leading the way to the new storage frontier
`
`.....SSD endurance.. SSD news
`
`..
`
`HDDs
`
`..
`
`PCIe SSDs
`
`..memory channel SSDs...SSD controllers
`
`There's a confusing picture in many consumer products like phones, cameras and music
`players in which one day it seems that the storage function is done by flash and next day
`another company announces they're doing the same thing with miniature hard disks. Is
`there any sense to this seemingly random choice? This article uses pricing trends,
`technology trends and unique market analysis insights to show that users and oems may
`be able to reliably predict which storage devices will be most cost effective depending
`where you are on the future history curve.
`
`.....
`
`.
`
`. F
`
`.s
`
`torage history
`the top SSD companies
`Can you trust SSD market data?
`what changed in SSD year 2016?
`Adaptive flash care IP including DSP for SSDs
`What are the user value propositions for SSDs?
`Efficiency - making the same SSD - with less flash
`hybrid DIMMs - DRAM with integrated backup and restore
`flash wars in the enterprise - SLC vs eMLC vs MLC vs TLC vs 3D
`How will the hard drive market fare... in a solid state storage world?
`
`.
`
`.
`
`.
`
`.
`
`...
`
`"I don't see how SSDs can replace HDDs in the timescale
`you've talked about in some of your articles. Based on
`what's known now - and flash capacity and the timescales
`and investments needed... it looks to me like Seagate may be
`right - there isn't going to be enough SSD manufacturing
`capacity. Or am I missing something?"
`
`meet Ken - and the enterprise SSD software event horizon
`
`"The user mood is changing from - can I afford to use
`SSDs? to a realization that - I can't afford not to."
`
`where does all the money go?
`
`Retiring and retiering enterprise DRAM was one of
`the big SSD ideas which took hold in the market in
`2015.
`
`lash Memory vs. HDDs - Which Will Win?
`
`by Jim Handy, Director of NV Memory Services, Semico Research
`
`(this classic article was published here in June 2005)
`
`There are many questions confronting today's managers about the state of small form factor HDDs and flash
`memory:
`
`• Will solid-state storage replace all rotating media over the long term?
`• Where does flash threaten rotating storage and where does it not?
`• What applications can take advantage of flash, and what applications cannot?
`• How will media's predictable price drops change our work/play habits?
`
`Although digital cameras have solidly moved from rotating storage to flash, and although USB Flash Drives,
`the little keychain fobs that store hundreds of megabytes of information, have already displaced floppies on
`many PCs, there is no reason to anticipate an exodus away from today's optical and magnetic storage in PCs
`and other traditional applications.
`
`There are lots of angles that designers consider when choosing flash versus HDDs. Price per megabyte is often
`discussed, but this must be weighed against total system cost, which is an equally important factor, as we'll see
`soon. In many applications physical size and weight limit the use of HDDs (although today's form factors get
`away from that in very many cases). Energy consumption and robustness are arguments often used by
`purveyors of solid-state drives, but these factors are important to a more elite audience, so they will not be
`discussed in this article. But one very important factor is file size, which we will see counterbalances costs to
`become one of the top reasons for selecting one or the other media type.
`
`Cost is a Key Factor
`
`The single most important factor in any consumer system is cost. As long as the desirable features can be
`brought to the market for an affordable price, the product should succeed. The big trade-off is cost vs. features.
`It would be nice if the world would stand still, and a tidy answer to the question of costs could be derived. This
`is not the case, yet the dynamics of HDD and flash pricing are clear enough that we can draw some important
`conclusions that we can use to foretell the future.
`
`The following chart illustrates historical price per megabyte trends of flash, DRAM, and HDD. We show
`DRAM price per MB because flash is a new enough technology that we only have eight years' worth of data.
`Since both are semiconductor memory technologies, both are driven by the same factors, so both can be
`expected to follow the same trend line.
`
`1
`
`APPLE 1048
`Apple v. Realtime Data
`IPR2016-01738
`
`

`

`The chart is plotted using a logarithmic vertical axis. This helps us to read the chart because steady growth is
`drawn as a straight line on a semi logarithmic format. Straight lines have been overlaid on top of the data to
`illustrate how steady the trends really are.
