Items tagged with Fusion-io
SanDisk has announced the release of third-generation Fusion ioDrive PCIe and Mezzanine flash cards, in doing so marking the first integration of SanDisk NAND flash and Virtual Storage Layer (VSL) software into the ioMemory product line since the company acquired Fusion-io in June 2014 for $1.1 billion. Flash technology has moved significantly forward since the SanDisk's acquisition of Fusion, with smaller geometries and denser dies, all of which mean more flash capacity can now be placed on a PCIe flash card with performance raised and/or prices cut. Which explains why SanDisk is saying that their new products — built with SanDisk NAND — will offer a four times price performance improvement,...
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Two well known players in the flash storage business are about to become one. In somewhat of a surprise move, SanDisk inked an agreement to acquire Fuision-io in a deal that's worth about $1.1 billion. It's an all-cash offer of $11.25 per share, which is about 21 percent higher than Fusion-io's closing price on June 13. This is a big acquisition for SanDisk. The company is already an established player in the flash media space with its chips being found in smartphones, digital cameras, and various other mobile devices. SanDisk also uses its chips to market its own brand solid state drives (SSDs), including its Extreme PRO SSD introduced earlier this month. Not only does SanDisk make its own SSDs,...
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Fusion-io just took the wraps off a new, high-performance series of MLC NAND flash-based accelerators that push the limits in terms of speed and capacity. There are two families of products in the new Fusion-io Atomic series, the high-end PX600 series and the not quite as high-end, but still drool-worthy SX300 series. The Fusion-io SX300 Atomic Series products will be offered in capacities of 1.25TB all the way on up to a massive 6.4TB. The 1.25, 1.6, and 3.2TB devices feature low-profile PCBs, while the larger 6.4TB Atomic SX300 has a half-length, but standard full-height PCB. All of the drives have PCIe 2.0 x8 connections. The maximum read bandwidth on all of the SX300 series parts is...
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When it comes to picking out a storage scheme, businesses face the same dilemma as home users. The decision at hand is whether to spend a premium on high performance solid state storage, or stretch those dollars on higher capacity and slower performing mechanical hard drives. It's not unusual for a home user to opt for both by configuring a solid state drive (SSD) to run the operating system and beefier hard drive for storing files. Fusion-io offers a similar solution for enterprise users, only far more advanced. It's called ioControl, an intelligent hybrid storage solution that allows IT professionals to use both kinds of storage mediums with software optimized to maximize efficiency according...
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Some pretty meaningful changes are afoot at one of the world's most innovative suppliers of flash storage, Fusion-io. Announced this week, the company's president and the co-founder both stepped aside, leaving big holes in a company that's struggling to get solid footing for growth. David Flynn is leaving his post at CES, as is CMO Rick White. Interestingly, both are parting ways to pursue entrepreneurial investing activities, presumably at the same firm. Flynn and White will both remain members of the Board and will serve in advisory roles to the company for the next 12 months. So, what's happening? Well, Shane Robison is stepping up as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, effective...
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Fusion-io's ioDrive line has become an icon in its own right, proving that all-flash storage solutions -- while pricey -- do fit in our world. Now, the company is taking yet another swipe at the market (citing a target of "webscale" customers) with the introduction of ioScale. This unit was previously exclusive to Fusion-io customers outfitting thousands of servers, but is now available for hyperscale and cloud companies in minimum order quantities of only one hundred units. Each ioScale provides up to 3.2 terabytes of reliable Fusion ioMemory capacity that is performance tuned for the unique needs of webscale environments. With prices starting at $3.89 USD per gigabyte with increasing...
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Haven't heard too much news from Fusion-io lately, but the company famous for making PCIe-based solid state storage "a thing" is back in a big way. The company has today announced that it is bringing the power of its ioMemory technology to visual effects professionals with the Fusion ioFX. According to the company, the new monster is "designed to eliminate data bottlenecks that slow the creative production process for digital artists, the Fusion ioFX enables creative professionals to meet deadlines while exploring more artistic possibilities by bridging the performance gap between workstations and today's powerful digital content creation applications." It's based on the ioMemory platform that...
