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NAND Flash Density Surpasses HDDs', But Price Is Still a Sticking Point (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: With the introduction of 3D or stacked NAND flash memory, non-volatile memory has for the first time surpassed that of hard disk drives in density. This year, Micron revealed it had demonstrated areal densities in its laboratories of up to 2.77 terabits per square inch (Tbpsi) for its 3D NAND. That compares with the densest HDDs of about 1.3Tbpsi. While NAND flash may have surpassed hard drives in density, it doesn't mean the medium has reached price parity with HDDs — nor will it anytime soon. One roadblock to price parity is the cost of revamping existing or building new 3D NAND fabrication plant, which far exceeds that of hard drive manufacturing facilities, according to market research firm Coughlin Associates. HDD makers are also preparing to launch even denser products using technologies such as heat assisted magnetic recording.
Have SSD's reached a point where they have a lifespan comparable to HDD's in the most extreme applications, though? For instance: Just had to replace the HDD in my DVR. It's dual tuner so it's buffering 30 minutes for each channel, perpetually. The HDD lasted for years; would a current-technology SSD last as long before it ran out of write cycles in the flash memory?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
If you look at a list of new computers, you will notice that a surprisingly large amount of PCs are already shipping with 128 GB or 256 GB SSD. That's gonna hold everything that most people need. People with bit more specialized needs (hardcore gaming, media production, virtual machines, etc.) can probably soon acquire 1 TB SSD for a price like $200. Only massive data centers will remain as users of HDDs. Flash memory companies are putting huge investments in developing the technology further, while HAMR is still a prototype in skunkworks that is struggling to be usable for mass production.
The second point is a limited number of rewrite cycles. There, FTFY.
Oh, while we are at it, SSD tend to fail spectacularly: i.e. usually when they perish you cannot extract any information at all vs. spinning platters which usually fail gradually.
P.S. If you wanna counter my first argument, fill your SSD up to 99% and then try to work with it continuously for quite some time. That 1% will get overwritten multiple times and your whole SSD will be prone to a failure. Those tests you've seen online all deal with continuous overwriting of the whole SSD and that rarely happens in real life. In real life pretty much no one continuously wipes clean its SSD to fill it up again and again.
If you only have a few hundred GB of data or less, then SSD is your best choice now. If you have many TB, it will still be several years before it is cost effective to store it all on SSD instead of HDD.
That's 4.294 Gb/mm^2 and 2.02 Gb/mm^2, respectively, for us SI folks.
I don't like the idea of someone trying to fix my HDD with a HAMR.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
magic unicorn land you speak off?
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by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
It should be noted that while SLC flash is good for around 100,000 writes or so, TLC flash is only good for around 1,000. MLC is in in-between, about 30,000 writes. So the type of flash used in the drive very much matters.
Then there's the value economics, too.
Endurance testing have revealed modern SSDs to be remarkably reliable -- this guy wrote 7 PB to an 850 Pro. http://packet.company/blog/
But let's say the failure rate is N% higher than HDDs for a given application. But the drive itself is much faster and uses less power than a HDD. What number N is acceptable as an increased failure rate in exchange for the vastly improved performance?
In an array, the performance increase may allow the use of single parity over double parity due to the increase in rebuild times and reduced stress on the other members, resulting in better overall storage efficiency through reduced redundancy. Then there's power savings, too, if you're spinning and cooling a large number of HDDs.
My wild guess is that drives like the 850 Pro already have a dollar cost and failure rate low enough that the performance improvement is so great over HDDs that for most applications it's already superior to HDDs. The only places it may not be are weird corner cases requiring extreme storage densities at very low costs.
This write up is misleading as it is comparing densities from the laboratory of one item to production densities of another item.
Please compare apples to apples. Hard drives are more dense and cheaper than solid state drives, in addition to being far cheaper: Still, and into the forseeable future.
The OP rather implies that a supplier offering both convetional HDDs and SSDs of the same capacity would offer their products at prices based upon "cost of manufacture + margin" - i.e. that the retail prices would be a reflection of production costs. Sadly for consumers, this is blatantly not the case. The evidence for this is *everywhere* - for example a BluRay Movie costs no more to make, ship and sell than a DVD [maybe less, the packaging is smaller, lighter and cheaper to ship] and yet BluRay discs cost significantly more. Another classic example is the motor trade, where 2 cars that are identical in every respect except the engine size are priced so that the one with the larger engine costs more. Going back to the storage industry, there may be at least a couple of legitimate reasons for the price differential : first, the vendor is still recouping research and development costs from SSD technologies, whilst HDDs may be investing much less in R&D and therefore cost less. Second, economies of scale mean that a vendor can spread overheads across greater sale volumes and thus one format costs less. Unfortunately, what is most likely to be happening is that vendors are "fixing" market prices and using the principle of "cool new thing" to charge a premium for the latest product, well beyond what legitimate development costs would suggest. In theory many countries have national agencies to stop markets conspiring to fix prices like this. There is legislation against this [it's essentially racketeering and/or market manipulation, after all]. Unfortunately, 99% of the time, large suppliers get away with it. It's only when something goes unexpectedly wrong [look at the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal in the UK] that regulators will act [because it puts them in a position where they have no choice but to act]. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, for most of the time, a price is set on the basis of "the maximum we can get away with", as determined by the vendor.
read the other post to learn the meaning of the word 'tapas'
*a wide variety of appetizers, or snacks, in Spanish cuisine.*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Use flash as your HDD.
Don't be too sure. A point will come where NOR flash densities will surpass NAND, and at that point, data integrity will NOT be an issue, since NOR doesn't have the cell issues that NAND has
Canadian.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Well, when that point is several years in the past, be sure to let me know, and if I haven't heard of a solid-state drive failure for several years, I'll consider buying some when I next need mass storage.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"