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Samsung Mass Produces 128GB SSD
Lucas123 writes "Samsung Electronics said today it is now mass-producing solid-state drives with a 128GB capacity, and it will begin production of a 256GB product later this year, ahead of its scheduled 2009 release. Samsung's 128GB and 64GB SSDs are available in 1.8-in. and 2.5-in. Currently, solid state disk costs about $3.45 per gigabyte and spinning disk costs about $0.38 per gig."
1) Faster reads
Not necessarily. Sustained read speeds are still faster on (most) spinning disks (vs. most SSDs). They do have orders of magnitude better access time resulting in better random read performance, but that wasn't what you said.
2) Lower power
Not necessarily. A 200GB HDD uses about the same power as a 32GB SSD. While these numbers do not scale linearly with size, you can expect SSDs to consume more power as sizes go up (e.g. due to more complex wear leveling algorithms). These performance numbers of course will increase as the technology matures, but for now it is still only a perceived benefit.
I do agree with your expectation about SSDs in the future, but you don't need half-truths to reach that conclusion :)
However, I don't expect the spinning disk do the dodo just yet; seeing as they're still cheaper per unit of storage, I expect that 2-disk setups will become the norm: SSD for the OS, and HDD for data - which is what I've been doing in my own systems for the last 2 years (using CF->IDE converters)
Does anyone know about the retention rate for these SSDs? I can let an HDD gather dust for ten years, and then still hope to retrieve the data succesfully. Can I expect the same from SSDs?
I would take that Toms Hardware article with a huge grain of salt.
Their tests simulated a usage pattern that is pretty rare in practice, especially for a portable device. Although certain applications do indeed require long, sustained transfers, most data transfers are spontaneous and sporadic (which is where flash memory shines, thanks to the nearly-zero seek times).
To make a shameful car analogy, a long sustained transfer is like driving on the highway. You get pretty good mileage, even with an "inefficient" petrol engine.
Unfortunately, we don't always drive on the highway, and a typical usage pattern involves lots of stopping and going. Due to the rotational inertia of the platters, HDDs and Optical disks are inherently inefficient in this regard, as the disk either has to be kept 'idling' or spun up from rest whenever access is required. These effects can be reduced via caching or by reducing the rotational velocity to match streaming/continuous data (eg. a video DVD), but flash memory seems to have a pretty clear advantage here.
This snippet from the article destroys virtually all of their credibility;
Could Tomâ(TM)s Hardware be Wrong?
No, our results are definitely correct.
Although I believe their data, any scientist needs to keep an open mind for any inaccuracies or potential flaws in their methodologies that may be present. Computer hardware reviews are no exception to this.
I'm also wary of leaving any media to sit for 10 years. Longevity isn't a terribly strong point these days....
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose