[4] According to Gartner, IBM was the number one all-flash storage array vendor in 2014 selling over 2,100 FlashSystems totaling 62 petabytes (PB) of capacity.

[6][7] The IBM FlashSystem architecture was originally developed by Texas Memory Systems (TMS) as their RamSan product line.

[10] As RamSan technology evolved, TMS adapted the systems to different storage media (DRAM, single-level cell flash memory, and multi-level cell flash memory) and external storage area network interfaces (Fibre Channel and InfiniBand), but the core system design principles remained relatively constant: custom hardware with a shared internal network to maximize speed, particularly latency.

[11][12] IBM FlashSystem products were first made generally available on April 11, 2013, in conjunction with the announcement of a US$1 billion investment in flash optimization research and development.

IBM also announced the FlashSystem Enterprise Performance Solution, which added software features and functions to the 840, including real-time compression, replication, and snapshots.

They incorporated pattern removal, data de-duplication, and real-time compression combined with the IBM FlashCore technology to deliver consistent low latency performance.

The A9000 was a fully configured solution, while the A9000R enabled a grid architecture and the ability to scale to petabytes of storage.

This marks the first time that the FlashSystem brand offered a consumption model UF3 for the product line whereby a customer would only pay for what they used.

[7] With the announcement of the FlashSystem 9100 on July 10, 2018, the product line added a new enclosure that was designed with NVM Express (NVMe) from end-to-end.

The 9100 was the first FlashSystem product which combined the Spectrum Virtualize software stack with the IBM Flash Core Module technology in a single enclosure.

[6] With this announcement, the FlashSystem product line will no longer include enclosures with end-to-end hardware only data path technology from the Texas Memory Systems (RamSan) acquisition nor will it include enclosures running Spectrum Accelerate software from the (XIV) acquisition, however, the product still retains the IBM FlashCore based flash modules developed at TMS[26][27] IBM FlashSystem products are based on a custom hardware architecture that incorporates field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

The primary components of each FlashSystem unit include custom flash modules, external storage area network interfaces, and FPGA logic that spreads data through the system.

A9000R units share CPU, cache and access paths with their neighbours, leveraging a zero-tuning data distribution design.

The system supports a wide range of advanced data services such as IBM Real-time Compression and external storage virtualization.

FlashSystem 840 was composed of enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC) flash technology and was a 2U rackmount unit with up to 48TB of usable storage capacity, 40TB with RAID 5.