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Reimagined, high-performance solid state drives could be right around the corner
If you think about it, solid state drives are still living under the shadow of their antiquated hard disk cousins. SSDs are manufactured to take on the same shape as an HDD, fit into the same slots and generally pretend to be a hard disk drive for all intents and purposes. Now, however, SSDs are gaining enough of a foothold — hell, even Dell offers sizable solid state drives at reasonable prices for its computers — that computer experts are seriously reconsidering how we build computers to apply the new technology appropriately.
According to experts interviewed by Computer World, "performance could initially double, quadruple or more" if the way we installed memory inside a computer was reconfigured. Solid state memory, for instance, could be built right onto a computer's motherboard, rather than hooked up to it via slower connections in a drive form.
With solid state prices going down and SSDs saturating the market, the very shape of computing could change in a mere five years.
Via Computer World
By Barnops at 5:09 PM ON 01/19/09
But if the memory is built right into the board then we would never be able to add more of this "new" quicker, better solidstate harddisk space
By xTdub at 5:20 PM ON 01/19/09
@BARNOPS: Um, what? You add more the same way you currently would, buy a new one. No one replaces the platters in their HDDs. Although, it would be nice to be able to upgrade a SSD by just getting a few new chips for it.
By xTdub at 5:30 PM ON 01/19/09
Nevermind. I accidently skipped a paragraph.
By TEC at 6:35 PM ON 01/19/09
Wonderful concept, Yes it would improve performance exponentially but if one of the chips in the series dies your screwed. And at least when a standard HDD starts to go you normally can rescue the data no matter how bad it is. Personally i would never use it for any sort of backing up of data.
By BoxerFanatic at 6:49 PM ON 01/19/09
Don't like the "built in" idea. Too vulnerable to failure. Modular is where it is at, but It is interesting to explore modular options.
Perhaps for a kiosk, or something that can be entirely replaced economically, like a micro-mini, or embedded device, or even phones, like iPhone, already are starting to have storage on board. But anything that costs a certain amount to replace, like a computer motherboard, it is better to keep storage close but separate.
SATA is good, but there was a PCI-Express solid state card that was supposedly testing FAR faster. I think that is going to be the next focus, is finding a channel for maximum transfer speeds to and from the main instruction pipeline, and solving some of the limitations in terms of reading, or especially writing iteration capabilities.
Computer architecture could be poised for a new change in design, with increasing emphasis on graphics core co-processing, and solid state storage coming on strong... new ways of incorporating both closer into the pipeline of instruction processing, in order to increase speed, thermal management, and compact modularity...
The near-intermediate term design changes for future computers could be interesting, and up for some more fundamental changes than we've seen in a few years, rather than just speed bumps and size reduction.
By Ron at 11:48 PM ON 01/19/09
Is this what Sarah Connor warned us about?
By TheOriginalGiga at 10:22 AM ON 01/20/09
@Tec: you're right, if one chip fails in a circuit, they all fail and lose all your data. But what about blowing a servo in a platter drive and/or getting the dreaded click of death? there's always going to be a failure rate.
@boxerfanatic: I agree with you that not ALL storage should be built in to the mainboard, but how nice would it be to have enough to run your OS from? can we say almost instant bootup? and as you said, Sata is good, I'd say SATA is great, but it's an old technology, just like USB 3.0 is replacing USB 2.0 SATA will be replaced by something faster.
But as always technology comes and goes, just like the BetaMax and the Slot A processor (how many remember that one?), either something will win over another, or a technology will come and go in the blink of an eye replaced by something even bigger and better, all we can do is wait and see for what the minds create for us next.
@Ron: I welcome our new mechanical overlords, and you should to!
Haha
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TheOriginalGiga:
@Tec: you're right, if one chip fails in a circuit, they all fail and lose all your data. But what about blowing a ...More »