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When it comes to wild storage performance, few do it better than Fusion-io. The company has cranked on some insane NAND-based storage solutions in the past, but none as crazy as this. At a recent demo, they managed to break one billion (with a B!) IOPS. Yeah, that's many, many more times what even your average PCIe-based solid state drive can muster. The demo was conducted at DEMO Enterprise: An Evening of Innovation, in a preview of the company’s latency reducing Auto Commit Memory (ACM) extension, part of the Fusion-io Memory subsystem. This demonstration used eight HP ProLiant DL370 servers, each equipped with eight ioDrive2 Duos, to break the one billion IOP barrier when transferring...
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Fusion-io reminds us why we love technology so much. How so? Well, it's awfully hard not to perk up and get excited when you learn about a 10TB storage device with multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory. Yes folks, that's ten freaking terabytes Fusion-io managed to cram onto its ioDrive Octal, or twice as much as was previously available on the single double-wide PCI Express device. "The 10TB ioDrive Octal packs increased raw flash capacity in a server, enabling customers to accelerate even very large data sets with an intelligent and efficient ioMemory solution," said David Flynn, Fusion-io Chairman and CEO. "Previously, a 4U server could contain 10 ioDrive Duos for 20 TB of total capacity,...
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And the fast, just keeps on getting faster. And cheaper. And more mainstream. And that's just the way we like it. As hard drives continue to best SSDs and NAND-based storage solutions in price, the latter two are besting HDDs in terms of performance. No shock there, but the "price gap" keeps getting more and more narrow, making it easier for performance freaks to side with flash over mechanical drives. Fusion-io has been at the forefront of the NAND / SSD revolution, and this week they're introducing a new and improved ioDrive aimed at the masses. The ioDrive2 promises more capacity, enhanced enterprise reliability, better performance and lower cost. Sounds like a win-win, doesn't it? It's the...
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Wow, Fusion-io doesn’t mess around; just a few weeks after acquiring IO Turbine, the company has made ioTurbine software (note the subtle name change) the centerpiece of its new ioCache solution. ioCache uses an ioMemory product with ioTurbine software to offer scalable data caching for data-intensive applications on virtualized machines. Traditionally, data-intensive applications have caused a problem for VMs, facing a performance bottleneck due to slow storage, but Fusion-io believes that ioCache will finally defeat that issue. “Just as RAM benefits from close integration within the server, our VSL subsystem integrates ioMemory within the server as a true memory resource to eliminate...
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When it comes to lightning-fast storage, Fusion-io's name comes with a mighty reputation. Now, the company is taking its name one step closer to the mainstream with a partnership involving NVIDIA, Tweak Software and Thinkbox Software. The company has joined forces with those guys at the SIGGRAPH 2011 conference on computer graphics and interactive technologies. According to the joint release, Fusion-io is collaborating with a number of leading technology companies, including NVIDIA, Thinkbox Software and Tweak Software, to accelerate entertainment production by demonstrating full resolution, real-time digital content creation for many of the industry's most powerful applications. The demonstration...
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Well, this isn't completely unexpected. Fusion-io, a company that has been on a rapid growth pattern for years now in the flash storage market, has just reached the end of their term as a privately held company. Or, they will soon. Today, the outfit announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a proposed initial public offering of shares of its common stock. This is the same company for which Steve Wozniak (Apple's co-founder) is acting in an advisory role has just issued their intentions to go public, and that could mean very big things ahead. As of now, there has been no decision made as to the quantity of shares,...
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If we consider companies like LSI and their competitors, like Adaptec and AMCC (3Ware), you'll note that they're in a unique position in this storage technology migration, in that they can almost take an agnostic stance, in terms of which media type and market opportunity they decide to resource development efforts in. For players like LSI, with a wealth of HBA controller IP at their disposal, they can relatively easily adapt and re-tool their technologies to service NAND Flash SSD memory structures and bring compelling solutions to market as market demand develops. The LSI WarpDrive that we have on hand for you here is representative of LSI's efforts to capitalize on the company's strong...
