An article in the Storage Newsletter caught The SSD Guy’s eye when it ran in July. The article consisted of a press release followed by an editorial comment:
While hard drives still have the cost advantage, it appears it’s becoming akin to sticking with a horse-drawn buggy in an age of automobiles by arguing that the upfront cost for a car is so much more than the cost of a horse. At some point, it just doesn’t make sense to ride a horse. How soon until the IT world gets there?
SSDs vary widely in performance. This is something that becomes amazingly clear when a number of these devices are put through a battery of tests.
Calypso Systems ran the SNIA SSD Performance Test Specification (PTS), outlined in an earlier post in this blog, on seventeen SSDs and a single HDD. The results appear, in miniature, in the graphic for this post. Continue reading “Not all SSDs are Created Equal”
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?”
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”
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”
On October 26 LSI announced its acquisition of leading SSD controller maker SandForce. The privately-held firm has made significant strides in the development of high-performance controllers that have gained great popularity through a string of impressive benchmark results in the online reviewer community. Continue reading “LSI Acquires SandForce”
