Samsung aims to bring solid disks to market

Not that it should come as much of a surprise that the largest flash memory manufacturer in the world would be dabbling in solid state disk drives (SSD), but once Samsung gets their legal ducks in a row we don't have any reason to believe they won't make good on taking that 32GB NAND SSD we saw appear at CeBIT to the consumer market. The demand is obviously there for a laptop drive that, according to Samsung, would consume less than 5 percent of the juice of regular hard drives, and weigh less than half, not be nearly as susceptible to shock or climate, or emit the same heat or noise. No, it won't be cheap (yet), but sooner or later flash memory will be the only thing anyone uses, and Samsung really wants to get this show on the road already.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[Scooby Dooby @ Mar 23rd 2006 9:25AM]

If a laptop had one of these badboys inside, how much longer would the battery last?

[Jason @ Mar 23rd 2006 9:50AM]

#1: The screen and hard drive are usually the two variables that a user can control to save battery life. If I take the brightness from max to min, I go from about 3 hours to nearly 4 hours. If I spin down the hard drive, I get a bit more. However, it's hard to keep it spun down, as Windows and app's themselves often spin them back up making less effective overall as a power-saving tactic. I think a solid state HD could give maybe 20-25% more run time, but I'm just speculating based on how my current machine works.

[alan westbrook @ Mar 23rd 2006 10:01AM]

This seems like it might be a bad idea, flash memory 'wears out' after a certain amount of usage. While typical usage cycles for digital cameras and such don't make this an issue, runnin your whole system off it is probably something that bears more scrutiny before adopting such a technology.

[Brian @ Mar 23rd 2006 10:13AM]

What are we looking at in that picture? The device on the left is obviously the solid-state hard drive, but what's on the right? Is that a laptop hard drive for comparison or is it the underside of the solid-state disk?

[Gwyn @ Mar 23rd 2006 10:26AM]

Why not create a hybrid, ala Toyota Prius?

eg- A medium sized flash disk for the OS and program files, with an ordinary hard disk for data storage. Then you would only need to use the HDD to load files into RAM, the most frequently used files could be kept on the flash disk.

Unless, of course, I've got my wires completely crossed about how computers work (especially re HDDs and OSs/applications). Which, to be honest, is very likely.

[Rich @ Mar 23rd 2006 10:28AM]

The one on the left almost looks like a PCMCIA card. Is it? These remind me of those Thinkpad RAM expansions that you could get way back when a 4 MB expansion was a huge deal. They would suffer a performance hit compared to a direct SATA link, but for expansion and wide use a PC Card version would be nice (or Express Card for all the MacBook Pro users to have something to stick in there).

[Marc B @ Mar 23rd 2006 10:33AM]

This is a great advance. The performance gain + power savings will make this popular if the price is right and the interface (SATA, EIDE, etc.) does not become a bottleneck.

[Dave @ Mar 23rd 2006 10:46AM]

I've been wondering about the limited writes as well. Have they solved this issue? It was always my understanding that flash can only be written to a finite number of times--far less than a standard hard drive. True or false? Anyone?

[Matt @ Mar 23rd 2006 11:38AM]

#5 Not a bad idea. I think you would have just invented RAM if it wasn't already.

;)

[hastings @ Mar 23rd 2006 11:47AM]

The limitation is about 10^6 write/erase cycles, which translates to 1,000,000 write/erase cycles. That's likely more than you're EVER going to use on your laptop. But that's a limitation at this point, and a viable one, however I think by the time this technology hits mainstream, they would have hopefully found a way to double/triple this.

[jomo @ Mar 23rd 2006 12:10PM]

Perhaps the drive controller will contain software to properly distribute the data so that the individual sectors all get the same number of writes. While that doesn't solve the limited write problem, it reduces the chance that part of the drive will fail prematurely.

[Mark B @ Mar 23rd 2006 12:21PM]

#9 - Number 5 was on to something. His point about the hybrid is already in the works. I believe I read an article on this site a few weeks back about hybrid drives greatly improving battery life. We should see them by CES next year.

[Jason @ Mar 23rd 2006 12:21PM]

#3: Interesting point. More risks courtesey Wikipedia's entry on Flash memory:

"One limitation of flash memory is that although it can be read or programmed a byte or a word at a time in a random access fashion, it must be erased a "block" at a time. Starting with a freshly erased block, any byte within that block can be programmed. However, once a byte has been programmed, it cannot be changed again until the entire block is erased. In other words, flash memory (specifically NOR flash) offers random-access read and programming operations, but cannot offer random-access rewrite or erase operations. When compared to a hard disk drive, a further limitation is the fact that flash memory has a finite number of erase-write cycles (most commercially available EEPROM products are guaranteed to withstand 106 programming cycles,) so that care has to be taken when moving hard-drive based applications, such as operating systems, to flash-memory based devices such as CompactFlash. This effect is partially offset by some chip firmware or filesystem drivers by counting the writes and dynamically remapping the blocks in order to spread the write operations between the sectors, or by write verification and remapping to spare sectors in case of write failure."

