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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?
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
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.
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