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Hybrid Storage Drives

winners, losers and maybes

July 1, 2008 - by Zsolt Kerekes editor of storagesearch.com

My immediate reaction on seeing the first news about hybrid flash / hard drives back in April 2005 was skepticism.

I didn't think that a flash / magnetic platter hybrid would be a good investment for users in either desktop systems or servers.
  • in single flash hybrid drive installations such as desktops or notebooks - the theoretical speedup benefit actually depended on how well Microsoft's Vista supported this function and whether there was enough free RAM.

    The marginal benefits delivered by first generation products are (in my view) so small that if you don't carefully measure the speedup - with storage analyzers - you wouldn't notice any speedup at all.
  • in multiple flash hybrid drive installations - such as a RAID system - there is an overwhelming cost, performance and reliability benefit in using vanilla hard disks and / or vanilla SSDs compared to using hybrids.
Storage analysts have published various reports which support a cautious view about the market. (You can see summaries of these lower down in this article in the sidebar on the right.)

You have to be cautious about placing too much weight on storage soothsayers' reports. As in the story about the emperor's clothes - many analysts are inhibited from saying that a new wardrobe (or market segment) is a complete waste of space - or invisible. That's because flattery works better in the courtier's business model.

I thought that was the end of the hybrid storage drive matter and let it rest.

For several years I didn't even create a separate page for this subject. Instead I slotted news and vendor listings about hybrid disks in the main hard disk page.

My reasoning was that - just as there isn't a need for a separate listing of disks which have cache memory or buffers (they all do) - there shouldn't be a need for a standalone flash-HDD hybrid page either. If successful it would become part of the mainstream HDD market - if not - then I hadn't wasted too much of my valuable time on it. It would go away.

I like to think that I'm quick and mostly right when it comes to recognising storage trends that matter. And when I've made my mind up that something isn't in that charmed category - I'm stubborn enough to persist in my prediction that it's doomed. I was busy enough with other things that really mattered to readers during these years. Editing the storage news page gives me good visibility of emerging themes (and a good safety net - because I can see how popular stories are with readers).

In January 2007 Dynamic Network Factory launched a RAM hybrid disk.

I still missed the subtle difference (between a RAM-HDD hybrid and a flash-HDD) and it was nearly a year later when I looked in detail at another RAM hybrid - the Platinum HDD from DTS - that I realised the important differences. I was wrong to lump all hybrid drives together. The fact that I hadn't lumped them anywhere in the world wide web wasn't the point. They were marooned on a remote island in my brain which even the sharks hardly ever swam by.

Forget everything you know about flash hybrid drives!

They rely on software from the OS to operate. No OS support (or poorly written software) means that even the minimal benefit you might get from such a product takes a powerful set of reading glassses to spot the difference.

The Platinum HDD in contrast - is a self contained drive which appears to the OS just like a hard drive. All the clever caching stuff goes on inside. In fact architecturally it's identical to a depopulated RAM SSD.

RAM SSDs (unlike flash SSDs) have symmetric read / write IOPS. That means you get more predictable speedups in a wider range of applications than with flash.

The Platinum HDD gives you the same kind of results you might see if you coupled a small capacity RAM SSD to a traditional hard disk based RAID system. You can buy it with variable ratios of RAM to hard disk - and the performance is scalable if you put the Platinum devices in a RAID.

If you're lucky enough to have the right kind of application it should be easier to install and get results with the Platinum HDD than either using a flash SSD or RAM SSD alongside a hard disk RAID, and it should cost less too. But you'll need to test the device in your environment to be sure.

As the ratio of RAM to magnetic storage in RAM hybrids grows - they could become a very useful tool for systems integrators who need more IOPS than is available from traditional solutions.

But that's not the end of the story when it comes to hybrids.

If the RAM HDD hybrids achieve enough market momentum I predict that will lead to an entirely new class of hybdrid drive - the RAM-flash Hybrid.

The first commercial product in that class was the RamSan-500 launched by Texas Memory Systems in September 2007. Although that was a 4U rackmount SSD - there's no technical reason why that architectural concept couldn't be put to good use in a 3.5" form factor too.