[Spawnofbill @ Mar 23rd 2006 12:43PM]

The only thing I'm worried about is read/write times. Lexar's fastest write time for their CF cards is 20MB/s, and if I'm opening a 300MB photoshop file (I'm a photographer, and do on more than a daily basis) I just can't afford to wait that long for the file to load. I think that over time, this technology will take it's rightful place, but until they speed it up, I'm not interested; even though I would love having improved battery life and less heat for my laptop.

[Trey Evans @ Mar 23rd 2006 12:43PM]

Not only will the flash-based drives save on battery power, but will cut boot time significantly. Number five has a good point about a hybrid, which is what I do when I boot Linux on my Thinkpad. I keep a two gig thumb drive with Knoppix on it for booting and keep /users/ on an EXT3 partition on my hard disk. However, 32 gigs seems high if you just want to make it a boot drive. Four or eight would be sufficient for Windows, and then have a 40 gig drive for storage. With eight gigs, it would be possible to but the NAND chips on-board and the IDE disk in it's usual spot; then we wouldn't have to find a new spot to put a flash HD.

[Jim @ Mar 23rd 2006 1:07PM]

Take a look at The Economist's recent Technology Quarterly report at:

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5571544

The OS would cause more of a problem than file storage, they claim, as it rewrites data almost constantly. I quote:

"To further complicate matters, flash has the disadvantage that its memory cells eventually wear out�though the cells in modern flash chips can typically be reprogrammed around 1m times before this happens. This is not a problem in a devices that stores largely static files that are read but seldom modified (such as music tracks on an iPod). But using flash memory in place of a hard disk to store running software, such as an operating system, is a different matter, since information is constantly being modified and updated. To get around this drawback, flash-memory controllers keep track of how often particular groups of cells have been modified, and move data to different parts of the chip to maximise its lifespan. And if a fault is detected in a group of cells, that group can be tagged so that it is no longer used. It is worth remembering, however, that hard disks, particularly those in laptops, also have limited lifespans.

Although flash seems unlikely to replace hard disks just yet, it could soon start to infiltrate laptops in a more gradual way. Last year Microsoft and Intel demonstrated different ways to combine flash memory with hard-disk drives. In both cases the flash serves as a temporary storage for frequently used data, reducing the need to access the disk. This speeds up the rate at which data can be retrieved, enables laptops to wake up more quickly from sleep and extends battery life."

[Milton @ Mar 23rd 2006 2:18PM]

Am ready for flash drives it since my first PC XT. Always thought mechanical drives were clunky and totally incompatible with computers. Can't wait for the day that mechanical drives are only a fading memory.

[Mathew_M @ Mar 23rd 2006 2:18PM]

Looking beyond computer hard drives this represents a major leap in storage for digital acquisition such as the P2 cards used in the Panasonic HVX HD video camera. When prices come down they will incorporated with consumer video cameras as well.

[Lee @ Mar 23rd 2006 2:21PM]

As for transfer rates, your limit is bus speed... Example -- ATAPI-7 is on or about 133Mb/sec.
Let's not forget the access times for SSD is averaging about 100 times faster than spinning disks... and there in no latency in SSD vs 2 to 5 msec with spinning disks.

Cost still hurts a bit, but that's coming down rather quickly.

[dan @ Mar 23rd 2006 3:21PM]

I've got an even better idea for a hybrid flash device for boot drive/system partion use. What if you can build, for example, a 64G flash drive, with 4GB DDR RAM built into it as a sorta buffer? When the drive powers up, the drive's io controller automatically reads from the flash section the necessary sectors for the boot up & normal OS operation, and writes it into the DDR RAM buffer, using it as a internal RAM drive that is completely transparent to the OS itself. And then, the drive controller only updates the physical flash-based storage only every 100 writes or so. You'd cut down on memory wear-out time by a factor of 100! Not to mention that the important OS operations will be bitchin' fast! A hybrid RAM/Flash drive, how about that?

[Dave @ Mar 23rd 2006 3:26PM]

I still see the limited writes as a problem with swap.

[dan @ Mar 23rd 2006 3:28PM]

Also, about the picture above. Why is it that in the picture on the right side (which I assume is the bottom side of the same NAND flash based PCMCIA form-factor harddrive) I see a circular footprint in the metal casing? If the drive is all flash memory, which I assume is not laid out in circular spinning platters, what could possibly need to be so round and protruding?

[Greg Ferguson @ Mar 23rd 2006 3:50PM]

#19 One big problem with what you suggest is that when the computer crashes, whatever was in memory will now be lost.

