirectory.com - initially with the idea of promoting the book.

Sun and SPARC International had kindly helped me promote the book - and they suggested I change the name to the SPARC Product Directory - because SPARC systems were now supporting PCI as well as SBus. And half the content was about servers.

Within a few weeks of setting up the new web site in the summer of 1996 it became clear to me that what customers really wanted was the directory online for free and I would have to teach myself how to sell web advertising.

And web advertising (selling ads in my own publications) has been the way I've earned my living ever since.

Today (in 2011) the SSD market - which I write about in StorageSearch.com is just as exciting as the SPARC compatible market seemed back in 1991 when I started this publishing phase of my career.

See also:- SPARC market history

...

this way to the Petabyte SSD

In 2016 there will be just 3 types of SSD in the datacenter.

One of them doesn't exist yet - the bulk storage SSD.

It will start to replace the last remaining strongholds of hard drives in the datacenter due to its unique combination of characteristics, huge storage density, low running costs and operational advantages.

Bulk storage SSDs will displace the last remaining hard drives in the enterprise server market by 2020 - even if the price of a new hard disk drops to zero and enterprise HDDs are given away free!

click to read the article - reaching for the petabyte SSD - not as scary as you may think

...

The new business and architectural models of the datacenter - how we get from here to there - and the technical and problems which will need to be solved - are just some of the ideas explored in this visionary article.

directory of SPARC compatible cards, add-in modules & peripherals
This topic used to take up about 1/2 the content of the SPARC Product Directory. The links below are for historic illustration only and no longer represent the current state of the market.
1553 adapters Analog to Digital Converters AppleTalk Interfaces ARINC Interfaces ATM Interfaces Audio Interfaces Bus Analysers Cables - Fibre channel Cables - InfiniBand Cables - Sun compatible video extension Cables - SCSI Counter-Timers Digital to Analog Converters DR11-W Interfaces DSP cards Encryption accelerators ESCON interfaces Ethernet NICs Ethernet Switches Extender Boards FDDI Interfaces Fibre Channel Interfaces GBICs & SFPs Firewire (IEEE 1394) Storage Graphics Adapters - LCD Graphics Adapters & Video cards Hard disk drives HIPPI network Interfaces IEEE-488 Interfaces InfiniBand Interfaces iSCSI ISDN Interfaces KVM Switches	Memory Modems - (Internal PCI cards) Monitors - LCD Myrinet Interfaces Network Switches NTDS Interfaces Parallel Printer Interfaces Parallel Interfaces (high speed) PCI Expansion Boxes PCMCIA Interfaces Prototype Boards Q-bus Interfaces RAID controllers SATA SBus Expansion Boxes Scanner Interfaces SCI Interfaces SCSI adapter cards Serial Attached SCSI Serial Interfaces SBus & PCI Storage Terminal Servers Token Ring Comms Interfaces Uninterruptible Power Supplies USB storage USB to Sun Keyboard Adapters Video adapter cables VME-bus to PCI Interfaces VME-bus to SBus Interfaces Watchdog cards and modules

SBus, PCI, USB etc... a user's introduction to the busses used in SPARC based computers what they do, market trends and 3rd party support. Historically the main expansion busses used for adding in cards and modules in SPARC based systems were (in order of introduction)
Expansion Bus	First appearance in a SPARC system	First production model in which used
VMEbus	1987	Sun Microsystems Sun-4 deskside server.
SCSI-bus	1987	Sun Microsystems Sun-4 deskside server.
SBus	1989	Sun Microsystems SPARCstation 1 desktop workstation.
MBus	1991	Sun Microsystems SPARCserver 600MP deskside and datacenter server.
PCMCIA	1994	Sun Microsystems Voyager transportable.
PCI	1996	Sun Microelectronics - SPARCengine Ultra AX oem motherboard.
Compact PCI	1997	FORCE COMPUTERS CPCI-522G card
USB	2001	Sun Microsystems - Sun Blade 100 workstation
InfiniBand	2002	Themis Computer, slot expansion for rugged enterprise servers
Serial Attached SCSI	2005	Sun Microsystems - Sun Fire X4100


today's SPARC news	SPARC computers	Sun/SPARC Resellers in the USA
SPARC manufacturers		Sun/SPARC Resellers in the UK
SPARC(R) is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc. SPARC PRODUCT DIRECTORY(SM) is a service mark of SPARC International, Inc used under license by ACSL. Products using the SPARC trademarks are based on an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.