Related Sections: Computer Peripherals
416GB SSD is worth more than you are
Until now, the largest flash-based SSD hard drive has been 160GB, and it was insanely expensive. Right now, the largest you're going to find in a consumer product such as a laptop is 64GB, which generally adds around $900 to the price of the computer. With that in mind, a 416GB SSD from Bitmicro Networks will probably cost as much as a new luxury car when it comes out next March.
Aimed at the military rather than at consumers looking to beef up their laptops, the 2.5-inch drive is small enough to fit in laptop computers, providing faster access time, faster booting, less energy consumption, and less weight. Eventually, all computers will have drives like this inside, but hopefully they'll cost somewhere in the low hundreds of dollars rather than the tens of thousands of dollars.
Bitmicro Networks, via Crave
By raymondjram at 6:45 AM ON 09/20/07
The concept behind "solid state" drives is as old as computers. The first computers used magnetic core memory, which stored the control program (or basic operating system), and kept their infomation even when powered off. But they were slow and costly, needing special machinery to wire up all the cores, since each bit was a physical magnetic ferrite core with four wires in each one (two for addressing, one to read and one to write).
Semiconductor memory is cheaper to make, and helped lower the cost of computers, but we need to keep the control program in a magnetic media. Now that flash RAM has reached 4 GB sizes, we may see new computers (probably laptops) using that flash RAM to store the operating system and using the hard disk just for data storage.
The best example is the "Laptop for every Child" idea, which will use flash RAM to store everything, making it more rugged and saving energy. Unix-based O/S are the best that can take advantage of solid state memory, because the O/S doesn't change as it is running. The O/S can stay in ROM, and data files, logs, and other variable information can stay in the flash RAM.
But if a cheap flash Disk (about 4 GB) in a 2.5" format is available, those who use Windows can probably take advantage of its benefits and install it as the boot drive, as long as they don't fill it up with useless Microsoft stuff.
By blzrd at 9:17 AM ON 09/20/07
I can see why they would gear this towards the military. Flash memory is like 100 times more sturdy so it can take a beating unlike any spinning hard disk can take. Plus ssd should be impervious to an electromagnetic pulse (say from a nuclear bomb) as long as it isn't running while it happens.
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blzrd:
I can see why they would gear this towards the military. Flash memory is like 100 times more sturdy so it can take...More »