[Tomas @ Mar 23rd 2006 5:05PM]

MS is already working with drive manufacturers on this as a standard...I forget what it's called. Data will be written to the flash portion of the drive when the drive isn't spinning (which will be often, under the new technique.) When it spins up for other reasons, or if the flash buffer gets full, the flash memory content is written out to the platter. Result is a hybrid drive that rarely needs to spin up, but protects user data during crashes/power interruptions.

[p quan @ Mar 23rd 2006 7:38PM]

#20 has a good point. RAM disks are fast.

Most of the OS files are not constantly rewritten. For example, in *nix assuming you don't rebuild everything from source frequently, you mainly see frequent read/writes to only a few log files. Swap/paging is not really necessary if you have the RAM.

I'm not sure what purpose modern internal hard-drives serve. If you have rewriteable optical media, then it makes sense to store semi-permanent user files on these...or on thumb-drives...or in external storage drives.

I challenge any casual/normal business notebook user to make 10^6 read/write cycles.

[Spawnofbill @ Mar 23rd 2006 7:38PM]

#21 That's only true in RAM, Solid State keeps it's information even after it loses power. RTFA man.

[Great Googly Moogly @ Mar 23rd 2006 9:12PM]

#25 What are you talking about? "That's only true in RAM"? Err. You don't swap to RAM. That's the whole point with swap. It's still a problem because when you swap out to storage (in this case a flash-based drive), you write to it. DUH.

So, then I was thinking that you must be thinking of sleep/hibernation stuff, which of course also would be a problem (writely writely writely). But no, it can't be that either because you surely know that a magnetic HDD keeps its information whilst unpowered as well.

And the article didn't address anything of this, so why should he read the article again? If anything, it seems you didn't read the article.

#21 raised a very good point.

[evo @ Mar 23rd 2006 9:48PM]

#20: What you describe is called a write-back cache:

http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=write-back+cache&gwp=13

This is in fact how all hard drives work. Look at any hard drive and you will see that its spec includes a buffer/cache. You know why computer manufacturers moved to software "power" buttons for computers instead of the good ol' days when you just flipped that hardware switch? It's so that all data can be written to permanent storage from the cache before the machine shuts off.

[Ryan Gardner @ Mar 23rd 2006 9:57PM]

I don't get what the big deal is... I don't even use a hard drive. I have 8 gigs of RAM and I use a bootloader to load my RAM disk. I never turn my computer off, and work entirely from RAM. My computer has been running for 219 days now nonstop...

;)

[fxtt @ Mar 23rd 2006 10:10PM]

so how much will SSD cost when it first comes out?

[dan W @ Mar 24th 2006 1:40AM]

problems and answers will work out w/ time...i'm not expecting the next macbook to run on flash; sure it'll take time but samsung needs a pat on the back for pushing the envelope

[Frank @ Mar 24th 2006 3:39AM]

I've recently setup a media center pc with a 1 Gb CF card as harddrive. I stored all media files on a shared network disk.
Worked quite nicely, although some programs failed to install (e.g. all anti virus software simply refused to install on the CF card, no idea why).
Main advantage of this system: ultra fast booting and totally silent :-)

However, I wonder how one could build a INSTANT-ON pc based on a solid state disk?
I mean, once I've booted the system and loaded the OS-info into RAM, I could easily store my RAM contents in my solid state disk when I power-down/suspend my pc. The solid state disk (i.e. CF card) would even store this content even when the machine is switched-off.
Thus, in case I want to switch on the pc, I only need to re-load the RAM contents from my solid disk.

Well, I haven't got a clue on how to implement this but I guess you guys get the idea.

Any thoughts?

[ben @ Mar 24th 2006 3:56PM]

I can't wait for the day when it's all solid state, it only makes sense that moving parts are more prone to failure than non-moving parts (in theory, and I understand current limitations). I can imagine it, you've got your entire operating system and all your games and programs all on a flash drive on your keychain, all 500GB . You've got a backup copy of it on another one at home, and you just plug that baby into any piece of computer hardware you want and voila, instant computer wherever you are.

[Martn Cutcher @ Mar 27th 2006 7:33AM]

This is a comment on #21.

I think it is time to revisit virtual memory. VM came about in part due to relative expense of RAM compared to disk storage.

RAM is now so cheap that rather than run 512M RAM with a virtual 768 VM, a very real option is to run with 1G RAM and not bother with VM at all.

This is even more the case with an expensive SSD, and finesses the issue of swap writes to the SSD.

[Steffe @ Apr 29th 2006 1:59PM]

#10) Firefox has at this point (2 days since boot) read/written 3.4 million times from/to my harddrive, and that's not the program that has read/written the most times either. So a million readings/writings is nothing.