“Samsung and Micron are prepping 256GB SSDs for the mass market, while Intel lays the foundations for drives with ‘over 300GB capacity,'” David Flynn reports for APC Magazine.
“Samsung last week flicked the switch on mass production of its 256GB ‘FlashSSD’ solid state drive, which uses the standard notebook 2.5 inch form factor. The drive boasts a read rate of 220MB/s and writes at 200MB/s, closing the read-write performance gap that typically sees solid state drives write data much slower than they can read it,” Flynn reports.
“Now Micron has joined the 256 Club, announcing it will begin volume production of a 256GB consumer solid state drive due for release in March 2009. Samples of the Micron RealSSD C200 have already been shipped to current and prospective OEM partners, although the read/write speeds of 250MB/s and 100MB/s will make for slower overall performance than the Samsung offering,” Flynn reports.
And “a joint venture by Micron and Intel should bear fruit later next year with SSDs jumping over 300GB,” Flynn reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]
We are starting to get to a point for at least laptops that this could really become an interesting technology!
So theoretically, we’re looking at a 300GB memory sticks sometime around 2010?
250/100 is slower than 220/200? And that is read/write numbers? Yet they said “typically sees solid state drives write data much slower than they can read it”, didn’t they? The numbers suggesting that each writes at least a little faster than they read? Yeah, I ask my computer to “read” much more often than I ask it to “write”, so the 10-12% difference might – MAYBE – make a modest difference.
For me, the more important issue is cost. I’ve been told that Flash Drive prices are dropping much faster than Hard Drive prices. It really only takes one Hard Landing to make the FD a better buy.
Great… now if they would just make the damn things affordable…
Now if they can just break the $1000 barrier.
The day I have to carry around a 200 GB powerpoint presentation or spreadsheet is the day I hang up my mouse and raise llamas in the Andes.
“The day I have to carry around a 200 GB powerpoint presentation or spreadsheet is the day I hang up my mouse and raise llamas in the Andes.”
icaled
“The day I have to carry around a 200 GB powerpoint presentation or spreadsheet is the day I hang up my mouse and raise llamas in the Andes.”
That would have to be a Keynote presentation, HMCIV!
PowerPoint can’t handle such large file sizes.
@DL
“The numbers suggesting that each writes at least a little faster than they read? Yeah, I ask my computer to “read” much more often than I ask it to “write”, so the 10-12% difference might – MAYBE – make a modest difference.”
Being able to write just 100MB/sec when the same device can read 220MB/sec represents more than a “modest difference”. The device reads 120% faster, not 10-12%.
Hard Drive SPEED is as important as capacity. Anything slower than the equivalent of a 7200 rpm hard drive is unacceptable for me. mac OS X uses some form of virtual memory and hard drive speed has a big impact on overall performance.
The article contains no speed comparisons between 4200/5400/7200 rpm hard drives and the SSD drives mentioned in the article.
No prices, either
The day I have to carry around a 200 GB powerpoint presentation or spreadsheet is the day I hang up my mouse and raise llamas in the Andes.
Remember when we carried around multiple apps and documents, together, on 140k floppies?
Be careful where you draw that line.
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@old school
Remember when we carried around multiple apps and documents, together, on 140k floppies?
I remember the 1.4MB floppies, the 800K floppies, and even the 400K floppies. I don’t remember the 140K floppies. Were they the 5.25″ disks (that were really floppy)?
Spark said: “Being able to write just 100MB/sec when the same device can read 220MB/sec represents more than a “modest difference”. The device reads 120% faster, not 10-12%”
Not the way I read it. Read is 250 vs 220 while Write is 100 vs 200. Read is slightly faster for one while Write is MUCH faster for the other – except I don’t do a lot of writing. So, being able to WRITE 120%(?) faster is not a huge bonus for me. Of course, YMMV.
@El Guapo,
There was an 8″ disk. I actually saw one in a classroom situation. The teacher said it must hold twice as much data due to its size! Ha. Even then I knew better than that.
The floppies you’re thinking of were the 5.25″ kind. At first they were single sided. Then the double sided, double density came out. Those could hold a whopping 360 KB. There were many flavors but eventually we had the 720k and 1.44 Meg 3.5″ “floppy” drives.
The NeXTcube and NeXtstation introduced a 2.88 Meg but it arrived too late to make much of a splash.
Like so many things in this industry, standards were in place and the best technology doesn’t always win out. At least not in quantity of use. By the time it is available it can be obsolete.
old school said: “apps and documents, together, on 140k floppies”
Actually, I remember having a dual-drive system with 90K in each, the app and system on one and the docs on the other. Then I upgraded and installed a 128K RAM Disk so I only needed the Docs disk to make it work – and bought some speed in the process!
