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Israeli Startup Claims SSD Breakthrough
Lucas123 writes "Anobit Technologies announced it has come to market with its first solid state drive using a proprietary processor intended to boost reliability in a big way. In addition to the usual hardware-based ECC already present on most non-volatile memory products, the new drive's processor will add an additional layer of error correction, boosting the reliability of consumer-class (multi-level cell) NAND to that of expensive, data center-class (single-level cell) NAND. 'Anobit is the first company to commercialize its signal-processing technology, which uses software in the controller to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, making it possible to continue reading data even as electrical interference increases.' The company claims its processor, which is already being used by other SSD manufacturers, can sustain up to 4TB worth of writes per day for five years, or more than 50,000 program/erase cycles — as contrasted with the 3,000 cycles typically achieved by MLC drives. The company is not revealing pricing yet."
Early adopters will pay for continued R&D, which will then make this affordable for most people down the line. It's how these things work.
How is this different/better than the sandforce controllers we already have?
If this is really astroturfing, they just shot themselves on the foot. I mean, I've just got the message that this new technology of theirs will be "prohibitively expensive" ...
morcego
So, lets assume what you say is true - is this really a nice business that deserves success? Hard to say.
Obviously if they can do all that is claimed then they "deserve success", though of course that depends on your definition of success. If success means being the richest company in the world showered with personal sex slaves then, no, they really didn't deserve that. If you mean deserve to pay their employees a slightly above average salary for their area and have a slightly above average return for their investors then certainly - I would say they deserve more than that.
Of course that is the crux of the problem that is asked and the one you bring up - they took a cheap system and through software made it perform as well as the high dollar items. They then apparently turned around and charged the similar to the high end items which kinda defeats the whole "cheaper" angle. They do not deserve to do that because they found a nifty way to do something.
Since you are an AC there are already a few posts accusing you of astroturfing, if so then it is a poor attempt. You tell us a story where someone is charging WAY too much for their product and basically failed due to a bad marketing department (marketing isn't just there to hype a product, in a successful business it has a real impact on how profitable things are). If they can take a cheapo drive and through software/firmware make it perform like a high dollar one and then charge me most of what the high dollar one costs - why purchase theirs? They would have to have nearly totally equal guarantees that the enterprise level devices did.
In short getting 95% the benefit at 90% the cost isn't really worth it - that extra percentage in costs is usually worth other intangibles ("Who ever got fired because of purchasing IBM" was an effective marketing tool for a reason even when you got 90% the benefit at 110% the cost), getting 90% at 70% the cost very much is. In the longer run if true then this will make a difference - if they have a patent then selling/licensing it can generate a decent amount of money if done well. But if they follow the pricing model you allude too then it will be a dead end.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
It also often costs more and is less upgradable, though. These days Linux's software RAID, for example, beats out hardware RAID in a lot of ways (except on the high end).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's all digital.
Actually, once you get far down enough, nothing is :)
So we can have 50.000 instead of 3000 rewrite cycles. That's great. However, I still like the 100.000 to 1.000.000 rewrite cycles of SLC. Actually, SLC is only 50% more expensive to manufacture (per bit) than two-level MLC - I really don't understand why are manufacturers so enamoured with MLC.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
This sounds absolutely no different to how all wear-leveled, error correcting flash controllers work. They all use multiple levels of ECC to decrease the error rate. The 'signal processing' they're doing doesn't sound like anything new.
If there is something new going on here, it's absolutely impossible to decode from the layman's language used in the article. All I hear is "Other vendors use X bits for ECC. We use Y bits and we do it in software instead of hardware.", which is basically just another way of saying "Other vendors have 4 blades, we have 5 blades."
Onc you get far down enough, everything is. Consider Planck time: it's the smallest quantum of time for which there can be "a difference that makes a difference".
Extra ECC data and fancy controller trickery can't get around the fact that the write limit is a limit of the underlying flash, not the controller...
Extra ECC data and fancy controller trickery can't get around the fact that the magnetic media density limit is a limit of the underlying magnetic domains, not the controller...
No wait! Then they invented PRML. Turns out the underlying limit was actually due to engineers lacking vision. All they needed was a new analytic frame of reference. The same deal has happened over and over again with RF spectrum. One man's noise is another man's signal. I just don't know the RF world well enough to cite examples off the top of my head.
That said, there's a long of history of quacks who would like you to believe they invented PRML when they actually haven't.
On gut instinct I'd give this about 3:1 against this having a solid grain of truth, and slightly longer odds against commercialization at significantly better than cost parity compared to other methods of achieving the same end. Even where you find a grain of truth, the product often falls into a niche for one reason or another. Sometimes it's nothing serious, just small things that get refined in the due course of time, which would be great if your massively larger competitors were transfixed with awe.
So many business plans are missing the critical line item:
Transfix deep-pocket competitors with awe while we burnish our new technology to ultimate perfection.
Pity.
Several of the most important corporations in the world have major R&D sites in Israel. You would have to boycott Intel, Microsoft, Sun, Philips, Zoran, IBM, Motorola.. the list goes on..
Besides whats the point? How does you not buying a superior SSD promote peace in any way?
Strong hi-tech companies provide philanthropic aid many times without accordance to government policies. So what your saying doesn't make much sense.
I believe in peace and human rights, but honestly I don't think South Africa is an example of how things should be done.