Los Angeles (CA) – Sandisk today announced a new flash file management system for solid state disk (SSD) drives, which is capable of accelerating random write rates at a factor of up to 100x. But don’t get excited about SSDs that are shifting data at gigabyte rates just yet. The net speed gain is only 4x in the short term and even that performance increase may depend on your point of view and especially on the maximum bandwidth of the interface.
The promise is enticing. 100x faster wrote speeds over existing SSDs thanks to a new flash file system developed by Sandisk. However, if you look closer than you quickly notice that this is theory at this time and simply promises the potential of 100x speed increases down the road, which, after several other challenges are overcome, could provide write rates in the range of 5 – 10 GB per second.
Sandisk did not provide a baseline of performance so the 100x speed gain is difficult to pinpoint and could refer to Sandisk’s own drives which aren’t among the highest performing devices in the consumer space at this time, or refer to speedy versions such as Intel’s recently released 80 GB consumer drives.
Sandisk’s new ExtremeFFS flash file management system operates on a page-based algorithm, which means there is no fixed coupling between physical and logical location. When a sector of data is written, the SSD puts it where it is most convenient and efficient. The result, according to Sandisk, is more performance and higher reliability.
While the technology potential is a 100x speed increase, some SSDs are already coming close to the maximum interface bandwidth of SATA II (300 MB/s) already today, at least in terms of read speed. The next generation will enable 600 MB/s, which is still a far cry from a 100x improvement that would exploit Sandisk’s technology. Not surprisingly, Sandisk expects SSD performance to increase by “just” about 4x next year - and not 100x.
However, even 4x would be massive and create a significant gap between SSDs and the fastest hard drives, which today can match the performance of most mainstream, SSDs. At that point, it seems rather unlikely that hard drive makers will be able to follow. It is unclear, however, what “4x” exactly means as the performance span between different SSDs is substantial. Read speeds could range from 300 MB/s to a maximum of 600 MB/s, if Sandisk is correct, and write speeds from about 200 MB/s to 300 MB/s.
Also somewhat expected is Sandisk’s request to come up with new metrics to measure SSD performance and reliability against hard drives – to highlight the advantages SSDs. The two proposed metrics are virtualRPM (vRPM) as a comparison metric to hard drive performance in terms of revolutions per minute, and Long-Term Data Endurance (LDE), which Sandisk sees as the first industry metric of long-term data endurance. “This is a lot like measuring tread wear on a tire,” said Rich Heye, senior vice president and general manager for Sandisk’s SSD business unit. The beauty of LDE," he added, "is that it captures endurance in one single, understandable figure. A common metric is necessary to facilitate SSD adoption moving forward."
Major PC OEMs and SSD competitors have reviewed and commented on SanDisk’s initial proposal, he added, and Sandisk has submitted a proposal and white paper to JEDEC, the main developer of standards for the solid-state industry.
The promise is enticing. 100x faster wrote speeds over existing SSDs thanks to a new flash file system developed by Sandisk. However, if you look closer than you quickly notice that this is theory at this time and simply promises the potential of 100x speed increases down the road, which, after several other challenges are overcome, could provide write rates in the range of 5 – 10 GB per second.
Sandisk did not provide a baseline of performance so the 100x speed gain is difficult to pinpoint and could refer to Sandisk’s own drives which aren’t among the highest performing devices in the consumer space at this time, or refer to speedy versions such as Intel’s recently released 80 GB consumer drives.
Sandisk’s new ExtremeFFS flash file management system operates on a page-based algorithm, which means there is no fixed coupling between physical and logical location. When a sector of data is written, the SSD puts it where it is most convenient and efficient. The result, according to Sandisk, is more performance and higher reliability.
While the technology potential is a 100x speed increase, some SSDs are already coming close to the maximum interface bandwidth of SATA II (300 MB/s) already today, at least in terms of read speed. The next generation will enable 600 MB/s, which is still a far cry from a 100x improvement that would exploit Sandisk’s technology. Not surprisingly, Sandisk expects SSD performance to increase by “just” about 4x next year - and not 100x.
However, even 4x would be massive and create a significant gap between SSDs and the fastest hard drives, which today can match the performance of most mainstream, SSDs. At that point, it seems rather unlikely that hard drive makers will be able to follow. It is unclear, however, what “4x” exactly means as the performance span between different SSDs is substantial. Read speeds could range from 300 MB/s to a maximum of 600 MB/s, if Sandisk is correct, and write speeds from about 200 MB/s to 300 MB/s.
Also somewhat expected is Sandisk’s request to come up with new metrics to measure SSD performance and reliability against hard drives – to highlight the advantages SSDs. The two proposed metrics are virtualRPM (vRPM) as a comparison metric to hard drive performance in terms of revolutions per minute, and Long-Term Data Endurance (LDE), which Sandisk sees as the first industry metric of long-term data endurance. “This is a lot like measuring tread wear on a tire,” said Rich Heye, senior vice president and general manager for Sandisk’s SSD business unit. The beauty of LDE," he added, "is that it captures endurance in one single, understandable figure. A common metric is necessary to facilitate SSD adoption moving forward."
Major PC OEMs and SSD competitors have reviewed and commented on SanDisk’s initial proposal, he added, and Sandisk has submitted a proposal and white paper to JEDEC, the main developer of standards for the solid-state industry.