Keio University and Toshiba ready tiny 1TB SSDs for 2012
By Vlad Savov 
posted February 11th 2010 7:53AM
posted February 11th 2010 7:53AM
Japan's Keio University claims to have developed, in conjunction with Toshiba, the technology to shrink the size of SSDs by a spectacular 90 percent while also cutting energy consumption by 70 percent. If that's not enough mind-boggling numbers for you, the final product of this partnership is expected to yield 1TB drives with 2Gbps throughput. The details of this are still somewhat unclear, but we're told researchers stacked 128 NAND flash chips atop one another, with the breakthrough being in the way they communicate -- using short-range magnetic signals --- which results in less wiring complexity and reduced production costs. We'll take some convincing to believe they can really put these to practical use by 2012 as promised, but if they do make it to any sort of commercial launch, you can bet we'll be queuing up through the night to get one. Note: Nikkei source link requires a paid subscription to access.
1TB SSDs that are as small as a postage stamp in 2012 hmmm really?
maybe 2015...
I will believe it when I see it.
@Tg Hey if they can get it done within a nice $ frame, then I'm all for it!
@Tg
thats harsh technology evolves fast it probably will be done by that time, u ppl lack imagination and that stops technology from advancing, hell it only took ibm to about 2 years to put a load of tb's on a film tape, and we even have 1tb ssd already
wow, really big, crazy fast, less power AND tiny, can't wait for these! My 64gb SSD could go with being bigger. I can image all laptop hdd's going ssd with 1tb ssd's in a few years, would be cool.
Is that before or after December 21st 2012?
@onlymyrailgun
http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=2012&invocationType=wl-gadget
WTF is up with everything due by 2012? I don't remember 2002 being the time a flood of new tech being released.
@Eternity
What, don't you remember the eMac!?
Yeah it'll only cost just north of $9,000.
@Eternity
You forgot another 0
@Eternity OVER 9000!?!?!?!?
@shaffaaf27
Yes! OVER NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS.
Can you believe it?
@Eternity did you not get the meme? :(
@shaffaaf27
Yes I did... :)
while having your os and possible apps/games on an ssd would be amazing, who has a tera of them?
things that take up that much space are videos and audio, which you're better off running from a magnetic hdd
@mrqs
oh yeh, that thing would be great for laptops and other portable devices, i was thinking desktop comps with that comment
@mrqs
I would still like my Desktop to be 100% silent. Less moving parts is all good.
@mrqs
"things that take up that much space are videos and audio, which you're better off running from a magnetic hdd"
Why is that? (I'm genuinely curious)
@Brownsound279
it's random access snappiness that ssdrives are great at, while hddrives are quite capable with sequential operations
plus an ssd tends to use more power
tho' the silence thing is a good point
@mrqs Laptops are better off not having a second magnetic drive, for compactness and shock resistance.
@mrqs
I am pretty sure hard drives are rarely, if ever better than SSDs of equal size performance wise. SSDs also take much less power.
Power Consumption (Active) 150 mW Typical
Power Consumption (Idle) 75 mW Typical
For the Intel X25-V SSDSA2MP040G2R5 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive
The Western Digital Caviar Green with 1TB of storage uses about 4780 mW idle and 6500 mW on load, according to this review:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/15769/11
Since when is 4780
@edk128
Since when is 4780 better than 150/75?
There, I think you meant to finish that thought, but we all got the general idea. I think what mrqs was getting at was that for certain aspects, your magnetic drives are better in a sense. If you totally ignore price per GB and lifetime issues, in some instances the standard drive will be a better choice, and in some the SSD will (as you pointed out with power consumption).
Though I would argue that power consumption would be more of a issue with a mobile platform than with a desktop (which was mrqs' original comment was based on) unless one worries about the machine being a little greener.
Everything has arguments for and against, but sometimes it's easy to forget that, especially when news as exciting as this hits.
@edk128
Addendum: Just caught this line "plus an ssd tends to use more power." In this instance you were right, but I think most of my argument still holds water.
@sypen
if only the world worked that way sigh
@mrqs
Me, actually. I have an entire 500gb drive for my Steam folder and another for Windows 7 and all my other games/apps.
Very impressive. The commercial viability of such a drive would depend on how much they reduced the price of the production by. If they can reduce it enough to enable widespread adoption then economies of scale would help reduce the price even further over time as more and more people buy ssd drives. All in all great news.
2012? I'm ready now.
@sibyy
SSDNow!
Holy crap. That just blew my mind.
Now I can back up all of my data before the world ends. Awesome!
While I also believe these would be revolutionary from many aspects the speed (2 Gbps) doesn't look that impressive for 2012. Today's SSDs are faster than that.
@AlCabon
I was thinking the exact same thing. However, I'm wondering either if the 2Gbps rating is per NAND chip (which seems somewhat unlikely) or if an Engadget editor meant to write 2GBps, which would be 16Gbps and would indeed be revolutionary (assuming there was a bus capable of handling that sort of bandwidth at that time.)
Do want 1tb SSD. Can't wait that long though, I'll probably buy myself a nice 512GB one in a years time, if pricing permits.
Well, when you think about it, they announced 32GB MicroSD cards a month or so ago, and those things are absolutely minuscule. Think about it, how many of them can you physically fit in a 2.5HDD enclosure? At least 100, probably a lot more. There's 3TB right there. And this will be significantly smaller, so 1TB makes sense.
@Yankee
You're forgetting the issue of speed. MicroSD, although brilliant, is a crippling slow form of storage.
@toast
What if they were in a recursive RAID?
512GB SSD's under $400. That is when I think they will truly take off, as pretty much all computer maker's will offer them in their high end systems as a standard. And for those who don't have one initially, it becomes feasible for them to purchase after the fact.
2012 is definitely a viable time frame for that to happen. or we'll just have to wait for the 6th world and see what it brings.
@James5mith
then we can made fun of people that owns ssd of 16, 32 and 64gb.
@magallanes
Sadly, I am one of those people. I have the X25-M G2 80GB.
So after 500 seconds at 2Gbps your drive is full. Then what?
@ShadowMaker SdR
4000 seconds actually, 1B=8b
i wonder where you are going to get 1 TB of information at 2 Gbps though.
@(Unverified) Right. That's why I leave all things math to my computer.
@(Unverified) http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/10/google-to-launch-1gbps-isp-service-in-select-markets-at-competi/2# here
What happens if you put a mobile phone near the SSD while it's in use?
Then you're thankful that SSDs come in a metal box rather than unshielded?
@article: I don't need 1TB. But if they can do 256GB drive with 70% less energy usage... and if they can achieve a similar price reduction too... then I'm certainly interested. (I don't really know if disk drives are a significant portion of netbook power use, but a teeny-tiny 64GB drive with very lower power usage would certainly be nice for a netbook, too.)
but wait regular ssd prices havint gone down yet...sigh fine whtever ill start saving money now
MSRP = $3,000
This presented at ISSCC this week. But I think Engadget missed the juiciest part: they used inductive coupling to link the stack of dies. That's right, it's wireless!
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222700422