SanDisk cranks up solid-state drive speed

LOS ANGELES--Technology introduced at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference by SanDisk could boost solid-state drive performance in Windows Vista by 100 times.

The largest supplier of flash memory cards unveiled an advanced flash file system for solid-state drives that "has the potential" to accelerate random write speeds by up to 100 times over existing systems.

Despite being generally faster than hard-disk drives (particularly at reading data), solid-state drives fall short of hard disks when they randomly write data. Random writes are generally considered to be the Achilles heel of solid-state drives.

To maximize random write performance, SanDisk developed the ExtremeFFS flash file management system that uses a "page-based algorithm" so when "a sector of data is written, the SSD puts it where it is most convenient and efficient," SanDisk said.

The result is an improvement in random write performance as well as in overall endurance.

"For SSDs to perform optimally in Windows Vista, and thus replicate or surpass the functionality of hard disk drives, a new flash management technology is needed to accelerate SSD write speed and endurance," said Rich Heye, senior vice president and general manager for SanDisk's solid-state drive business unit.

SanDisk will present this technology here at WinHEC 2008 on Wednesday. ExtremeFFS will ship in SanDisk products in 2009.

Heye also introduced two metrics that can help users evaluate solid-state drives.

One metric, vRPM, enables comparisons in performance between a solid-state drive and a hard-disk drive or another SSD. The other metric, LDE, calculates the lifespan of a solid-state drive.

Click here for more news on Windows and WinHEC.

[Wookiee-1138]

I think users are more concerned with the read/write lifespan than the speed.

[Seaspray0]

I agree with the concern over read/write lifespan. Brooke Crothers, can you provide any more information on The LDE metric you mentioned? How does a solid state drive compare to a hard disk drive for read/write lifespan? I've asked several cnet reporters to do an article on this subject and still nothing.

[dijitul]

You can do your own research on lifespan and wear-leveling. Start with these high-end SSD drive manufacturers:

http://www.mtron.net/english/
http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/mainstream/index.htm
http://www.fusionio.com/

[koldflame]

Hmm, personally if a hard drive can last for about 3 years of constant use (like the enterprise versions from mtron can) then I care more for speed, as I replace my HDD at least every 3 years. And the enterprise mtron SSDs already have sustained reads and writes of 130MB/s / 120MB/s, respectively. So, if SanDisk improves write speeds over that, provides the SSDs cheaper and includes a decent warrenty, I'm sold.

[dijitul]

On the contrary -- speed is the most important factor. For at least decade, the bottleneck in processing power of your computer has been the disk I/O. CPU and bus speeds have long surpassed the average human's daily processing requirements. Most of the time you spend waiting is because the computer is LOADING something from disk, not processing data or crunching numbers. In Windows, the most predominant disk usage comes from the paging file, web-browsing, and other temporary data transfers. Today's SSDs, predominantly from MTron and Intel, have VERY long lifespans because they implement wear-leveling (in the upwards of 20 years), so lifespan is not an issue if you buy the appropriate SSD. What matters now is: Do these SSDs take full advantage of the controller they connect to, and are the capacities reasonable? (I believe they are more than adequate for most operating system environments, but not for mass storage of static data.) Can they maintain SATA-II speeds for reading and writing? MTron has recently announced 250 MB/s read/write drives (yes, megaBYTES per second) for Jan 2009 introduction, so if SanDisk and Intel don't keep up, then what's the point of this article? There's no specs listed here. What's to brag about? SanDisk is not the first company in this market, and I doubt they will be a leader.

[alegr]

I noticed that when you write a bunch of files sequentially to a flash drive, you mostly get a decent speed. BUT when you run TWO write streams in parallel, speed drops dramatically. I wondered why; there is no mechanical arm to move. Looks like that's the flash's achilles heel.

[dijitul]

If you're talking about USB drives, you're comparing apples to oranges. USB and SATA-II SSD drives are two completely different beasts, using different hardware and transfer technology, as well as having widely different bandwidth capabilities.