Solid State Drives – Where Are They Heading?

Solid-state drive adoption will persist to grow and it’ll be more than 10 years before it is ultimately replaced by a new memory technologies, experts said.

SSDs are becoming more attractive as NAND flash memory gets cheaper and faster, as it offers flexibility in usage for a RAM or hard drive alternative, mentioned attendees and speakers at the Hot Chips conference in Stanford, California on Sunday.

SSDs constructed on flash-memory are now considered an alternative to spinning hard drives, that have reached their speed limit. Mobile devices have moved up to flash drives, and a significant number of light and thin ultrabooks are switching to SSDs, which are smaller, faster and much more power efficient. But, the business market still relies mainly on spinning disks, and SSDs are poised to replace hard-disks in server infrastructure, experts said. Among the reasons: SSDs are still costlier than hard disk drives, though flash cost is coming down quickly.

“It is going to be considered a number of years until NAND flash memory runs out-of steam,” said Jim Handy, an analyst at Objective Evaluation, within a presentation.

Handy predicted that NAND flash will probably be replaced by 2023 or beyond. The capability of SSDs is developing as NAND flash geometries get smaller, so scaling down flash will wind up hard, that will increase the demand for a brand new form of nonvolatile memory that doesn’t rely on transistors.

Footnote: You know what? SSDs still break…. Can we recover the data from them? You bet! – Go here.