The SSD Guy often hears people ask: “When will SSD prices drop below the prices of HDDs?”
This makes a lot of sense. After all, NAND flash, which makes up the bulk of the cost of an SSD is renowned for its rapidly-falling prices.
The short answer to this question is: “Never!” Continue reading “When will SSD Prices Drop Below HDD Prices?”
At Oracle’s October OpenWorld conference in San Francisco more exhibit hall space was dedicated to SSDs this year than ever before. That’s because Oracle runs faster on systems with SSDs than on systems without.
Even Oracle ships SSDs in its popular Exadata system, and the company recently announced that it had shipped over 1,000 installations since its introduction in 2009. Continue reading “SSD Presence Growing at Oracle OpenWorld”
Few realize just how long SSDs have been around. In fact, Dataram introduced the Bulk Core SSD in 1976.
This 2-megabyte wonder, introduced in 1976, was said to offer speeds 10,000 times those of a fixed-head disk, while reducing power consumption, with no moving parts much like the SSDs of today.
Some may object to my calling this an SSD – and with good reason. It didn’t use semiconductor memory technology, it used core memory. Continue reading “The First SSD”
On Tuesday, November 1, Seagate announced improvements to its flagship Barracuda line of 3.5″ HDDs for the desktop.
Capacities will range from 250GB-3TB. Continue reading “Seagate’s Barracuda to Add Hybrids”
A colleague – Isilon’s Rob Peglar – pointed out an interesting paper written by researchers at the University of Toronto in collaboration with Microsoft. The paper makes a case for using an HDD to cache writes to an SSD to improve storage system performance.
“Wait a minute!” you say. “An HDD as a cache for an SSD? This can’t be possible!” Continue reading “An HDD Cache for an SSD?”
The Storage Networking Industry Association – SNIA – determined a few years back that it should address SSDs since they were about to become an important part of most storage systems. To this end SNIA created the Solid State Storage Initiative, or SSSI.
They didn’t name it after SSDs since there will clearly come a time when flash stops pretending it’s an HDD and abandons standard HDD mechanical and interface specifications. Continue reading “What’s the SNIA SSD Performance Test Specification (PTS)?”
InSpectrum, a spot market trading firm, shares a viewpoint that the floods in Thailand could increase SSD consumption.
HDD makers have been severely impacted by this disaster, and are projecting lower unit shipments in the fourth quarter as a result. Continue reading “Thai Flooding and SSDs”
