“Samsung is touting the reliability of solid-state drives, while citing an explosive market for the devices in server computers,” Brooke Crothers blogs for CNET.
“Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Samsung. A flash device that is rated at 100,000 write cycles, for example, can write 100,000 times ‘to every single (memory) cell within the device,’ Yang said. In other words, the device doesn’t write to the same cell over and over again but spreads out the writes over many different cells. This is achieved through ‘wear leveling’ which is carried out by the SSD’s controller, he said,” Crothers reports. “This makes it virtually impossible to wear out a flash chip.”
“Regarding cost, Yang expects to see a 35 to 45 percent year-to-year drop in SSDs. This will be a welcome relief since 64GB SSDs currently can add as much as $900 to the price of a notebook PC,” Crothers reports. “In the third quarter, Samsung is slated to bring out a 128GB SSD based on MLC (multi-level cell) technology–which uses multiple levels per cell to allow more bits to be stored. But the company sees even larger-capacity SSDs, ranging all the way up to 250GB, possibly before the end of the year.”
Crothers reports, “The company is also working with notebook PC makers to design ultra-thin notebooks that use SSDs that are not limited to a 1.8-inch form factor (a 1.8-inch SSD is used in the MacBook Air) but can fit into potentially even thinner designs than the MacBook Air.
More in the full article here.
[Attribution: MacNN.]
Me want now!
Bring ’em on.
No more versions of the iPod Classic?
Holy mother of all things hairy and horny! The Library of Congress should be portable.
Anyone know what the typical write-over limit is for HDs? 100,000 sounds like ample, but how long is that in dog years?
@Ampar
¿?
¿Qué?
It will be interesting to see how these perform in real world intensive tests. For instance Virtual Memory and Photoshop Scratch Disks are being written to and read constantly… 100,000 doesn’t sound like a big number at all to me.
It’ll cost 6000 dollars, but the price will drop over time I guess.
“but can fit into potentially even thinner designs than the MacBook Air.”
Like an iPhone / iPod Touch?
Powerbook. You & I have a date w/ a screwdriver!
I’m looking forward to my 250 GB iPhone.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
I’d buy one for my iMac!
SSDs are the wave of the future!
I agree with NickBob,
The only way to understand what 100,000 means is to compare it with what hard drives are rated at.
So, what is it?
A minimum of 100,000 writes before a cell goes bad? With 250 GB of cells to work with? It could take a while before this thing starts reporting errors, and a while longer before it loses significant available storage. And … NO chance a ‘bump’ will cause the read/write head to nick the surface!
Boy will people be hollering when these things start to go bad … after forgetting that they have been much more reliable than the previous generation of hardware.
Dave
And yet, not more than a day ago some clown was telling the world the market for this stuff was in the toilet. Of course, that was NOT true then or now.
I heard today that the Zune division at Microsoft is closing soon – by the Summer for sure, as the zune is simply NOT selling and the subscriptions are VERY low.
I guess Microsoft wont be buying any of these soon-to-be cheap SSD drives.
> not limited to a 1.8-inch form factor
At some point, Apple will not have to make the HDD the “standard” option. When cost is low enough to use SSD on all models, the MacBook Air will become even thinner.
There will be a flat thin battery that takes up the bottom “layer.” On top of that, there will be a logic board, including a flat wide SSD that’s as thin as the logic board. That should take up only half the “surface” area, so the mechanism for the keyboard can take up the other half.
When components no longer need to be a standard size, it opens up new design possibilities. No one is better than Apple at exploiting this potential. They’ve already started by putting the RAM directly on the motherboard, saving the space needed for standard RAM modules and sockets.
Okay this may seem like a weird thing to ask but does anybody know if these drives are affected by an EMP pulse? I am pretty sure platters don’t. It would be a tragedy if billions of Gigs of data were to be lost in the future because of this.
@ Snapper
That is a very good question, not weird at all !
Actually, Snapper & WBFS, HDs are just as susceptible to EMP as any other integrated circuit, as their controllers are small computers with power & signal interfaces to other electronic systems (e.g. your laptop’s motherboard) and lots of buffer memory. As for the information on the platter itself, that I don’t know. But in the event of an EMP, a HD will be just as likely to be toast as the rest of the computer system. But I see the point about a good EMP blowing out the individual memory cells of an SSD, whereas the platter of a HD could be removed & placed with a good controller IF the data survives.
“100,000 sounds like ample, but how long is that in dog years?”
For a sector written once every second without wear levelling, about 1.15 days.
Wear levelling is critical to extending the life of these devices.
@Snapper
That possibility is why Time Machine is coming in handy.