| why the
notebook SSD crystal ball is still murky |
Editor:- September 2, 2010 -
this week a reader (Andrew Hancox) sent me a list of 10 key questions
about the future of the SSD market.
As I'd already answered most of
them to some degree in articles my reply was mostly a list of links.
His
1st question was - "How long do you think it will be before the pricing
of SSDs comes down to a level where they are a viable option to be used as
primary drives in portable devices for mainstream consumers?"
I've been answering that question in articles for 5 years - starting with my
SSD market
penetration model, numerous comments on the
notebook SSD
page, quotes from other
SSD analysts and
comments in past
news pages - but I've never been able to give a deterministic number because
there are parameters involved which depend on vendors in the market changing
their behavior.
Here's what I actually said in my email reply - "A
big obstacle is not media pricing - but how well the SSD design is integrated in
the notebook motherboard design. Nearly all current notebook designs are
adapted from HDD designs. Adding SSDs into them wastes most of the potential
benefits of the SSD. That's why this is taking years longer than it should
have done... "
Thinking back on my replies to readers I'm never
really sure how well they have been understood. That's because
SSD education is a
big issue.
Now when I talk about "motherboard design"
that's the electronics and computer architect in me talking in a code language
which translates as - the design of most notebooks is a mismatch for getting
the best out of SSDs. Most notebook vendors are too lazy to design new SSD
notebook products - so instead they integrate me-too SSDs into me-too
HDD-centric notebook designs - to get results which fail to inspire anyone. Then
they complain that the market projections for SSD adoption in notebooks didn't
come true.
This morning I thought of a good analogy for what's been
happening in the notebook SSD market.
Imagine that Henry Ford - had
looked at the horse drawn carriage market and the internal combustion engine -
and had decided to design mechanical horses (powered by the new engines) which
were then coupled to a coach in the traditional way.
There you have
today's notebook SSD market...
From the viewpoint of the horseless
carriage customer it's an expensive novelty. The engine is whirring as fast as
it can - but those clippety cloppety legs in the mechanical horse can't run
any faster. The coach rolls along and it's an impressive sight but also a
waste of internal combustion engine horsepower. This will never become a mass
market. |
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Most notebooks today
completely waste the potential horsepower of SSDs. How can you predict when
notebook marketers and designers will stop being stupid? That's where my
crystal ball fails. | | |
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| StreamStor
optical option sustains 3GB/s |
Editor:- August 30, 2010 -
Conduant
announced new optical options for its
StreamStor
mezzanine data recorders enabling upto 800MB/s per port and 3GB/s for a 4 port
confguration and cable lengths upto 16 miles.
Conduant's founder and
CEO Ken Owens said -
"Our Optical High Speed Serial Mezzanine Board can be upgraded and
customized in the field as requirements demand and allows for recording from
multiple devices simultaneously in any environment. |
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"With our StreamStor
technology, all packet formation and management is performed by the hardware so
there is no latency or other delays to affect data transmission performance."
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| Can you
believe the word "reliability" in a 2.5" SSD ad? |
Editor:- August 12, 2010 - One
of the most popular recently published articles is -
the cultivation and
nurturing of "reliability" in a 2.5" SSD brand - which I
wrote as a marketing case study.
I didn't think a
marketing views article of this
typet would appeal to many readers - but then I didn't think that
SSDs would
become a mainstream subject
once upon a
time either - which just shows how wrong you can be.
Reliability is an
important factor in many applications which use
SSDs.
But can
you trust an SSD brand just because it claims to be reliable?
As we've
seen in recent years - in the rush for the
SSD market bubble -
many design teams which previously had little or no experience of SSDs were
tasked with designing such products - and the result has been successive waves
of flaky SSDs and
SSDs whose specifications
couldn't be relied on to remain stable and in many products quickly
degraded in customer sites. |
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As part of an education
series for SSD product marketers - this case study describes how one company -
which didn't have the conventional background to start off with - managed to
equate their brand of SSD with reliability in the minds of designers in the
embedded systems market. ...read the article | | |
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| SSDs - the big picture |
| Editor:-
StorageSearch.com was the
world's 1st publication to provide continuous editorial coverage and analysis
of SSDs (in 1998) and in the years which have followed we've led the market
through many interesting and confusing times. |
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If you often find yourself
explaining to your VC,
lawyer or non technical BBQ guests why you spend so much time immersed in SSD
web pages - and need a single, simple, not very technical reference to
suggest - this may be the link they need. | | | |
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| SSD Pricing -
where does all the money go? |
SSDs are among the most
expensive computer hardware products you will ever buy.
Understanding
the factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating
process... |
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...not made any easier when
market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more than 100x to 1!
Why is that? ...read
the article | | | |
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Energy Data Storage
2010
by SMi Group
November
3 - 4, Kensington, London |
This new event
will form a platform for the
energy sector to discuss and compare their
unique digital data storage needs. | | |
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| Fast Purge flash SSDs
when "Rugged SSDs"
won't do |
| The need for fast and
secure data erase - in which vital parts of a flash SSD or its data are
destroyed in seconds - has always been a requirement in military projects.
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Although many industrial
SSD vendors offer products with extended "rugged" operating
environment capabilities - and even
notebooks SSDs come
with encryption - it's the availability of fast data purge which
differentiates "truly secure" SSDs which can be deployed in
sensitive applications.
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the Problem with
Write IOPS
the "play it again Sam" syndrome |
Editor:- Flash SSD "random
write IOPS" are now similar to "read IOPS" in many of the
fastest SSDs.
So
why are they such a poor predictor of application performance?
And
why are users still buying
RAM SSDs which cost
9x more than SLC? - even when the IOPS specs look similar. |
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This article tells you
why the specs got faster - but the applications didn't. And why competing SSDs
with apparently identical benchmark results can perform completely
differently. ...read
the article | | | |
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| SSD videos |
Editor:- whenever I'm asked
-"What do you do for a living?" - the answer I come up with is - "I
waste my time so my readers don't have to waste theirs."
Few
things are so time-wasting on the web - in my opinion - as videos which talk
about the
SSD market. In 99.9% of
cases the same points have already been made - earlier, better, and 30x
quicker - on static webpages.
It's years since a reader asked me
- "Why isn't there a directory of
SSD videos on
StorageSearch.com?"
Well
- there is now. I created s short list from the tens of thousands of hours I've
spent reading and writing about SSDs. It really is short. |
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| Could TB HDDs be given
away free? |
They may be expensive now...
...
but I think giving terabyte
hard drives away free
could one day be a really good business strategy to prolong the life of
the HDD market and to deal with what will be unbeatable price /
performance challenges posed by SSDs.
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