Rock solid?

Though the term might not be immediately familiar, we’re all aware of solid state storage. Chances are there’s an example on your desk or in your pocket right now. That USB pen drive attached to your keys, the shiny iPod Touch you got for Christmas, the memory card in your mobile phone: all examples of solid state in use as part of our daily lives. But the technology lying at the heart of these everyday devices is evolving. It’s growing in capacity and making the leap from small handheld devices to laptops and desktop computers and potentially into the mainframe and data center.

Throughout the modern age of the computer, the only feasible data storage option has been hard drives with rotating discs or platters that spin at speeds of between 5400 and 10,000 times per minute. Since the early days of computing we have seen the capacity of such discs grow ever larger while prices have moved in the opposite direction. In 1981, the cost of a single megabyte of storage ranged from $200¬–$500. Today you would pay less than a dollar for a gigabyte. When IBM introduced the first 1GB drive in 1980, it was the size of a refrigerator and weighed 550 pounds. Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.10, released in 2006, packed 750GB into a case the size of a paperback book.

Despite these spectacular advances in hard disc affordability and capacity, there are some drawbacks. With so many delicate moving parts, traditional drives are extremely susceptible to damage. As anyone who has dropped their laptop will know, it doesn’t take too big a knock to turn your prized business machine into a glorified placemat. Traditional discs are also extremely vulnerable to damage by water and heat. Power consumption is another major concern, particularly in the data center. Spinning hard discs requires large amounts of power and generates heat has a byproduct. This heat must then be mitigated by cooling systems, placing a further strain on the energy supplies. As environmental concerns gain greater prominence in the business community, creating greener storage systems is becoming a priority.

These issues go some way to explaining the recent surge in interest in solid state. As these drives have no moving parts, they are considerably more resilient than their disc based counterparts. Without the requirement to keep platters spinning, they also require much less power and generate far less heat. As a result of the modular structure, there is no need to spin a disc up to speed to access data so read/write speeds should be quicker.

SSD’s are already pushing into the consumer computer market, mainly in the field of the new generation of ultra-lightweight laptops. Apple recently released its much-vaunted MacBook Air, which is available with 64GB of solid state memory, while both Sony and Lenovo are producing similar machines.

So why isn’t everyone making the move to this revolutionary storage solution already? Predictably, it comes down to a simple matter of cost. With a current price tag of approximately $10 – $20 per gigabyte for SSD-based storage, it isn’t going to immediately supplant magnetic hard drives for most organizations. Nonetheless, consumers are recognising the potential of solid state as manufacturers make significant breakthroughs in both capacity and storage. Researchers iSuppli predict that demand for SSD is on a major upswing. Spending on the technology hit $23 million in 2007 and is expected to climb as high as $5.6billion by 2011.

The cost of SSD is continuing to fall, providing hope that the technology will become an affordable option for ever greater numbers of users. Analyst Jack Gold is confident that the tipping point is within view. "By 2009/10, we believe the premium for SSDs will be under $200 per machine," he says. "Given total cost-of-ownership savings of $50 per machine and the additional potential benefits, we believe many companies will deploy SSDs within this time frame. Therefore, we believe most enterprises should plan on deploying SSDs to their mobile workforce, at least in higher-end machines, in the 2009/10 time frame."

But as prices for SSD lower, so do those of the already cheaper disc-based alternatives. It seems unlikely that there will ever be complete parity in cost terms, so SSD will have to win converts on performance. Leaps and bounds are being made on the technical side and SSD is already the solution of choice for certain users that demand extremely resilient storage. Both NASA and the US military are major purchasers. With major manufacturers like EMC stepping up their efforts to create more practical and affordable SSD offerings, it is surely only a matter of time before they become a far more familiar sight in both the consumer and enterprise market. One thing that any study of technological evolution will show is that today’s premium product is tomorrow’s commodity. As innovation continues to accelerate, don’t be too surprised if the next computer you buy has an SSD at its core.

Heavy hitters

The leviathan
BitMicro recently announced the Altima E3S320. With capacity up to a massive 1.6TB the drive proves that solid state can compete with disc-based media on scale. The 3.5-inch drive offers SCSI connectivity capable of a sustained transfer rate of 320 MBps on a single-level cell NAND flash design. The drive is expected to be available by the third quarter, aimed primarily at military, enterprise and industrial applications. No word on prices yet, but don’t it expect it to come cheap.

The speed demon
Texas Memory Systems has hit new speed benchmarks with its RamSan-40 SSD. The device exceeded 290,000 input/outputs per second (IOPS) under Storage Performance Council benchmarks. Claiming the ‘World’s Fastest Storage’ title for itself the company is also boasting a market leading price-performance level of $0.67 per IOPS.

Solid state explained
SSDs, or solid-state drives, sometimes referred to as flash drives, use no moving parts. They consist of large quantities of RAM attached to an appropriate interface. Once packaged, the drives are no different from their spinning disc-based counterparts as far as interface controllers on host systems are concerned. The key difference is the lack of moving parts. Instead of a motor and series of heads, controllers manage data flow from each bank of RAM, passing information to the attached drive controller, which in turn passes it to the host system.