Update at 1:30 p.m. PDT July 3, with additional comments from Micron Technology (at bottom).
Has the image of solid state drives as power misers been shattered? A recent review would seem to dispel the notion that these devices are more power efficient than the hard disk drives used in laptops.
In an article at Tom's Hardware titled "The SSD Power Consumption Hoax", the authors state: "We have discovered that the power savings aren't there: in fact, battery runtimes actually decrease if you use a flash (solid state drive)."
(Note: Tom's Hardware has posted a correction to its original report here.)
One of the key selling points of solid state drives has been that they use less power than hard disk drives. The claim has seemed plausible because solid state drives have no moving parts, while hard disk drives have a number of moving components.
The Tom's Hardware review, however, says: "While conventional hard drives may operate at relatively low power when little movement is required...flash based drives do not. They will draw their maximum power level constantly when in use, and as a consequence, simply spend more total time drawing maximum power than conventional drives."
The review goes on to test four solid state drives (SSDs) from Crucial (Micron Technology), Memoright, Sandisk, and Mtron. For example, in evaluating the Crucial CT32GBFAB0 32GB drive, the review states, "Users who purchase this drive because of Crucial's statements such as 'low power consumption' and the product being ideal for 'users who want longer battery life' will most likely be disappointed."
Though Intel's drives were not tested in the review, the chipmaker stated Wednesday that SSDs "can be architected to improve battery life." Intel is expected to bring out drives ranging in capacity from 80GB to 160GB later this year.
... Read more2008 is the year of the solid state drive. That's what Sun Microsystems believes as reliability finally measures up to the rigorous requirements of server storage and the cost per gigabyte plunges.
On Wednesday, Sun announced that it is preparing to introduce solid-state drive (SSD) technology that "will completely change how server and storage infrastructure is designed and deployed in enterprise data centers." Sun said it is already shipping Solaris ZFS software "optimized" for SSDs.
Though Sun is not specifying suppliers, Intel confirms that it has collaborated with Sun on SSD development for servers. Intel is slated to bring out high-capacity SSDs in the second half of the year.
Sun follows storage vendor EMC, which announced integration of solid-state drives into its product portfolio in January.
Solid-state drives give "customers 3x better performance at one-fifth the energy consumption of traditional spinning (hard disk drive) disk offerings," according to a prepared statement by Sun.
Sun StorageTek server array
(Credit: Sun Microsystems)Solid-state drive suppliers Intel and Samsung have both discussed the huge potential for servers. Samsung said previously that companies like Citibank and American Express peg server performance on IOPS, or input/output operations per second. Hard disk drives typically achieve 120 to 150 IOPS, while SSDs are in the neighborhood of 10,000 to 30,000 IOPS, according to Samsung.
Intel also sees SSDs playing a role in the server market as a "performance accelerator." The chipmaker cited a streaming video example where 10 SSDs could essentially handle the same workload as 62 high-performance hard disk drives.
In addition to performance benefits, SSDs "save on energy costs compared to traditional Fibre Channel hard drives (and) decrease server and storage sprawl in already maxed-out data centers," Sun said. "SSDs consume around one-fifth of the power of both memory...and disk drives, have no rotating media and consume very little power when not in use."
Sun sees SSDs as a watershed technology. "Flash SSD is the most exciting innovation to happen to system and storage design in over a decade. By mid-2009, it will be in the majority of servers and deliver more capacity than DRAM and far greater overall system performance and energy efficiency," said John Fowler, executive vice president of the Sun Systems Group.
Intel is targeting SSDs for consumer and server storage
(Credit: Intel)Plunging cost is another factor. "Enterprise-class Fibre Channel hard disk drives have only exhibited a 40 percent year-over-year price decline in the last decade, while the Flash SSD price per gigabyte continues to fall between 50 to 70 percent annually," Sun said.
The Mountain View, Calif., company is expected to deliver Flash-based products to market in the second half of 2008. Sun did not cite price or capacities. Today, typical large-capacity enterprise SSD capacities start at 32GB but can range up to 512GB.
If there was any doubt about the state of solid-state drives, Computex seems to be putting it to rest.
SanDisk, TDK, and Intel, among others, are announcing new solid-state drives while Asus is launching the Eee PC 1000 with a larger-capacity drive.
