Samsung develops 256GB solid state drive

[WoodPeckr]

This will really take off once they get prices down.

Samsung develops 256GB solid state drive

May 26, 2008 2:12 AM PDT

Posted by Brooke Crothers


Samsung has developed one of the largest-capacity and highest-speed solid state drives to date.

CNET site ZDNet Korea reports that Samsung announced the development of a 2.5-inch, 256GB solid state drive (SSD) at the fifth annual Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei, Taiwan.

Typical solid state drives shipping in notebook PCs today have a storage capacity of 64GB.

With a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second and sequential write speed of 160MBps, Samsung is claiming some of the fastest SSD data transfer rates to date.

Like upcoming Intel SSDs, Samsung's drive will use multi-level cell (MLC) technology and a high-speed Serial ATA (SATA) II interface. Later this year, Intel is planning to announce high-capacity SSDs, which select PC vendors are expected to adopt in forthcoming notebook PCs based on the Centrino 2 "Montevina" mobile processor.

Samsung is slated to begin commercial production of the SSD by year's end, with customer samples available in September. A 1.8-inch version of the 256GB SSD is expected to be available in the fourth quarter, ZDNet Korea reported.

SSDs have no moving parts, which means they avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of hard disk drives.

 

[Radio_Shack]

I am wondering if they have got around the issue of # of writes before failure with this one. Seems thats the deal breaker with SS vs Hard disks.

This will really take off once they get prices down.

Samsung develops 256GB solid state drive

May 26, 2008 2:12 AM PDT

Posted by Brooke Crothers


Samsung has developed one of the largest-capacity and highest-speed solid state drives to date.

CNET site ZDNet Korea reports that Samsung announced the development of a 2.5-inch, 256GB solid state drive (SSD) at the fifth annual Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei, Taiwan.

Typical solid state drives shipping in notebook PCs today have a storage capacity of 64GB.

With a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second and sequential write speed of 160MBps, Samsung is claiming some of the fastest SSD data transfer rates to date.

Like upcoming Intel SSDs, Samsung's drive will use multi-level cell (MLC) technology and a high-speed Serial ATA (SATA) II interface. Later this year, Intel is planning to announce high-capacity SSDs, which select PC vendors are expected to adopt in forthcoming notebook PCs based on the Centrino 2 "Montevina" mobile processor.

Samsung is slated to begin commercial production of the SSD by year's end, with customer samples available in September. A 1.8-inch version of the 256GB SSD is expected to be available in the fourth quarter, ZDNet Korea reported.

SSDs have no moving parts, which means they avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of hard disk drives.

 

[WoodPeckr]

I am wondering if they have got around the issue of # of writes before failure with this one. Seems thats the deal breaker with SS vs Hard disks.

Believe they did.
Another report said a SSD should last more than 100 years before failing.

 

[cypherpunk]

Yawn. This is, once again, not news. No problems are solved, no doors are opened.

 

[boffo]

From Wikipedia, Advantages, Disadvantages of SSD:

Advantages

The disassembled components of a hard disk drive (left) and of the PCB and components of a solid-state drive (right).Faster startup – as no spin-up is required. (RAM & Flash)
Typically fast random access for reading – since there is no read/write head to move. (RAM & Flash)
Extremely low read and write latency times – SSDs seek times are orders of magnitude smaller than the best current hard disk drives.[1]. (RAM)
Faster boot and application launch time – provided hard disk seeks are the limiting factor, see Amdahl's law. (RAM)[2]
No noise – Lack of moving parts makes the SSD completely silent, although high-end SSDs and large SSDs may include cooling fans. (RAM & Flash)
For low-capacity SSDs, somewhat lower power consumption and heat production, although High-end SSDs and DRAM based SSDs may have significantly higher power requirements.
High mechanical reliability – Lack of moving parts almost eliminates the risk of mechanical failure. (RAM & Flash)
Better able to endure extreme shock, high altitude, vibration and temperatures – SSDs are tougher than traditional hard drives.[3] These features are useful for laptops, mobile computers, and devices that operate in extreme conditions. (Flash)[2]
Relatively deterministic performance[4] – unlike hard disk drives, performance of SSDs is almost constant and deterministic across the entire storage. This is because seek time can be constant, so file fragmentation has less impact on performance than on disk drives.
For low-capacity SSDs, lower weight and size, although size and weight per unit storage are still better for traditional hard drives, and microdrives allow up to 20 GB storage in a CompactFlash 42.8×36.4×5 mm (1.7×1.4×.2 in) form factor. Up to 256GB, SSDs are currently lighter than hard drives of the same capacity.[3]

[edit] Disadvantages
Price – as of early 2008, flash memory prices are still considerably higher per gigabyte than those of comparable conventional hard drives – around US$15 per GB[5] compared to typically less than US$0.20[citation needed] for mechanical drives.
Capacity – though currently far lower than that of conventional hard drives, SSD capacity is predicted to increase rapidly, with experimental drives of up to 1TB in test.[6][7]
Higher vulnerability to certain types of effects, including abrupt power loss (especially DRAM based SSDs), magnetic fields and electric/static charges compared to normal HDDs (which store the data inside a Faraday cage).
Limited write cycles – usually Flash storage will wear out after 300,000-500,000 write cycles[citation needed], while high endurance Flash storage is often marketed with endurance of 1–5 million write cycles (many log files, file allocation tables, and other commonly used parts of the file system exceed this over the lifetime of a computer[citation needed]). Special file systems or firmware designs can mitigate this problem by spreading writes over the entire device (so-called wear levelling), rather than rewriting files in place. This problem is being improved all the time with lifespans increasing. Today's drives can last up to 20 years with average usage.[8] An example for the life time of SSD is explained in detail here. SSDs based on DRAM, however, do not suffer from this problem.
Slower write speeds – as erase blocks on flash-based SSDs generally are quite large, they're far slower than conventional disks for random writes,[9] and in some cases for sequential writes.[2] SSDs based on DRAM do not suffer from this problem.
Lower storage density - hard disks can store more data per unit volume than DRAM or flash SSDs, except for very low capacity/small devices.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

 

[WoodPeckr]

Intel to use Centrino 2 to promote solid-state drives

Some good news. Looks like prices are coming down (if this is set to compete with Apple's MacBook Air) as progress moves along on the SSD.

Intel to use Centrino 2 to promote solid-state drives

By Tony Smith
23rd May 2008 09:39 GMT

Intel will offer to bundle its promised solid-state drives with its upcoming Centrino 2 platform, it has been claimed. The plan is being portrayed as a bid to push SSDs into the mainstream.

Today, SSDs generally command a significant premium over the price of equivalent notebooks fitted with a hard drive. Quite how far Intel will use the bundle approach to drive down the cost of implementing SSDs remains to be seen.

Centrino 2 - codenamed 'Montevina' - is due to debut late June, according to industry moles. Back in March, Intel executive Troy Winslow said the chip giant would ship 80GB and 160GB 2.5in- and 1.8in-format SSDs in Q2, so the timing of both product types could easily coincide.

According to insiders cited by Digitimes, the Flash drives will be branded Intel High Performance SSD, with the model codes X25-M and X18-M for 2.5in and 1.8in sizes, respectively. The first SSDs will be 80GB. They'll use a SATA interface.

That makes the 1.8in model a logical update for Apple's MacBook Air - reviewed here - allowing the company to deliver a second-gen machine that connects to storage over a SATA bus rather than the slower, parallel ATA bus the current version uses. The report claims the 160GB version won't arrive until late Q4, with 250GB SSDs following next year.