|
|
 |
|
Viewing report
|
|
|
|
HDDs and Flash Memory: A Marriage of Convenience
Coughlin Associates, Jan 2011, Pages: 45
This report examines a new storage architecture that has been named “Paired Storage” by the Storage Networking Industry Association – SNIA. Paired storage is the combination of flash memory with conventional rotating storage.
Important findings are:
- Flash will become a necessary component in computing systems driven by a growing performance gap between DRAM and rotating storage.
- The first hybrid HDDs have appeared from Seagate combining flash memory and hard disk drives but more hybrid drives may follow.
- Paired storage using separate flash and HDD storage devices are already being used to help bridge this gap. Data centers and high performance computer users are the largest market for paired storage today. This will migrate to the broader PC in the future.
- Several paired storage approaches are being tried with no clear winner: Hybrid HDDs, flash on the motherboard, SSDs teamed with HDDs, and other approaches are each detailed in the report.
- Manual data placement is most common today, but several new software products automate this task, offering much better results at a low cost.
- Paired storage helps reduce system power consumption while improving system performance.
- The paired storage market will grow to 328 million units by 2016, with an additional 41 million units shipping in the Tablet market creating a new category of “fat tablets”.
The report ends with profiles of companies spearheading efforts in paired storage technology.
|
|
|
|
