Monday, October 31, 2016

WFR's New SSD and Controller SWOT Analysis – Is Speed Enough?

Who is making high performance SSDs for the Client, Enterprise and Commercial applications?  Who is pushing the edge of third party Controllers: intelligent processing of NVMe storage, compression and Object storage?

MONTEREY, CA., October 31, 2016 – WebFeet Research, Inc., an industry leading Non Volatile Memory and Storage market research firm, introduces the sixth annual report SSD SWOT Analysis and Company Profile, which provides the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of 60+ standard form factor SSD vendors and 30+ third party Controller manufacturers. This report recognizes the difficulty of knowing which SSD and controller storage companies are active in the market, what products and services do they offer and who is advancing the ‘intelligent processing’ of memory and storage.   This timely update also lists the major vendors in hardware: Enterprise Solutions and All Flash Arrays, and through software/firmware: Business Intelligence and Analytics, Data Analytics, In-Memory Compute, Object Storage and Distributed File Systems, and NVMf Fabrics.

Besides being a veritable who’s who covering the players in each market, this analysis provides more clarity in highlighting how the SSD and controllers are evolving towards the merging of memory and hot storage. The hardware side of the SSDs shows the host interface moving from SATA and SAS to PCIe/NVMe and into the Memory channel. On the controller side are advances in handling or processing large data sets, reducing latency, improving LDPC and ECC, applying real time compression, enabling object storage, and enhancing security. Storage Class Memory (SCM) along with the advent of Data Centric Computing has motivated lead vendors like CNEX, NGD Systems and Symbolic IO to optimize the features of SCM or counter with their unique approach.
For marketing, finance or strategic planning professionals this report is essential. The SSD and Controller SWOT report, SS350SWOT-2016, is available for purchase from WebFeet Research in electronic excel format at $3,995.
About WebFeet Research   
Headquartered in Monterey, California, WebFeet Research provides business consulting and market research services in the memory and storage markets, with a focus on nonvolatile memory and solid state storage technologies.

Monday, June 20, 2016

WebFeet Research Heralds 2015 as Awakening of Life beyond NAND and DRAM

Flash Memory Components Market Revenues Improved to $33B, 3D XPoint Announced

Monterey, CA - June 20, 2016 – After reaching a midyear turning point WebFeet Research reflects on the salient 2015 announcements impacting the Non Volatile Memory market and the computing industry.  Intel and Micron revealed 3D XPoint memory heralding a sea change in computing memory architecture that will complement then replace DRAM and ‘high performance’ NAND. In consolidating its annual results of each Flash memory vendor’s shipments, WebFeet Research found the 2015 Flash memory market to be $33.4 billion, an increase of 8.2% from 2014.  A substantial increase in 2015 revenues came from the NAND Flash market at 10.6%, while the NOR market contracted dramatically from 2014 by -13.7 %. Samsung was again the 2015 revenue market leader for all NV Memories and NAND, Cypress (Spansion) established itself as the NOR Flash and the NVRAM market leader, and Winbond maintained the serial NOR leadership position. This report discusses the impact of the mergers and acquisitions (SanDisk and ISSI) on the memory market, qualifies the migration of planar to 3D NAND, quantifies how fast the emerging NVM are growing including XPoint as well as the reemergence of NRAM, and presents two forecasts for serial EEPROM showing the impact (slow initial adoption) of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its aggressive scenario.  

The 2015 Non Volatile Memory Market Shares by Vendor report, CS700MS-2016, includes market shares by vendor for total Non Volatile Memory, NAND Flash, NOR Flash, serial NOR Flash, total EEPROM, serial EEPROM, parallel EEPROM, OTP ROM (EPROM and Mask ROM), and NVRAM (NVSRAM, RTC, MRAM, FeRAM, PCM, XPoint, RRAM, NRAM and Others).  Annual revenue forecasts are provided from 2014-2021 for the EEPROM, OTP ROM, and NVRAM markets. In addition, the NVSRAM market shares are broken out by vendor for Real Time Clocks (RTC) and NVSRAM from 2010-2015.  This report, CS700MS-2016, is available for $2.5K and for providers of the market share data they can obtain the report with a $500 discount.  WebFeet Research also has forecast the serial EEPROM (conservative and aggressive) and the NVSRAM (nvSRAM, RTC) from 2013-2021 by density for revenue, units, and ASPs, and for the serial EEPROM by interface type.  Each of these additional forecasts are priced at $500 and come in excel format. 

WebFeet Research, located in Monterey, California, provides business consulting and market research services in the memory and storage markets, with emphasis on flash memory components, flash cards, EFDs, SSDs, and In-Memory Computing. 

Monday, March 28, 2016

WFR's New Applications Report Addresses - XPoint Impacts on Flash and Memory Applications

How will XPoint Memory improve the intelligent processing of the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data and Enterprise SSDs? How will it impact Flash and DRAM consumption in 2016 and beyond?

MONTEREY, CA., March 28, 2016 WebFeet Research, Inc. recognizes the magnitude and impact of the 3D XPoint memory progressively adding intelligence to memory and storage as well as heralding in a new cognitive computing paradigm. There has been a bit of confusion about when XPoint will be available and with which applications. The fourteenth annual report Flash and XPoint Memory Applications and Markets, (CS100XFA-2016) provides some clarity to the timing and markets XPoint will address as well as showing the intelligence evolution theme weaving through NOR, NAND and XPoint. This major update provides an integrated memory/storage end-use market segmentation in the consumer, mobile and computing markets and forecasts the NOR, NAND, 3D NAND and XPoint usage in over 175 end-use applications.  Some of the new applications forecast are; when server-side XPoint DIMMs will replace NVDIMMs, the rise of wearable computing, Connected Home IoT and autonomous cars.
As the Flash/NVM technology evolves adding intelligence so did its markets. Beginning with basic media file storage in consumer applications NAND grew in usage. Mobile storage in Smart phones needs more intelligent Flash in performing execute-in-place with more reliable storage. Computing applications require the utmost performance from the block addressable NAND and XPoint as byte persistent SCM merges working data with hot storage to enable high capacity in-memory computing. Finally, the lost step-child NOR should see a mild rebound with high speed twin-Quad XTRM or HyperFlash Serial NOR initiating the connection for the Internet of Things in over 30 billion Intelligent Connected devices in 2020.
In the Flash and XPoint Memory Applications and Markets forecast, WebFeet Research provides a density breakout by revenue, units, and Mbits/Gbits for NAND (SLC, MLC, TLC, eMLC, SPI, Combo (MCP) NAND); 3D NAND (MLC, TLC); NOR, MLC NOR, serial NOR, Combo NOR and serial Combo NOR; and XPoint Memory.  The forecast period includes 2013-2015 historical and 2016-2020 projections.  A special section breaks out the serial NOR by over 30 applications including the major use of quad/plus IO serial NOR components.  In addition, the compute market examines the use of Flash cache, Server-side SSDs and storage SSDs for the client and cloud/datacenter/enterprise end-use markets. GigaByte consumption is also forecast by memory/storage end-use market and shows when computing becomes the Flash consumption market share leader.  Finally, the 2015 Flash Market Shares by Vendor is included showing how the players have changed position based on acquisitions and pricing to reach $31.3 billion in NAND, $2.1 billion in NOR and for a total of $33.4 billion in total Flash.

The Flash and XPoint Memory Applications and Markets: 2013-2020 report, CS100XFA-2016, (348 pages) is available for purchase from WebFeet Research in electronic and hard copy at $5,950.