`
`Flash prices can be expected to continue to drop at an annual rate of 30-40%. DRAM has followed a 32%
`average annual price decline for over 30 years. The wavy portions of the line indicate price flattening during
`shortages. The one place where DRAM prices drop significantly below trend occurred during a period of
`prolonged below-cost pricing. As a result of this policy foreign competitors' wrists were slapped by the US and
`European governments. The portions of the curve that rise above the trend line indicate profits during
`shortages - nobody can begrudge a memory manufacturer taking profits by holding prices firm during a
`shortage.
`
`HDDs underwent a change in the late 1990s, where the shallow price decline, which was on a collision course
`with semiconductor memory, suddenly became much steeper. Semico does not closely track the HDD market,
`but we have been told that this is where the GMR head started to be used. The new slope accelerates HDD's
`price per megabyte decline to a point where it looks like semiconductor memories will not be able to catch up.
`This chart indicates that HDD is priced three orders of magnitude lower than flash, but the flash data is an
`aggregate over all densities of chip - the higher density chips used for mass storage are about 1/30th of this
`price, while the HDD line is based upon the least expensive version. Additionally, the small form factor HDDs
`that are used in portable applications are several times as expensive as the HDD trend line would indicate. All
`in all there are only about two orders of magnitude between the average mass-storage flash and the average
`HDD.
`
`For the sake of simplicity, let's not assume that there will be any more breakpoints in either curve (which is an
`adequate assumption for the near term) and let's look at these two price declines as if they are roughly parallel.
`These two assumptions will help develop arguments that can be refined by the reader at a later point.
`
`With the kind of price drops the preceding figure illustrates, where does flash threaten rotating storage and
`where does it not? At first flush it appears that there is no contest. Why is anyone currently using flash? The
`answer requires for us to look at the big picture, to understand where pricing is at a system level. The
`following chart compares flash prices against HDD prices across a wide range of capacities for a set point in
`time. The numbers are approximations made in 2004, and the reader may want to plug in more relevant
`numbers. We argue that this won't change the nature of the chart that much, just the placement of the
`breakpoints. This chart was developed to compare a $100 64Gb HDD to a $10 32MB flash card.
`
`The chart differs from the earlier version as it has log scales on both axes. This helps to show that for a
`doubling in capacity, prices will double, as long as the doubling requires for another unit to be added to the
`system.
`
`It is clear from the chart that HDDs have a floor price. The lowest price for this exercise was estimated at
`$100. Below this level flash becomes the less expensive option, as long as the smaller capacity of the flash
`does not get in the way.
`At the point where the two cross over the price of that much flash has become equal to the floor price of the
`HDD. For the numbers used here that occurs with slightly more than 512MB of flash. At this juncture HDD
`and flash add the same cost to the system, yet HDD offers the designer 100 times as much storage.
`
`Looking farther away from the origin we see a point where the HDD price starts to rise. This is the capacity at
`which multiple drives must be used, so pricing suddenly becomes proportional to storage requirements. An
`example of such an application would be a RAID array or a collection of blade servers. The HDD and flash
`lines track from this point on, but the flash line is over 100 times the price of the HDD. There are few
`applications that would gravitate towards flash at such an expense, but this is the realm of solid-state drives,
`which offer faster seek times, extreme mechanical ruggedness, and low power consumption at a considerable
`premium.
`
`To boil this down, we see that for very small storage requirements flash gives a lower overall system cost.
`Once flash approaches the floor price of the HDD, then HDD wins hands-down from a pricing standpoint, and
`any decision to use flash would have to include more considerations than simply cost.
`
`Combining the Charts
`
`What do the two charts show us together? We were unable to come up with a reasonable representation of this
`in a picture, so we'll have to describe it in words.
`
`First, let's assume that HDD and flash price per megabyte will continue behave as they do in the first chart and
`
`Over 20 companies have already announced products
`for this market among which are Memory1, 3DXPoint
`etc
`
`But what are the underlying reasons that will make it
`feasible for slower cheaper memory to replace most of
`the future DRAM market without applications
`noticing?
`
`latency loving reasons for fading out DRAM
`
`...
`
`...
`
`popular SSD articles on StorageSearch.com
`
`SSD Myths - "write endurance" - In theory the problems are now
`well understood - but solving them presents a challenge for each
`new chip generation.
`
`spinning down to HDD's retirement - hard drives updates
`
`the Top 20 SSD companies - updated quarterly.
`
`the Fastest SSDs - in each form factor.
`
`capacitor hold up extremes in 2.5" SSDs
`
`PCIe SSDs - news and market commentary. We've reported on
`PCIe SSDs since the first products shipped in 2007.