Those were THE DAYS! Programmers spent more time tweaking their apps than actually writing them! You could actually get some work done with a 64K system at 4KHz.
You can now get 16GB into a Micro SDHC card that’s only 15 millimeters long and 11 wide (one inch is about 25 mm)
http://www.sandisk.com/products/ProductDetails.aspx?CatID=1117&ProductId=2702
With the volume of a 2.5-inch hard drive to work with, I’m sure it would be very easy to make a 1GB SSD. The only thing holding them back is the retail price for such a product. But cost is heading down at a rapid pace. At some point soon, the SSD will be cheaper than the same size and capacity hard drive.
I’m sure it would be very easy to make a 1GB SSD
Maybe you meant 1TB? Making a 1 GB drive would be going backwards.
As for all you old timers – do any of you still have any 8″ floppies around? I do, but I have nothing to read them on. I also have a 14″ 5 MB hard disk. (Yes kiddies, those numbers and units are correct.)
Not the way I read it. Read is 250 vs 220 while Write is 100 vs 200. Read is slightly faster for one while Write is MUCH faster for the other – except I don’t do a lot of writing. So, being able to WRITE 120%(?) faster is not a huge bonus for me. Of course, YMMV.
You *think* you don’t write. Actually you do. A lot. The OS does it behind the scenes all the time, through virtual memory —there’s other stuff that uses it too like application tmp files, document auto-saving, caching, system maintenance, logs, etc.
My main issue with SSD’s is that Adobe CS4 apps will not run on them. Not sure if they will enable SSD capability in CS5 or not. Also, current HD’s are at 1.5TB now, so SSD’s will need to make a MUCH bigger jump in size, performance and match the price in order for the demand to be greater. Why buy one of these for anything but a laptop or keychain drive when SATA is cheaper?
The interesting thing is of course that Apple invested $500 M in the joint Intel Micron venture, and also prepaid for a buttload of FLASH from them. Can you imagine a > 256 GB iPhone? Just sayin.
rws writes, “There were many flavors but eventually we had the 720k and 1.44 Meg 3.5” “floppy” drives.”
How curious that the 3.5″ floppy has remained unchanged in performance since it first appeared circa 1984, while every other PC component – disk, CPU, RAM, display, etc. – has improved by orders of magnitude. It took Apple to push for its retirement.
ummm…. qka? I am very interested to see a hard drive thats 14″ accross, but I couldn’t find any pictures of one on google image search… wanna help?
Alienware are now selling a 128GB SSD for $550. Last year Apple first sold a 64GB SSD for $1K. So the price is dropping , capacity and speed are increasing rapidly.
My guess is than in 2 years 1TB will be available and ~$300. In 5 years SSD will be ubiquitous.
I can’t imagine the form factor will stay at 2.5″ for long either.
Hard Drive SPEED is as important as capacity. Anything slower than the equivalent of a 7200 rpm hard drive is unacceptable for me. mac OS X uses some form of virtual memory and hard drive speed has a big impact on overall performance.
That is a fact. OS X will page out memory to the hard drive if you don’t have enough RAM to cover open apps and files plus about 1.5GB for OS X. this seriously affects performance because the hard drive is slower than RAM.
Some apps, like Adobes, page out to disk regardless because of the huge image files, but will perform a lot better with huge amounts of RAM and a page out disk/fast boot drive. Check out the Adobe forums for the current speed tweaks or Barefeats.
If you got a MacPro, slap a couple of 10,000 RPM WD Raptors in a RAID 0 and clone your boot drive over to it (bootcamp cloning requires Winclone in addition) and set that bad boy as your boot drive.
Of course a very big limiting factor is the current crop of Intel processors with severly limited bus speeds. Too many engines and only a funnel to channel the power through.
Got I miss the dual processor G5’s with their 1GHz FSB PER PROCESSOR….
*cries*
Maclovin said: “I am very interested to see a hard drive thats 14″ accross, but I couldn’t find any pictures of one on google image search”
Yer asking a lot of my old brain, but I’ll try. I think the very earliest HDs, right after the Drums, were 14″ across. Look for them on the 1960s and 1970s IBM and DEC systems … maybe others as well, but my memory doesn’t cover those. While the DRIVES were huge, the storage capacities – by today’s standards – were not. Heck, a 256K memory module was taller, deeper and wider than I am – even today. Monsters!