With SSD prices
still well above the point of affordability, we're thrilled to see more entrants joining the burgeoning market. Big players like
Western Digital and
Corsair are being greeted by small timers such as
PhotoFast,
Fusion-io and SandForce, the latter of which has just escaped "stealth mode" in order to launch its first solid state drive processor family. The chips utilize DuraClass technology and promise to address "key NAND flash issues allowing MLC flash technologies to be reliably used in broad based, mission critical storage environments." More germane to our discussion is the nice boost in transfer rates and lower cost of production; we're told that the SF-1000 crew sports a standard 3 gigabit-per-second SATA host interface connecting up to 512 gigabytes of commodity NAND flash memory, and that it delivers 30,000 IOPS and 250MB/s performance (sequential 128KB read or write transfers) with 100 micro-second latency. If all goes well, select OEMs will be launching SSDs based on this processor later this year, so we'll definitely be keeping our eyes peeled.
[Via
GadgetMix, thanks Kamal]
posted April 13th 2009 9:33AM
hmm... Hopefully the price wont be L33T
well The competition could spur some price drops... Recession Antidote :)... Mabie...
With a tag line like "mission critical storage environments" do you really expect this to be on the cheap? When is the last time you heard "mission critical storage environments" and "cheap" in the same sentence that didn't include words like "catastrophic" and "failure"
SSD are now used in many mission critical storage environments and are now cheap compared just a few years ago
It's all about random write performance. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=25
That is a HUGE article, but before you even think about buying (or even pretending to know anything about) an SSD, you need to read every word. I suggest having a few index cards by your side to jot down notes as you read to keep your terminology straight in your head.
HINT: It's amazing how much better you understand something after you take a moment to write down a few key points. You can throw away what your write. It's the exercise that matters.
This time last year, enterprise SSDs were up to 66% slower, 84% smaller in terms of max capacity, and 45% more expensive. So while I don't expect these SSDs to be cheap, take heart in the fact that another 12 months will mean a lower price, higher speed and more storage space for every dollar that you spend.
That logo looks like the Star Industries logo!