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Sandisk Debuts World's Smallest SSD Yet
siliconbits writes "Weighing less than a paper clip and smaller than a postage stamp, Sandisk's iSSD comes in a tiny Ball Grid Array and boasts support for the SATA standard, which means that it can be soldered directly on motherboards."
I don't think that the SATA spec mandates a BGA interface be provided on motherboards. You couldn't really solder this directly on there any more than you could directly solder a USB device on a mobo that had no headers. You'd have to precision-solder onto the tracks on the board. I think what's meant is that this component can be integrated onto existing motherboard designs without adding a new interface. It can use the existing SATA controller.
This opens the door to a mobo that not only has onboard graphics and sound, but onboard mass storage. That'd be pretty amazing in an "all my hard drives just ate themselves" scenario.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I wonder if anyone will build a mini-itx board with one of these on? IDE is on it's way out and while you can get SATA disk on moudules a largish lump hanging out of a flimsy sata port doesn't seem like a very robust soloution. A board with one of these on would mean all you would need to add is ram to make a fully functional embedded PC.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The whole article is just about 5 times longer than the very short summary. I didn't read it very attentively, but the following 2 quotes should be informative and reading them, I think you won't need to spend the 30 seconds it would take to read the full article:
"160MB/sec sequential read and 100MB/sec sequential write speeds being quoted."
"will target the "fast-growing" mobile computing platforms such as tablet PCs and ultra-thin notebooks (and netbooks we presume); as expected, they won't be available to consumers directly but as an integral part of devices."
Would be pretty good if one was soldered on the main board of a laptop for the boot drive, still leaving space for a traditional hard drive for mass storage.
Cheaper and higher capacity I'd say. I don't care if they've got some weight/size. 2.5" form factor for notebooks and very small pc's and 3.5" form factor for normal sized desktops is absolutely fine. My computer sits under my desk anyways.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
SSD being soldered directly to a motherboard? I'm a bit torn about that idea...
ok, so you're saying my hard drive died. How much will that cost to replace?
Excuse me?
(they'd BETTER put it in a socket)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
exactally, and if the mother board craps out, good luck getting your data back
It's a great Idea for Apple products. Because if it breaks, you just send it in to their support and they give you a replacement for the time being (ignoring the fact that you actually need your files right away) while they work on your computer for 4-6 months only to ship you a brand new one in the end. And when its time to upgrade, you just toss your computer out and buy a new one.
heh, I hadn't even considered that, excellent counterpoint.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Did it ever occur to you that drive manufacturers and researchers work on all of those things, but don't magically make breakthroughs in a given area simply because a bunch of jackasses on slashdot want them to? I mean, over the past 5 years, SSDs have gotten smaller, cheaper, bigger, faster and more reliable. This story just happened to be about a development in one of those areas.
In the end their purpose is to sell the product. That's why listening to consumers matters.
The only way I'm buying SSDs is if they become dramatically more affordable ($/GB). And I tend to think most people would agree. I'm not exactly asking for free stuff here, just helping those guys understand what matters. And I couldn't care less about a postage stamp SSD. I don't need that kind of speed at that price in my phone or my fridge. I want a fast disk for my workstation/server. And unless I have $1M to spend on a RAID array of 1024 SSDs the size of a postage stamp, I'm not going to mind if they're 3"1/2.
You *did* have a backup, right?
Possible Applications of 64 GB integrated into the motherboard.
And that's right off the top of my head.
How is this much different from a MicroSD?
--Smaller than stamp? Very much so, Check!
--4gb to 64gb? Check!
--100MB/sec read and 160MB/sec write? Hmm... well not by itself, but if you Raid 0 a few MicroSDs it'd probably reach those speeds, and we're hoping the article is correct with the MB term meaning Megabyte and not Megabit because MicroSD's also offer 100 Mbit/s
So while this is announcement is nice, I still feel like they took the same thing we've been using for the past few years, put it in a new box and labeled it as a totally new product.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I want a fast disk for my workstation/server.
In a desktop you can put in a SSD as your OS drive (which is where most random access takes place afaict) and keep a spinner for your data. Doing this is already reasonablly affordable.
However if you want a laptop with a SSD at the moment you have to either choose a SSD that can store everything you want on the laptop (which if you store a lot on your laptop means $$$), go for a monster size machine or sacrifice the optical drive (and pick your laptop from the very limited choice of machines that support replacing the optical drive with a hard drive).
With this a laptop vendor can put the SSD on the motherboard while having negligable impact on the rest of the machine.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I chose SSD for my "thing" in 20 questions all the time, now Sandisk has ruined it!
It's a thing.
Q1: Is it smaller than a breadbox?
Yes
Q2: Is it around the size of a postage stamp?
yes
Q3: does it weigh less than a paperclip?
yes
Is it a SSD?
Yes! Damn you Sandisk! You'll rue the day!
yes, but after a few months of windows updates (and the storage of all them, and the old files they replace being stuck in WinSxS) you'll have a 10Gb space left.
I initially installed windows 7 in a 25Gb partition thinking 'no-one needs that much'. Then I found it got quite tight for space, so I increased it to 30Gb. Now I find its quite tight for space (2.2Gb free out of 29.2Gb). So I guess I'll have to increase it again.
I wouldn't mind so much, but its obviously full of crap - as I install apps (especially big ones) mostly to my D drive to keep the OS backups small. At least its leaner than Vista was!