`
`SSD market history (1976 to 2011) - If you're new to the market it
`provides a clue to how much things have changed - and how fast (or
`how slowly).
`
`SSD controllers & IP - this is a directory of merchant market SSD
`controller chip technology providers.
`
`is eMLC the true successor to SLC in enterprise flash SSD?
`so called "enterprise MLC" tastes the sweetest? How come there
`are so many different and contradictory reliability claims?
`
`SSD Data Recovery - includes articles and news related to
`recovering data from faulty or damaged SSDs.
`
`Clarifying SSD Pricing - where does all the money go? - Also
`includes SSD price examples.
`
`RAM SSDs - 20 or so companies still market RAM based SSDs.
`This directory page tells you who they are and explains why - as the
`market uses more flash SSDs - the need for RAM SSDs is growing
`(instead of shrinking).
`
`year of the enterprise SSD goldrush - that's what I predicted for
`2012. Wonder why?
`
`SSD market analysts - I compiled this filtered list as a
`recommended resource for all those people who need paid-for
`custom reports and detailed SSD market help.
`
`SSD jargon - You can't have a meaningful discussion about the
`intricacies of SSD design without using these words.
`
`2
`
`

`

`track each other's decline over time. Next, let's assume that the floor price remains intact (which is roughly the
`case for any given form factor of HDD, although the price will not necessarily be $100) then we find that the
`shape of the second chart remains the same over time, yet the two lines move to the right at a rate of one
`doubling in capacity about every year.
`
`The net effect here is that flash will become the better choice for larger and larger applications over time. HDD
`will continue to be the less expensive choice for applications where flash's price equals or exceeds the floor
`price of an HDD.
`
`This means that applications that need an HDD today may be able to cut costs by going to flash in future years
`if the file sizes don't expand over time.
`
`So now we have the question: "How much capacity is needed by my application?"
`
`File Sizes
`
`the SSD Reliability Papers - links and abstracts of articles related to
`the subject of SSD reliability and data integrity.
`
`the problem with Write IOPS in flash SSDs - this classic article
`helps you understand why all flash SSD benchmarks incorrectly
`suggest you're going to get much higher performance from some
`types of flash SSDs than you will actually see in your application..
`
`Data Integrity Challenges in flash SSD Design - looks into the
`detailed techniques to achieve data reliability.
`
`What's the best / cheapest - PC SSD? - I often get emails from
`readers who ask the above question.
`
`notebook SSDs - market overview.
`
`File size is the final key factor in this equation - what is the size of all of the files that must be stored upon the
`media?
`
`auto tiering SSDs / SSD ASAPs - market guide to Auto-tuning SSD
`Accelerated Pools of storage.
`
`Certain files will not grow over time. A good example of this sort of file is an MP3 song (approx. 1.5MB for a
`3-minute song). Feature films are also unlikely to grow much in size. Today's 90-minute feature film consumes
`about 2GB of storage. Arguably HDTV will double this, but this is not an ongoing increase - it is a one-time
`event unlikely to be replicated for over a decade. Another one-time event that works in the opposite direction
`is the migration of videos from the MPEG-2 compression standard to MPEG-4, a change that is likely to cut
`the storage requirements of a film to as little as a tenth of its MPEG-2 size.
`
`this way to the Petabyte SSD - This article describes the future
`storage architecture of the datacenter, explains the economics of
`SSDs replacing HDDs for bulk storage and suggests a roadmap for
`getting there.
`
`the 3 fastest PCIe flash SSDs list - or is it really lists?
`
`...
`
`A to Z - SSD stuff
`
`1.0" SSDs
`1.8" SSDs
`2.5" SSDs
`3.5" SSDs
`19" rack SSDs
`
`1976 to 2013 - SSD history
`
`Analysts - SSD market
`Articles and blogs - re SSD
`
`Bad block management in flash SSDs
`Benchmarks - SSD - can you trust them?
`Best / cheapest SSD?
`Big market picture of SSDs
`Branding Strategies in the SSD market
`
`Chips - storage interface / processors
`Chips - SSD on a chip & DOMs
`Cloud storage - with SSD twists
`Controller chips for SSDs
`Cost of SSDs - why so much?
`
`more A to Z in SSD
`
`..
`
`"Thanks for the offer, but...
`we don't want to deploy any new hard drive arrays.
`Not even if you're giving them to us free!"
