digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About
See the original image at arstechnica.com

SanDisk plans hat trick of SSD performance improvements

arstechnica.com — SanDisk isn't spilling all the beans just yet, but the company is hinting that it's got the technology to make many of SSD's negative aspects go away. Full disclosure is coming at CES 2009, but for now, here's what we know.

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 1, 2008

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

43 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • doiveo, on 12/01/2008, -2/+36"ExtremeFFS" already eh? They skipped "superFFS" and "ultraFFS"
  • SirChasm, on 12/01/2008, -1/+28I find the whirring noise of the hard drive strangely comforting. It's like my computer is telling me, "Hey, don't despair; I'm doing SOMETHING, I just can't let you know what it is."
  • sirjimithy, on 12/01/2008, -1/+21I seriously can't wait until SSD is the standard for hard drives. No more moving parts will mean far less chance of data loss.
  • SirChasm, on 12/01/2008, -0/+15Even then it's a nice auditory signal that you're about to be *****.
  • SirChasm, on 12/01/2008, -0/+15FFS
  • TheUngod, on 12/01/2008, -0/+12"Extreme" comes first. Xtreme! comes later.
  • wolfing, on 12/01/2008, -4/+16should I dig this? It doesn't have doggies or cats
  • specialK16, on 12/01/2008, -0/+12Until the sound becomes more of a clicking loud noise.
  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -3/+14For ***** Sake
  • IanG73, on 12/01/2008, -1/+10Finally, some technology news on the front page.

    Sounds great, will it triumph over the Intel SSD?
  • TheKitchenSinkX, on 12/01/2008, -0/+8It's a Solid State Drive. Not a Solid State Disc. FFS.
  • Kahnza, on 12/01/2008, -1/+8And higher transfer rates.
  • specialK16, on 12/01/2008, -0/+7Sure is a slow day today.
  • rpgguy1o1, on 12/01/2008, -0/+7i like to think that there's pictures of goats on these SSDs
  • Jektal, on 12/01/2008, -0/+6You're doing it wrong.

    The SSD drive is where you install Windows, Chrome (incognito mode), and Media Player Classic. The pr0n gets put on the 6-disk RAID 5 NAS array of 1TB HDDs.
  • everyunitone, on 12/01/2008, -0/+6..complete sentences.
  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -5/+10Thaks for sharing :)
  • shifty2, on 12/01/2008, -0/+5speaking of data loss... would it be more difficult to recover data off flash media than off disk? at least on a disk, there is a high potential of recovery as they are physically changed on the disk...

  • cr3ative, on 12/01/2008, -0/+5MLC is much cheaper to manufacture; it's just slower, and this is what the new file system is trying to fix.
  • rolf, on 12/01/2008, -0/+5SSD is much nicer for starting up multiple programs at the same time as well.
  • RadiatedAnt, on 12/01/2008, -0/+3dugg for "hat trick"
  • Lewie, on 12/02/2008, -0/+3Like "flash drives"? WTF does "drive" mean, anyway. I drive my car. I drive my girlfriend crazy. I store things on a drive. Big deal.
  • nutsackninja, on 12/01/2008, -2/+5they need to increase the size of these drives so I can store more porn on them.....
  • daveisfera, on 12/01/2008, -3/+6The diagram said that current MLC can only handle
  • Jektal, on 12/01/2008, -0/+3Grinding steel like teeth bouncing on the highway, skidding along for a second each time they make contact, before a lip catches and sends the head back into the air as the pavement races by.
  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -0/+3Why does the TrueFFS have to move data? If an application is calling for a block to be overwritten, why try to preserve the data at that location? Is this to prevent data fragmentation?
  • breakaway, on 12/01/2008, -0/+2They should stop ***** around with press releases and just release a god damn SSD already. I don't have time for their *****.
  • zephyrprime, on 12/01/2008, -0/+2That's still a sort of problem. Flash is pretty durable for most users even at the current level of technological development. If MLC flash isn't durable enough, users can got with SLC flash which is 10x as durable but 2x as expensive.
  • t2t2, on 12/01/2008, -0/+2But it's EXTREME! Not just super, EXTREME!
  • Treshnell, on 12/01/2008, -0/+2Did they ever fix the fairly low number of total rewrites? I thought it was an issue that these flash drives had low total write/rewrite totals.
  • rheaume, on 12/01/2008, -0/+2Ahhh FFS
  • the_po8, on 12/01/2008, -0/+2No.

    I was at the SanDisk folks' talk at Linux Plumbers Conf this Summer. It was clear that they were hoping that the software folks would paper over their hardware problems so that they could stay competitive with Intel's amazing new hardware tech. Nothing I see in this announcement makes me think that's changed, or that it's going to work.

    The fundamental problem with traditional SSDs is that the sustained write rate is limited by the block erase rate, which is that thing they're talking about in the article that's 100x slower than the actual writes. Intel has apparently fixed this HW problem outright, which means that their SSDs are now astoundingly fast for both read and write operations. This is game-changing technology, and probably means the death of the spinning platter in the medium term. SanDisk needs to come up with a similar HW win, or they will be pushed aside. IMHO a better FS won't cut it.
  • Remelox, on 12/02/2008, -0/+2I'm sorry but is Extrememan better than Superman? And Superman regularly kicks Ultraman's ass. I'm not sure your scale is correct.
  • Lunarbunny, on 12/01/2008, -1/+2You forgot to say candleja-
  • zephyrprime, on 12/01/2008, -0/+1It's basically virtual memory for flash. Random write are turned into sequential writes by maintaining a map of logical-to-physical block locations. They'll probably add some dram buffer to the device as well.
  • dasamps, on 12/01/2008, -1/+2If I read it correctly, isn't the endurance of the drives one tenth of SLC? Sounds like they're adding negative aspects.
  • lohphat, on 12/01/2008, -1/+2Can we stop calling the SSDs? There is no Disc any longer.

    How about SSMs (Solid-State Memory) or MCs (Memory Cards). or PSRs (Portable Static RAM ).
  • quantumstatejim, on 12/02/2008, -0/+1The flash has to write to fairly large blocks at once. This means that if only half the block is rewritten the other half needs to be preserved.
  • Treshnell, on 12/01/2008, -0/+1I've really only ever used it for on-the-go storage (usb flash drives and the like), and for that I love it. I've been using the same couple of flash drives for a few years now, and they still function perfectly.
    But how does the durability hold up when running a full featured OS and a variety of apps?
    I thought I read somewhere that the SSD based laptops (netbooks, etc) had a life-expectency of 3-5 years for 'average' users (based on the number of writes the HDD could handle). Not bad, but I can't imagine they'd be a good indicator of life-expectency on a full-sized PC.
  • lohphat, on 12/01/2008, -1/+2Please look up "drive". SSDs are no longer mechanical.
  • arkaycee, on 12/01/2008, -0/+1I'm waiting for UltimateFFS.
  • warpbackspin, on 12/01/2008, -0/+0You need a name that distinguishes it from memory the CPU is using as RAM.

    "Storage Card"?

    "SSM" sounds like you just replaced the relays in your Harvard Mark I...
  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -4/+1They'll also improve the ammount you pay, say by +50%?

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...


© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.