“When Apple Inc marketing head Phil Schiller launched the new iMac in October he enthused about its “Fusion Drive”, a storage option combining the cost and capacity benefits of hard drives with the speed of flash memory,” Himank Sharma reports for Reuters.
“Apple’s adoption of a technology that has been around for years, without really catching on, looks likely to finally bring ‘hybrid’ drives into the mainstream.,” Sharma reports. “The outlook has also suddenly brightened for makers of hard disk drives (HDDs), whose share of the $45 billion storage drive market is being eroded by makers of more modern solid state drives (SSDs) that are faster, more reliable but also pricier.”
Sharma reports, “Now, both Seagate and rival HDD maker Western Digital Corp are banking on hybrids to get a leg up in a crowded SSD market, where they compete with more than 100 other firms… To be sure, Apple’s solution is not strictly speaking a hybrid drive. It is software-based, relying on a huge chunk of flash memory linked to a standard HDD. Still, the underlying rationale puts it in the same category as a hybrid. ‘We’ve certainly been getting more calls from OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) since Apple’s announcement,’ Scott Horn, Seagate’s vice president of marketing, told Reuters… “It is important to note that Apple is validating the value of hybrid technologies,’ Western Digital President Steve Milligan said.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Please stop the madness: Apple Mac’s Fusion Drive is not about caching – November 29, 2012
Apple’s new Fusion Drive technology also works on older Macs – October 31, 2012
Apple’s new patented Fusion Drive is more advanced than you might think – October 24, 2012