The Technology of Solid State Drives

Most solid state drives come in the following sizes of 1.8 inch, 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch storage devices

Prior to this year the majority of SSD drives have been bought as direct hard disk drive (HDD) replacements.  The main target for these drive swaps has been the notebook market, but more recently SSDs have been used for wider applications such as in servers, desktop PCs and in more rugged installations as required by industrial markets.

But this year this is set to change as the growth of SSD installations rapidly increases with new solid state drive shapes and sizes, which will allow SSD drives to start a real push into the mainstream. From now on we will see SSD drives installed as standard in new notebooks and laptops instead of the previous standard of HDDs.

Solid State Drives set to Takeover from Hard Disks

Hard disk drives domination of the mobile computing market is set to be taken over by solid state drives.

SSD drives use NAND flash memory technology and the price of this type of memory has seen reductions that were quicker than larger than expected so in turn the price of off solid state drives has also dropped more than was originally anticipated.

Also the performance and quality of SSD technology has improved well beyond what was expected meaning that SSD adoption by notebook and laptop manufacturers has been far greater than predicted. Consumers have therefore benefitted from these reduced price levels and purchase of new computers using a solid state drive have increased considerably.

SSDs have many advantages over HDDs such as greater durability, better  reliability, along with higher performance and a smaller form factor thus allowing them to become a much more attractive proposition to notebook manufacturers and customers alike.

The Netbook Effect

Another reason for the rapid increase in popularity of the solid state drive has been the incredibly fast growth in popularity of the NetBook.  High sales of netbooks have definitely helped mainstream adoption of SSDs as a valid HDD alternative.

Netbooks have been embracing SSDs in a big way because of their cost advantages when compared to the low capacity 1.8 inch hard disks with which they compete.

SSDs provide a much more robust and cost effective storage solution than a standard hard disk in these price ranges.

Cost of ownership also comes into play for some intensive server applications and SSDs are now being used in these types of servers as well because of the high performance and low cost that they provide.

The best cost of ownership scenario for SSDs is when they are used for high performance and read-intensive applications like web serving and providing video on demand quickly and reliably.

Solid State Drive Memory Technology

SSD technology is based on NAND flash memory.  As already mentioned NAND prices are still falling and NAND technology continues to improve as the memory suppliers continue to provide smaller sizes and higher memory density while still being able to reduce the costs of manufacturing.

The Multi-Level Cell flash memory (MLC), which is normally used in most notebook SSDs, is still being improved, which means that larger solid state capacities will continue to be achieved as more gigabytes of  memory capacity can be packed into each individual chip and more chips can be packed into each drive because they are smaller.

NAND flash technology tends to be very similar irrespective of which memory manufacturer is supplying it it.  However what makes the difference in SSD performance is the controller and firmware supplied with the solid state drive.

Note: Flash memory is widely used in all digital cameras, MP3 players, USB or Flash sticks, and many other portable electronic devices. NAND is special version of flash memory suitable for SSDs.

SSD Controller Technology

SSD controller technology continues to improve and now most major SSD designs have moved from a 4 channel to an 8 channel controller and controllers with even more channels will soon be here. This will allow SSD drives to perform much faster.

Advances in controller technology have allowed many mainstream notebook and industrial computer applications as well as read intensive server applications to start using MLC NAND, while on the other hand write intensive server applications are tending to use the Single-Level Cell NAND flash memory (SLC) as this type of memory has a longer potential lifespan.

SDD Firmware is another critical component of SSD performance. SSDs that have the best firmware can easily outperform those solid state drives where the firmware is less robust.

In time the SSD manufacturers that can provide the best performance in the controller and the firmware will capture the biggest share of the future SSD market as their solid state drives will simply be much better!

What Next For SSD Drives

Notebooks and netbooks will continue to adopt SSD drives in a big way with total domination of SSDs a real possibility.

The trend is definitely towards smaller slim and light portable computing where SSDs can help with the obvious space constraints and weight issues. SSD drives are also an advantage due to their lower power consumption and cool running temperatures as well as extended battery lives.

This year a very large number of notebooks will be sold with SSDs as the only storage option and hard disks will no longer be an option. As manufacturers become more creative many more SSD only notebook models will be realeased.

Performance of SSD Drives will continue to improve and drive capacities will continue to grow rapidly with the standard SSD capacity increasing from 128 GB to 256. Other advances are also in the pipeline such as the introduction of self-encrypted SSD devices to ensure your data is always secure.

The Future of Solid State Drives

In the years to come Solid State Drives and NAND flash memory will be introduced into many new and different applications.

And very soon terms such as "solid state drive" and "SSD" will become known to many more consumers and for anyone looking to buy a notebook, netbook, laptop or in fact any type of personal computer it may become the only option.