SanDisk pSSD solid-state drive
(Credit: SanDisk)Solid-state drives (SSDs) are used increasingly instead of hard disk drives in small computers like the Asus Eee PC and devices like the Apple iPhone because SSDs use less power and are generally more rugged--due to the fact that they have no moving parts.
The Asus Eee PC 1000, for example, will be offered with SSDs up to 40GB in capacity, beating the 20GB SSD offered in the Eee PC 901.
With this market segment in mind, SanDisk introduced a line of solid-state drives that are designed for "netbooks"--a category of compact, low-cost notebook PCs best exemplified by the Eee PC.
The SanDisk "pSSD" (Parallel ATA solid state drive) is available in 4-, 8-, and 16-GB capacities. The device can achieve a "streaming read" speed of 39 megabytes per second and a streaming write (record) of 17MBps, according to SanDisk. These speeds compare favorably with the low-performance 1.8-inch hard disk drives used in small notebooks.
The pSSD solid-state drives are expected to be available starting in August when pricing will be announced.
TDK also launched new solid-state drives. The "HS1" series is a line of 1.8-inch solid-state drives with the Micro Serial-ATA (SATA) interface. The Micro SATA specification provides for a smaller connector for the high-speed SATA interface used widely in PCs today.
The HS1 series offers capacities of 16, 32, and 64 gigabytes, respectively. The product uses SLC (single-level cell) NAND flash memory. SLC-based solid-state drives are used widely, today but many SSD manufacturers are planning to move to more advanced multilevel cell (MLC) technology later this year.
Burst performance is 100MBps for reading data and 50MBps for writing data. These speeds compare favorably with 2.5-inch hard disk drives.
TDK's SSDs are now available for volume shipment at sample prices of about $1,900 for a 64GB model and about $1,400 for the 32GB model.
On Tuesday, Intel will introduce the Z-P230 Parallel ATA (PATA) series of solid-state drives. The Z-P230 "is a cost-effective storage solution designed to replace traditional hard disk drives in netbook and nettop systems, yet is four times smaller and lighter than a standard 1.8-inch hard disk drive," Intel said. The drives come in 4GB and 8GB capacities.
The Intel SSDs are being launched along with low-power Atom processors that include the N270 for netbooks and the 230 for low-cost desktops--what Intel calls nettops. The chips run at up to 1.6 GHz with an average power consumption of 2.5 watts.
Intel will also announce high-capacity solid-state drives in the second half of this year that have capacities of 80GB and 160GB.
Future versions of the MacBook Air will pack larger-capacity but lower-cost solid-state drives, emblematic of the next generation of flash storage that will make a quick descent from current stratospheric pricing.
STEC solid-state drive
(Credit: STEC)Today, a consumer pays dearly for a solid-state drive (SSD). For example, for only 64GB of SSD storage on the MacBook Air, a consumer must pay a premium of about $1,000 over the 80GB hard disk drive model.
But the cost per gigabyte of solid-state drive storage will drop as notebook PC makers like Apple switch to solid-state drives with capacities above 100GB based on multilevel cell (MLC) technology. Adoption by notebook PC makers is expected to start in the third quarter, according to industry sources.
Virtually all SSD manufacturers have moved from single-level cell (SLC)--which is used in products like the MacBook Air, the ThinkPad X300 and HP 2510p--to MLC technology.
"Compared to the price you're paying today for a 64GB drive. You'll get a 128GB of storage for less than half the price (of the 64GB drive)," said Patrick Wilkison, vice president of marketing and business development at STEC, a supplier of MLC-based solid-state drives.
STEC offers solid-state drives with capacities up to 256GB in a 1.8-inch form factor, the same physical size as those drives used in ultra-light, ultra-slim notebooks today. These drives are based on MLC technology and offer better performance than hard disk drives.
Wilkison said that his company's drives offer read speeds in excess of 100 megabytes-per-second (MBps) and write speeds better than 65MBps. This compares favorably with standard 2.5-inch hard disk drives. The STEC products page lists enterprise SSDs with read/write performance of 200MBps and 100MBps, respectively.
