<NEWS> Samsung SSD on the way

[Groltz]

http://www.dvhardware.net/article5045.html

[snip]
The first SSD with parallel Advanced Technology Attachment interface will ship in capacities up to 16GB. Such a device will feature sixteen 8Gb NAND memory chips and will cost approx. $900 with the current market prices of these chips.
[/snip]

 

[P5-133XL]

Don't Flash devices still run into lifespan issues with a limited number of writes before self-destruction?

 

[Buck]

I was wondering if there would be any lifespan issues too.

 

[.Nut]

AND and NAND flash memories have a longer re-write life cycle these days compared to early flash memories, when you could get maybe 5k ~ 10k good re-writes. The last I heard, you can now expect about 1 million re-writes without errors. With the latest generation of flash memory, I suspect Samsung might now be able to push that number up even higher.

However, the "trick" flash replacement hard drive makers are using these days is a firmware storage algorithm that purposely cycles through all the available sectors for re-write usage, regardless of the obvious file level fragmentation this would cause. Of course, file fragmentation in a solid state memory is not going to result in a performance loss as it would with a (mechanical) hard drive.

Using a storage algorithm that purposely cycles through all the available sectors for re-write usage, instead of the common storage algorithm that uses the first available sector, will prevent certain sectors from exceeding their theoretical life expectancy. At the end of the drive's service life, all sectors in every flash memory module would be at the end of their theoretical service life.