We'll track the exciting developments in the flash-RAM-HDD hybrid market as usual in our main storage news page.
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hybrid drives
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Megabyte was playing with the latest
generation of DIY hybrid drives.
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Platinum High Performance HDD  is 10x to 100x faster  random IOPS than a hard drive at much lower cost than a flash SSD
fastest - 3.5" hybrid Hard Drives
from DTS
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Hybrid Drives Market - ORGs, Reports, etc
Silicon Motion Enables New Type of Hybrid Flash SSD

TAIPEI, Taiwan - June 23, 2008 - Silicon Motion Technology Corp today announced the launch of 3 new SSD controllers.

"We are already a market leader in the SSD controller market, especially in the low cost notebook PC segment. We shipped almost 1 million units of SSD controllers in 1Q'08, which is more than any other company in the world" said Wallace Kou, CEO of Silicon Motion.

The new controllers can support hybrid SSDs that use a combination of SLC and MLC NAND flash to minimize device cost and maximize endurance. SM2240, for example, can manage a 64GB SSD using 8GB of SLC and 56GB of MLC flash. Through sophisticated and innovative algorithms, the controller is able to analyze the incoming files from the host and intelligently move frequently accessed data to SLC NAND and non-frequently accessed data to MLC NAND. With this hybrid architecture, the SSD system cost is significantly reduced to a level comparable to a pure MLC-based SSD, while endurance is significantly enhanced and comparable to a pure SLC-based SSD. ...Silicon Motion profile

Editor's comments:-
this new class of hybrid SSDs is one way to fix the endurance problem faced in cost conscious server apps that are only viable with MLC type budgets. Another solution is EasyCo's MFT - which inherently reduces writes while increasing write IOPS through a host resident driver. But some of the other risks revealed in my article Are MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Apps? haven't gone away.


Hybrid Hard Drives Market Report

Los Gatos, CA - December 19, 2007 - The Hybrid Hard Drive will not make a big splash in 2008, according to a new 36-page report by Objective Analysis.

PC users who are waiting for this technology to speed their boot times are going to have to wait a little longer.

"Once all the kinks are ironed out, hybrid drives and their counterparts should sweep the market," said Jim Handy, the report's author. "Unfortunately, the hardware is ready but the software support is weak. Hybrid drives will have to wait for better support to justify their small additional cost."

Hybrid Hard Drives: How, Why, And When? - is an in-depth review of the hybrid hard drive market, exploring the technology, implementation costs, and expected benefits, as it explains why those benefits are not within reach today. The report takes a special look at alternative technologies like SSDs, Intel's Turbo Memory, the SanDisk Vaulter Disk, larger DRAM main memories and DRAM HDD caches, and even small SSDs from Samsung. The report reviews members of the Hybrid Storage Alliance members and details their product offerings.

Readers will learn how hybrid drives work and why they are receiving so much attention today. They will also understand why hybrid drives will threaten the SSD market, and why neither technology is likely to see much acceptance until the second half of 2008 or later. ...Objective Analysis profile


IDC Report Casts Doubt on Hybrid Hard Disk Market

FRAMINGHAM, Mass - January 23, 2007 - IDC has published a new report called - "Outlook for Adoption of Hybrid-HDD or NAND in PCs" It says that so far, neither the hybrid hard disk drives nor embedded NAND flash technology convincingly realizes the potential of caching in Vista PC and therefore, neither can be considered the clear winner. Also the emergence of NAND flash-based solid state disks could disrupt the brewing NAND caching technology battle. ...IDC profile


Hybrid Storage Alliance Aims to Speed Up Notebooks

Storage Visions 2007 Conference - January 4, 2007 - Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate and Toshiba have formed the Hybrid Storage Alliance.

The goals of the industry group are to illustrate how flash memory/hard drive hybrid technology can extend the capabilities of today's notebook computers and to accelerate market adoption of the technology. IDC predicts hybrid hard disk drives will constitute 35% of all hard disk drives shipped with portable PCs by 2010.

Hybrid hard drive technology is the industry's answer to growing demand for notebook PCs that deliver the speed and durability of desktop PCs. Hybrid technology, which can be deployed in other mobile devices and computing systems, combines the unmatched capacity and cost-effectiveness of hard drives with the responsiveness, power-efficiency and durability of flash memory. ...Hybrid Storage Alliance, Storage Industry Trade Associations
hybdrid storage drive oems
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Dynamic Network Factory

Fujitsu

Hitachi

Samsung Electronics

Seagate

Toshiba

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