Intel is set to move into the high-capacity SSD market on the back of its multilevel cell technology and current SSD manufacturers such as Samsung and Toshiba have also moved from single-level cell to multilevel cell.
MLC is a more sophisticated technology than current SLC. Its advantages are not only lower cost but higher capacity. Instead of the relatively small-capacity 64GB SLC-based drives being offered today in notebook PCs, manufacturers are targeting MLC-based drives ranging up to 256GB by the end of this year or early next year.
The disadvantage is more complexity, which can result in lower performance. "Inherently, MLC is slower and inherently (has) less write cycling endurance," Intel has stated in the past.
Avi Cohen, managing partner of Avian Securities, sees it that way too. "You lose some speed and you lose some reliability when you move to MLC," he said. "Errors per cell with MLC is an order of magnitude worse than SLC, which isn't that great to begin with," Cohen said.
But manufacturers like Intel and STEC say they mitigate the reliability problem and boost performance with proprietary controller chips. "We spend 85 percent of our time grappling with this reliability issue" when talking to customers, said Wilkison. "NAND (flash memory) will forever have limitations...It will be subject to a finite number of program and erase (record and delete) cycles," he said.
"There's a lot of background operations happening to manage the media. Moving the data around to make sure you're evenly wearing down the drive. You're not necessarily pounding on one specific spot and then killing a (memory) cell prematurely," Wilkison said. "This is all controller intelligence."
The kind of technology to optimize the longevity of the drive is generally referred to as wear leveling. Error detection and error correction technologies are also used, Wilkison said.
Wilkison said he believes these techniques result in solid-state drives that are just as reliable as hard disk drives. And he expects a surge in adoption of solid-state drives in notebooks. Whereas today there is only one notebook model per company that comes with a solid-state drive, the number of models offered with such drives will increase exponentially in the second half of the year, he said.
"Today it's a very boutiquey option. Volumes are very trivial," according to Wilkison. "It's one thing I do have visibility into" (because STEC is in talks with a number of computer makers). "It's an exponential number of platforms that are moving forward with SSD," he said. "What was one platform (model) per company in the first half of the year is going to be six in the second half of the year."
There will still be a "price delta" between hard disk drives and solid-state drives but that will continue to come down with MLC technology, he said. Reports have cited Intel pricing as approaching $1 per gigabyte.
Solid-state drives have no moving parts. Hard disk drives, in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, solid-state drives avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of hard drives. Therefore, solid-state drives are generally faster and in some respects more reliable.
On Thursday, Intel introduced a flash chip that stores more data, paving the way for its rollout of upcoming high-capacity solid-state drives.
Intel 32 gigabit NAND flash chip
(Credit: Intel)The chipmaker, along with Micron Technology, announced a 32-gigabit (Gb) NAND memory device built on a 34-nanometer manufacturing process.
The smaller 34-nanometer process bests Toshiba, which recently said it has begun using a 43-nanometer process that will enable solid-state drives with capacities as large as 256GB.
And Samsung said last week that it is slated to bring out a 256GB solid-state drive later this year.
Intel's 32Gb chip will enable more cost-effective solid-state drives, "instantly doubling the current storage volume of these devices and driving capacities to beyond 256GB in today's standard, smaller 1.8-inch form factor," Intel said in a statement.
Intel solid-state drives will be "introduced and ramped" in the second half of this year, said Pete Hazen, director of marketing for Intel's NAND Products Group
The 32Gb chip marks a big step up from the 16Gb technology Intel introduced about a year ago. At that time, Intel announced a 50-nanometer process. "This product is essentially the same die (chip) size as our 50-nanometer product but double the density," said Hazen.
Intel appears to be targeting 80GB as the sweet spot for its initial foray into high-capacity solid-state drives. "It will enable one to build a solid-state drive--say, for example, 80 gigabytes--at a lower cost than we could on the previous generation," Hazen said.
But Intel will bring out larger capacities too. "We see 256 gigabytes easily fitting into a 1.8-inch (hard-disk drive) form factor," he said. Apple, for example, uses a 1.8-inch form factor in its Air notebook.
Notebook PCs should be a big market for solid-state drives, Hazen said. "There's a great opportunity in notebooks. Great performance. (A solid-state drive) delivers ruggedness, reliability. And also lowers the power. That translates into extended battery life."
