Samsung's big flash alt-disk (and the last place you look)

Faster, lighter, greener... it's Tuesday's IT Blogwatch: in which Samsung launches its 1.8" 64GB flash replacement for portable hard drives. Not to mention how to find lost objects...

Martyn Williams reports:

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has begun producing a flash memory-based solid-state disk drive for mobile computing applications. The drive is the latest in a growing line of products from Samsung and competitors that make use of flash memory chips instead of magnetic disc recording technology. Compared to today's hard-disk drives, SSDs are lighter, use less power and can read and write data faster. They are also more expensive but the price difference has been narrowing
...
The new Samsung drive has a capacity of 64GB and is the same size as a conventional 1.8-inch hard-disk drive. It's designed to be used in sub-notebook class computers, ultra-mobile PCs and other devices such as portable media players ... Samsung said it is seeing demand increase for such products, particularly from companies making ultra-portable PCs.
...
The price of the drive, which will be sold to PC manufacturers and not end-users, was not disclosed.

Brian Lam takes a break from his readers' whines about Gizmodo's redesign:

Consisting of 64 eight Gigabit single-level cell flash memory chips (each one's circuitry is 1/2500th the width of a human hair) the new SSDs will be making devices faster, more efficient, and should boost battery life by up to 20 per cent. This move makes the Korean company the largest producer of high-capacity SSDs worldwide.

Cyril Kowaliski goes back to the future:

Samsung ... announced the drive around three months ago, boasting that it would feature a 64MB/s read speed and a write speed of 45MB/s. (For reference, the company quoted read and write speeds of 15MB/s and 7MB/s, respectively, for a conventional 80GB 1.8" hard drive.)

To which, UberGerbil cries, "It's all about the seek-perf, baby":

2.5" laptop drives vary quite a bit: the 7200rpm drives can hit 60 but they're uncommon (and expensive); the 5400rpm drives more typically found in laptops range from 30-40. The 1.8" drives, which are typically 4200rpm, are slower still -- 15-20MB/s ... So this SSD is already competitive with mainstream laptop drives on raw transfer rate (for reads, which matters much more than writes)

But SSDs have near zero latency for random access, something laptop HDs tend to be very slow at both in absolute terms (measured in milliseconds) and relative to desktop drives (typically 7ms for desktop drives vs 14ms or worse for laptop drives). And for many operations seeks dominate over raw transfer rate.

And ew answers the inevitable question about flash reliability:

Factoring wear leveling with commonly stated 1,000,000 write cycles can give you a pretty good estimate ... let's say it really is only 100,000 write cycles and assume wear leveling is distributing writes perfectly evenly. That means you can write 6,400,000GB to this drive before it fails.

Now let's assume you're writing to the drive at 45MB/sec constantly. That means you could write to the drive constantly for 142,222,222 seconds or 4.5 years. I'd say that's pretty damn good considering you're going to want to take a break from all that writing and do a little reading once in a while.

Thomas Ricker has bad news:

No word on price but it's not like you'll find these up for retail anyway. We expect 'em to go OEM-only baby as $1,000 (at least) premiums inside your latest VAIO, Latitude, Lifebook, and Sammy's own Q40 and Q1 Ultra machines to name a few. Apple too, if there's any life to that ultra-portable rumor.

Rob Bushway has gotta agree:

It wouldn't surprise me to hear an official announcement soon from Samsung, regarding a new 64GB SSD version of their Q1 Ultra, although I suspect you'd need to take out a second mortgage in order to buy one.

Buffer overflow:

Around the Net

• Eric Bangeman: Intel revs up FSB speeds with Core 2 Duo E6750
• Nicolas Falliere: Beware of LZH
• Om Malik: Vonage: The Last Stand
• Rational Security: BrokeNAC Mountain - "I wish I knew how to quit you."
• David Hitz: Pop Quiz: Should You be a Late Adopter or an Early Adopter?
• Duncan Riley: Xerox Enters Search Market
• Silicon Valley Watcher: Federated Media Denies its Top Blog Publishers are "Sell-Outs"
• Paul McNamara: Fallout from lawyers' 'How to cheat H-1B' video
• Timothy B. Lee: Analysis: Google's net neutrality position leaves unanswered questions
• Nate Anderson: Wi-Fi Alliance starts certifying 802.11n Draft 2.0 gear

Around Computerworld

• Angela Gunn: Hackers and "higher motives"
• Robert L. Mitchell: HP video blows up data center, goldfish tank in publicity stunt
• Shark Tank: Unclear on the concept
• Patrick Thibodeau: Three things I would buy over an iPhone
• Preston Gralla: Today is the beginning of the end for Vonage
• Shark Bait: I'll make this an open ended one

Previously in IT Blogwatch

• Plaxo: "All your social network are belong to us" (and mamma mia!)
• DHS derided due to dodgy digital defenses (and not MS Surface)
• Microsoft caves to Google complaint (and future-hate)
• EFF wins 4th Amendment email victory (and megayachts)
• Yahoo! loses! CEO!, Blockbuster <3 Blu-Ray (and C5jet)
• Older posts

And finally... Seek, and ye shall find

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.