Texas Memory Systems
| Company type | Private (before acquisition) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer storage, Solid-state drives, Digital signal processors |
| Founded | 1978 in Houston, Texas, United States |
| Founder | Holly Frost |
| Defunct | October 1, 2012 |
| Fate | Acquired by IBM |
| Headquarters | Houston , United States |
Area served | Worldwide (large enterprises and government organizations) |
Key people | Holly Frost (founder) |
| Products | Solid-state drives (RamSan series), Digital signal processors (SAM and XP product lines) |
Number of employees | 100 (2012) |
Texas Memory Systems, Inc. (TMS) was a U.S.-based company focused on the development and production of solid-state disks (SSDs) and digital signal processors (DSPs). Established in 1978, TMS introduced its first solid-state drive that same year, soon followed by its initial digital signal processor. The year 2000 saw the debut of the RamSan series of SSDs. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, TMS distributed its products both directly and through OEM and reseller channels, catering primarily to large enterprises and government organizations.
TMS is recognized as the longest continuously operating vendor of SSD technology in the industry.
On August 16, 2012, IBM revealed plans to acquire Texas Memory Systems, with the transaction finalized on October 1, 2012.
History
Founded in 1978 by Holly Frost in Houston, Texas, TMS initially targeted the seismic data processing requirements of the oil and gas sector. Its inaugural product, the CMPS, was a bespoke 16 Kilobyte SSD created for Gulf Oil.
SAM product line
By 1988, TMS had manufactured several hundred SAM-600/800 (Shared Attached Memory) storage units predominantly for the United States Department of Defense. These systems incorporated 128 Megabytes of Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and utilized high-speed Emitter-coupled logic (ECL) input/output to support real-time signal capture and processing.
After the oil glut of the 1980s, TMS transitioned from focusing solely on SSDs to emphasizing Digital signal processing products. The SAM systems were upgraded with custom DSP boards that allowed simultaneous data storage, processing, and analysis within a single platform—significantly reducing demands on host systems. This strategic shift led to the SAM line becoming better known for its DSP functionality than its SSD features. Throughout the 1990s, TMS released successive advanced DSP models under the SAM branding: SAM-2000 (1990), SAM-300/350, and SAM-450 (1997). Notably, the SAM-300 featured a 512 MB SSD and became a standard for alleviating high-speed data transfer bottlenecks in environments such as Network File System (NFS) and Local area networks (LANs).
In 2004, TMS collaborated with StarGen (which was later acquired by Dolphin Interconnect Solutions) to merge the SAM-650 DSP system with StarFabric switched interconnect technology. This partnership produced rugged military-grade embedded solutions delivering 192 Gigaflops of computational power alongside 16 gigabits per second bandwidth.
XP product line
While developing multi-host SAM systems, TMS also engineered DSP solutions on PCI card form factors aimed at single-host applications. The XP-15, XP-30, XP-35, and XP-100 models were architecturally derived from the SAM systems. The XP-30 and XP-35 utilized TM-44 DSP chips, whereas the XP-100 employed the TM-100 DSP—both custom ASIC designs by TMS.
RAM based products
In 2000, TMS launched the SAM-500/520 series of SSDs featuring standard interfaces such as Fibre Channel. The SAM-520 was rebranded as RamSan and offered 64 Gigabytes (GB) of DRAM with up to fifteen 1 Gb/s Fibre Channel connections.
TMS entered commercial storage markets on April 10, 2001 with the RamSan-210 model, which provided up to 32 GB DRAM capacity, four Fibre Channel ports, and delivered performance up to 200,000 IOPs within a 2U chassis. To maintain data integrity, it employed Triple-Mirror mode by simultaneously writing data to DRAM plus two mirrored hot-swappable hard disk drives. Additionally, redundant UPS units ensured safe system shutdown during power outages.
On November 11, 2002, TMS unveiled the RamSan-220 which doubled Fibre Channel throughput to 2 Gbps and introduced DataSynch mode—keeping disks offline during normal operations while flushing memory contents to disk upon power loss. In February 2003, TMS released the Tera-RamSan—a massive 1 Terabyte (TB) SSD solution comprising thirty-two RamSan-220 units spread over two racks—capable of exceeding two million IOPs and supporting up to 2,000 Logical unit numbers (LUNs).
The RamSan-320 arrived on July 1, 2003 with an expanded enclosure height of 3U; it added a third hard disk configured in RAID-3, increased DRAM capacity up to 64 GB, featured eight Fibre Channel ports at 2 Gbps each, and boosted throughput to 250,000 IOPs. It also introduced Active Backup—a patent-pending technology that continuously copied DRAM contents to disks in the background.