Servers are also a big target market. Solid-state drives are on the order of 10 to 50 times greater than hard-disk drives in a benchmark referred to generally as IOPS, or input-output operations per second, a critical yardstick in certain server applications. "That's because hard-disk drives are limited by the mechanical latency," according to Hazen. IOPS per watt is also a strong suit for solid-state drives because the technology draws much less power than hard-disk drives and power consumption is a high priority in data centers.
Solid-state drives have no moving parts. Hard-disk drives, in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, solid-state drives avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of hard drives. Therefore, solid-state drives are generally faster and in some respects more reliable.
Hazen also said that solid-state drives will be a part of future Intel processor platforms. "We work very closely with our platform teams to make sure that we're aligned with the platform roadmap and also to make sure that solution is completely validated on the latest platforms. So, I think you can expect to see that from Intel on our future (solid-state drive) products."
Hazen hesitated to address price because of the large unpredictable price swings in the flash market. But this is a big issue for consumers since solid-state drives currently command premiums of up to $1,000 compared to hard-disk drives. "I just know that cost has improved. But when we talk about price, we start to talk about market dynamics, including supply and demand, and that's a whole different ball game."
Samsung has developed one of the largest-capacity and highest-speed solid state drives to date.
Samsung 256GB solid state drive
(Credit: Samsung)CNET site ZDNet Korea reports that Samsung announced the development of a 2.5-inch, 256GB solid state drive (SSD) at the fifth annual Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei, Taiwan.
Typical solid state drives shipping in notebook PCs today have a storage capacity of 64GB.
With a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second and sequential write speed of 160MBps, Samsung is claiming some of the fastest SSD data transfer rates to date.
Like upcoming Intel SSDs, Samsung's drive will use multi-level cell (MLC) technology and a high-speed Serial ATA (SATA) II interface. Later this year, Intel is planning to announce high-capacity SSDs, which select PC vendors are expected to adopt in forthcoming notebook PCs based on the Centrino 2 "Montevina" mobile processor.
Samsung is slated to begin commercial production of the SSD by year's end, with customer samples available in September. A 1.8-inch version of the 256GB SSD is expected to be available in the fourth quarter, ZDNet Korea reported.
SSDs have no moving parts, which means they avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of hard disk drives.
ThinkPad X300's solid-state drive beats fast hard drives.
(Credit: Lenovo)Solid-state drives continue to outperform hard-disk drives in tests, providing some consolation for the high price.
The X300 ThinkPad, which starts at $2,900, is one of the hottest--and most expensive--notebooks on the market now. The Apple MacBook Air is another. They both come with solid-state drives (SSDs) that perform better than standard magnetic hard-disk drives. And the X300's outpaces a 7200rpm hard drive by a long shot, according to review site Hot Hardware.
In a test, the X300's SSD "performed 2.75 times faster than the Dell XPS M1730 running dual 7200rpm drives," the review said. That's not all. "The X300's performance was nearly 4.9x faster than the Asus U6S" with a 5400rpm 160GB hard drive.
Lenovo puts it this way: "Faster boot and application load times, extra durability, and longer battery life." You can add stratospherically higher unit price, but the price impediment will diminish over the next 12 months.
SSDs are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts. Hard drives, in contrast, use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. With no moving parts, SSDs avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of hard drives. Therefore, SSDs are generally faster and more reliable.
Comments by CEO Paul Otellini and CFO Stacy Smith during Intel's 2008 first-quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday cast a pall over the chipmaker's flash business while boosting the outlook of Netbook chips.
First, a quick inventory of the comments made by Otellini and Smith about Intel's NAND flash memory business. Overall Intel gross margins were affected by collapsing prices in the NAND market. Intel is currently in a joint NAND chip manufacturing partnership with Micron Technology. NAND flash is used in large-capacity storage devices which are, in most cases, interchangeable with hard disk drives. Intel said earlier this year that it is getting ready to enter the large-capacity solid state drive (SSD) market with capacities ranging up to 160GB. Intel sold off its NOR flash assets to STMicroelectronics last year.