`
`This classic article described the pivotal future storage
`market climate in which enterprise users will cease to
`regard hard drive arrays attractive or usable - even if the
`cost of buying a new hard drive array drops away to
`ZERO! - this way to the petabyte SSD
`
`What about camera megapixel requirements? Many in the digital camera business believe that camera
`megapixel offerings are about to stagnate at a certain level (although there is no agreement if this is 3
`megapixels, 5 megapixels, something between these two, or something larger). What Semico knows for a fact
`is that while HDD and flash capacities double approximately every year, camera megapixels have historically
`grown at a much smaller rate of about 19% per year. For the sake of argument we will assume that camera
`megapixels will continue to grow at this very low rate.
`
`Other files will grow as fast as or faster than the growth of the capacity of the media. A prime example of this
`is software, whose size seems only to be limited by the maximum practical HDD size in the system. The data
`files that go with this software are equally unconstrained in growth.
`
`For those applications that don't grow and for those that grow very slowly, the decline in cost in the first chart
`implies that the amount of storage in the system (a camera, a TiVo, an MP3 player, or what-have-you) will
`increase steadily allowing users to store an ever-increasing number of fixed-length files in the system.
`Napster's recent advertising campaign in the US points out that you could spend $10,000 to fill your iPod to
`capacity with songs. Not only are users unlikely to embrace this idea, but insurance carriers are even less likely
`to offer replacement value for the loss of such a well-filled iPod. Even if songs cost nothing, how much data is
`manageable through the interface of a portable device?
`
`Here's another similar example: By Semico's estimate the average capacity flash card in 2008 will be able to
`store almost 1,000 photos taken by the average camera purchased that year. We wonder how likely it will be
`that users will wish to manage 1,000 photos through the camera's interface.
`
`It is reasonable to expect users to max out on the number of these relatively fixed-size files that they wish to
`manage on a portable device. Although we don't know what this number is, we believe that the maximum
`manageable number of fixed-size files a user can deal with will limit the memory size desired by the user. In
`turn, this should cause systems to eventually migrate from HDD to flash.
`
`This sounds very negative from the viewpoint of the HDD maker, but new applications promise to come to the
`rescue.
`
`New Applications Will Change How We Work & Play
`
`Just as the TiVo is changing how people watch television, and as digital media is changing how people take
`and share photos, the availability of the right kind of storage will change other aspects of our lives.
`
`Video consumes prodigious amounts of storage. TiVo and other personal media recorders will continue to
`consume larger and larger HDDs for years to come, never once entering into a realm where flash can compete.
`Many people will find themselves with a stash of hundreds of hours of un-watched video, waiting for that
`"some day" when they can get caught up.
`
`One application that Semico expects to emerge from ever-decreasing media prices will be camcorders that are
`based either upon HDDs or flash cards. Many examples are on the market today, but either they are either too
`expensive (in the case of HDD and quality flash camcorders) or they offer insufficient quality (the other flash
`camcorders, which record low-resolution images.) Once we have reached the magical juncture of quality and
`price, the market should open up and perhaps explode.
`
`We are sure that other similar applications will emerge, and that creative minds will imagine ways to use
`growing HDD capacity that we have never even dreamed of.
`
`What to Expect Going Forward
`
`Here are some rules of thumb that will help with any decisions about when flash will appeal and when HDD
`will be the better choice:
`
`3
`
`

`

`1. Flash will be the leading choice in portable applications where a limited number of small files are used
`because it will offer the lowest overall system cost.
`2. Other limited-capacity applications will also gravitate towards flash.
`3. In applications where file size or the total number of files to be stored is of more concern than total
`system cost, HDDs will prevail.
`4. Everything will change over time, as declining prices cause flash to replace HDD in portable
`applications where storage requirements reach some natural limit.
`5. New applications will emerge to take advantage of lower prices afforded by HDDs.
`
`...Semico Research profile, flash, HDDs
`
`...Later:- 2008 - Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz,
`cited the above article in his blog Anything But a Flash in the Pan
`...
`
`The SSD market during its short history (spanning
`only 40 years) has managed to accrue an imaginative
`body of literature which includes truths, half truths,
`mysticism, misunderstandings. myths, legends - and in
`some cases - downright balderdash - when it comes to
`the subject of SSD costs, pricing and justifications.
`
`Exiting the Astrological Age of Enterprise SSD Pricing
`
`...
`See also:- 100 popular SSD articles on StorageSearch.com
`
`StorageSearch.com is published by ACSL
`
`4
`
`