Shortly thereafter, the RamSan-330 was launched offering identical specifications but optimized for transparent host caching across servers and storage arrays. It supported configurable cache modes including write-through, write-back, and read-ahead. The RamSan-330 was demonstrated accelerating a Digi-Data STORM system at CeBIT in March 2004. Later that year in November, the RamSan-320 was upgraded as RamSan-325 with doubled memory capacity reaching up to 128 GB.
On December 7, 2004, TMS expanded its lineup with the entry-level RamSan-120—a compact 1U unit featuring RAID-protected DRAM for enhanced reliability—providing an 8 GB capacity delivering up to 70,000 IOPs and bandwidth reaching 400 MB/s.
The RamSan-400 debuted on July 11, 2005 as an upgrade over the RamSan-325. It supported faster interfaces at 4 Gb Fibre Channel speeds with improved throughput of up to 3 GB/s and half a million IOPs. Additional enhancements included IBM’s Chipkill ECC memory protection alongside four backup hard drives. These interface upgrades were also made available as retrofit options for earlier models.
In November 2005 a high-performance 10 Gbps InfiniBand interface was announced; it became widely available during 2006.
On October 16, 2006, TMS introduced a more cost-effective RamSan-300 model housed in a 3U enclosure capable of delivering up to 200,000 IOPs and throughput of 1.5 GB/s with memory configurations of either sixteen or thirty-two GB. Together with the RamSan-400, this model formed part of Oracle’s Accelerator Kit which bundled RamSan SSDs with QLogic InfiniBand switches and Host Channel Adapters (HCAs).
Flash-Based Solutions
TMS redirected its efforts toward the storage sector and, on September 17, 2007, introduced the RamSan-500, an enterprise-grade solid-state disk designed for 4U rack mounting that utilized NAND Flash memory rather than DRAM. This model incorporated a 64 GB DDR cache alongside up to 2 TB of SLC flash storage, configured across nine hot-swappable modules protected by RAID-3. The RamSan-500 marked the beginning of RamSan-OS development, a proprietary flash management and storage infrastructure suite implemented through both software and hardware components.
Acquisition of Incipient’s Intellectual Property
On September 8, 2009, TMS obtained all intellectual property rights and source code from Incipient, Inc., a software firm established in 2001 that specialized in enterprise-level storage virtualization and automated data migration. Incipient’s primary offering was the iNSP software suite—a switch-resident virtualization solution tailored for SAN environments. The company possessed at least five patents, including one for a "Fast-path for performing data operations," which covered a split-path architecture designed for block-level storage virtualization within scalable switching fabrics.
By 2006, Incipient had secured $79 million in funding, followed by an additional $15.6 million in 2008. This acquisition allowed TMS to incorporate sophisticated storage virtualization technologies into its lineup, enabling features such as clustering of RamSan SSDs, intelligent tiering with traditional disk arrays, and seamless migration from disk-based storage systems. It was specified that only the intellectual property and software assets were acquired; both companies continued to operate independently.
Acquisition by IBM
Shortly after unveiling their inaugural high availability (HA) SSD product—the RamSan-720—on December 21, 2011, TMS announced plans to pursue acquisition by a leading IT corporation such as EMC Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle Corporation, or NetApp. This strategy reflected broader industry consolidation trends exemplified by deals like SanDisk’s purchase of Pliant and the emergence of new players like Pure Storage.
Less than a year later, on August 16, 2012, IBM finalized an agreement to acquire TMS under undisclosed financial terms. IBM intended to maintain support for TMS’s existing products while integrating their technologies across storage systems, servers, software offerings, and PureSystems platforms. At the time of acquisition, TMS employed approximately 100 staff members. The transaction concluded on October 1, 2012, with TMS’s products and personnel becoming part of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group (STG).
Post-acquisition, TMS underwent IBM’s Blue Wash process; subsequently, the RamSan brand was renamed IBM FlashSystem. IBM declared a $1 billion investment commitment focused on research and development to enhance and incorporate new flash technologies within its product range.
Products
TMS’s RamSan SSD portfolio included models specifically designed to accelerate Oracle Corporation applications.
The product lineup featured:
- PCIe-based Flash memory drives
- Systems utilizing Flash memory technology
- Cached Flash solutions combining Flash memory with RAM
- RAM-centric systems
The majority of digital signal processing SSDs were encompassed within the XP series.