Flash cannot become a long-term drag: "We made a decision with Micron to push out the timing of the joint Singapore plant. Last month I committed to our investors that I would not let the flash memory business become a long-term drag on company financials. I want to assure shareholders that we entered this business to make money and we will continue to make the appropriate decisions to that end," Otellini said.
Sale of NAND business possible?: In response to a question from an analyst about the possibility of selling off the NAND business Otellini, carefully choosing his words, said this: "There's a lot of ideas that we have here. Talking about them publicly before they're realized or discussed I think is inappropriate and weakens our negotiating position and our options. Really can't comment on that prior to doing it. We had similar questions raised on NOR a year and a half ago. About what are you going to do about it. Couldn't answer those even though we were in discussions with ST (Microelectronics) at that time."
NAND double whammy: "Gigabit production doubled in Q4 to Q1. We had a new factory come online. Bit doubling (doubling the storage capacity of the chips) hit us at the same time that prices came down," Smith said.
Otellini and Smith referred to the positive outlook for "Netbooks" a number of times. Netbooks are inexpensive ultrasmall, ultralight notebooks such as the Asus Eee PC or HP Mini-Note (though the Mini-Note currently uses a Via processor). In some instances during the conference call, it was apparent that "Netbook" was a blanket term for any small computer design using the Atom processor.
Netbook drives desktop-mobile crossover: "With the intro of the low-cost notebook category (Netbook), we believe shipment crossover of desktop PCs to mobile PCs will now happen this year not next year as anticipated...Netbooks and Atom (processors) are starting to show fairly good volume projections," Otellini said. Crossover is the point at which Intel ships more mobile processors than desktop processors. "(The Netbook is) like the early phase of the iPod as different versions and different price points come out," he added. The last remark referred to the many different iPod designs that eventually emerged.
Netbook ramp: "I see (the Netbook) as being a contributor over the course of the year and we're going to start to see the impact of that in the second quarter. It does look to be driving some incremental unit growth beyond what I thought when I first set my forecast for the year," said Smith.
Eight million 45-nanometer processors: Intel has now shipped "in excess" of eight million 45nm units, according to Otellini.
STEC issued a formal response Tuesday to a patent infringement lawsuit filed by rival storage maker Seagate Technology and its subsidiaries.
STEC, which responded to the lawsuit Seagate filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, says it will "aggressively" defend itself against Seagate's four patent infringement claims and contends it was one of the first companies to develop, manufacture, and ship high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs), predating the patents cited in Seagate's complaint.
Seagate is alleging STEC violated four of its patents relating to its SSDs, memory-backup systems, and self-testing systems for devices, according to a report in MarketWatch.com.
STEC, which said it has been shipping SSDs as early as 1994, said it plans to review the patents cited in Seagate's claims to determine whether any of its patents had been violated.
"STEC believes it held such technology including prior patents, dating more than a decade prior to any of Seagate's patents," STEC said in its response.
STEC alleges the Seagate lawsuits take aim at its Zeus-IOPS technology, a new line of SSDs targeted toward the enterprise storage market. SSDs competes against hard disk drive technology. Some storage makers like Samsung are looking to straddle both worlds. Samsung has said it has no plans to pit mechanical hard drives against solid-state flash drives.
Toshiba has postponed the launch of the Dynabook SS RX1 notebook slated to ship with a 128GB solid-state drive, according to an announcement on Toshiba's Japanese Web site.
Toshiba Dynabook SS RX series
(Credit: Toshiba)The Japanese-market Dynabook has been billed as the first notebook with a 128GB solid-state drive, or SSD.
The notebook was originally scheduled for general availability in April but will be delayed until June, according to Toshiba.
Toshiba cited parts delays. It's not clear whether the delays are SSD-related, but Toshiba postponed the launch of a notebook last year with a 64GB SSD due to flash memory chip "procurement" delays.
The 128GB SSD-equipped dynabook is expected to sell for 400,000 yen, or about $4,000.
Meanwhile, Toshiba Europe has listed the Portege R500-12Q with an 128GB SSD, though no information on availability is given, according to Engadget.
Popular ultralight notebooks such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 and Apple MacBook Air come with 64GB SSDs.
Intel is expected to announce SSDs ranging up to 160GB this year. Samsung is expected to follow suit.