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When we sit back and look at the evolving storage market and SSD technologies, there are a couple of competitive camps that are trying to gain traction, in what is without question one of the largest growth areas in storage. The major players in solid state storage solutions have emerged from old-line, incumbents in hard disk media and then also a new breed, specializing exclusively in SSD technology. Major memory manufacturers like Intel, Micron and Samsung, along with specialty shops like OCZ and Corsair, are making a push with their expertise in memory, whereas players like Western Digital and Seagate also have skin in the game, but are walking the line carefully, as the migration...
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Fusion-io has been blazing its own trail ever since the company was founded in 2006, tweaking technology to fit the kind of high speed products the company likes to release. Having seemingly hit a ceiling in PCI Express-based SSDs, Fusion-io has now gone and developed a new ioMemory module that will set the foundation for Fusion-io's next crop of products. The new ioMemory boasts support for the latest generation of MLC NAND Flash and 3X-nanometer (nm), which ultimately will allow Fusion-io to double up the capacity of its product lineup and squeeze up to 1.28TB of capacity onto a single PCI Express card. The performance potential here is off the charts, with Fusion promising up to 285,000 sustained...
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It's difficult to say if or when Fusion-io's newest development will directly affect the average consumer, but as with many things in the technology field, what starts at the highest levels of enterprise eventually filters down to the consumer once kinks have been worked out, prices have adjusted downward and more partner companies have had time to adopt the new process. We are guessing that's exactly the path that ioMemory will take, which is a new flash-optimized OS subsystem. ioMemory VSL (Virtual Storage Layer) is definitely an enterprise application for now. It has little direct connection to the parts within your existing notebook or desktop, but the ideas presented here could definitely...
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Fusion-io is probably one of the most important storage companies that you've never heard of. It won't be placed on Best Buy shelves beside Seagate, Western Digital or Hitachi, but in five years, it may be all the rage. Already, the start-up company (which has ties to Apple's Steve Wozniak) has delivered some of the fastest solid state storage on the planet, and it looks like the company is well on their way to doing that for some time to come.Innovation takes dollars, and thankfully for Fusion-io, their bank account just got stuffed with them. The company has just announced that they have raised another $45 million in Series C financing, led by new investor Meritech Capital Partners, as well...
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If it's dealing with flash storage, NAND or any combination of the two, there's a chance Fusion-io is involved somewhere. The company responsible for serving up one of the fastest consumer SSDs we've ever seen is also making waves in the enterprise, as today is has announced the company’s core ioMemory technology will serve as the basis for a solid-state storage solution offered exclusively in IBM's family of System x servers. The news is pretty large for just a start-up company; it takes a lot of dough and a lot of support to really break through into a market dominated by huge players like Seagate and Western Digital, but tossing a partnership with IBM on your resume can definitely go a long...
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The first time we looked at Fusion-io's ioDrive product, we offered the notion that it was a "disruptive technology", something that had the potential to set the industry on its ear. Of course the ioDrive is an enterprise-class product that showed the significant potential of PCI Express direct-attached SSD storage but its cost structure was such that the mainstream market couldn't possibly even begin to justify it, no matter what the upside performance looked like. And then of course we heard of Fusion-io's more consumer-targeted play, the ioXtreme, which debuted at E3 this past summer. Obviously, E3 is a consumer electronics entertainment venue so it became abundantly clear that...
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It's rare we get genuinely excited around here about a product. To be honest, likely we're spoiled by all the bleeding-edge technology we have the great opportunity to look at week in and week out. Or perhaps it's just that we're jaded a bit and have heard one too many marketing pitches, but truth be told it takes a lot to get us fired up about a new product or technology. Sure we can appreciate and will occasionally hand out high praise for a major evolutionary advancement but we honestly can't remember the last time a product really officially "changed the game" for us, or so to speak. The first time we looked at Fusion-io's ioDrive product, we offered the notion that...
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If you've been watching our previous coverage of Fusion-io's almost too good be true PCI Express SSD products, you'll know that while the company makes no bones about the fact that their enterprise class cards are ridiculously expensive, they are also planning on delivering an "enthusiast" class card that will align better price-wise with the average end user just looking for killer storage performance. It appears the planning process is over today and though it was delayed a month or two, Fusion-io is now executing on that plan. Fusion-io's ioXtreme and ioXtreme Pro cards just showed up to the Boston HH Test Labs and as we like to say around here, they're looking pretty <HOT>....
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