{Update:  According to SiliconANGLE founder John Furrier, the reported numbers by AllThingsD is a bit low.  SiliconANGLE has learned from sources close to the company that Violin’s latest round was actually $90 million at $850 million valuation.  Violin is filling a big unmet need in flash memory for new converged infrastructure devices and networks.  It’s storage that is the biggest bottleneck in creating a faster experience for apps and users.  Violin and FusionIO hope that spinning disks will soon be a thing for backup only.}

The flash market is heating up, at least as far as Wall Street is concerned.  Violin Memory chief exec Don Basile shared in a pre-release interview that his company has raised a massive funding round from some pretty major investors, and provided a timeframe for its initial public offering.

Violin will announce later today that it has raised $90 million led by GE Asset Management, with participation from Toshiba, Juniper Networks, Highland Capital  and SAP’s VC arm. The financing was initially set to $50 million but it was ‘oversubscribed’ according to what Basile told AllThingsD – see correction above.

This is Violin’s fifth round of funding, and after the most recent, the flash storage maker was evaluated at $850 million according to John Furrier’s sources.

The newly leaked capital injection is certainly a big milestone for Violin, although it’s less significant than what its CEO finally confirmed: his company will follow the route of competitor Fusion-io with plans to go public fairly soon.

“Basile told AllThingsD that he expects Violin’s road show will take place during the summer and that the company is now well within what he says is a 180-day window during which it will go public. That would place the offering no later than October 27.”

John Furrier confirmed that Violin is on the path to IPO.

Fusion became a $2 billion+ company after it went public last year, and it has been doing pretty well since then. Its Q3 earnings call a few days ago was no exception, but their shares did decline by over 10 percent in spite of the encouraging growth figures.

Forbes attributed that slip to what an error in an early report posted on MarketWatch, which stated Fusion-io’s sales decreased by 40 percent, when revenue in fact increased by that percentage. The mistake was eventually revised and the stock is now recovering, much to the delight of any fortunate investors that may have spotted this rare opportunity.