Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Faster NAND Flash (SSD) in Late 2008

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
68,183
38,967


With the introduction of the MacBook Air, Apple offered a new mass storage option for the first time -- Solid State Drives (SSD). The Solid State Drive takes the place of the traditional Hard Disk Drive (HDD) as the place to store your files. Being based on NAND Flash ram, SSD boasts the advantages of being more reliable, using less battery and being faster in certain circumstances.

Intel and Micron announced last week that they have developed a new high-speed NAND flash chip which can reach speeds up to 200 Megabytes/second reads and 100 Megabytes/second writes. Conventional Single-Level-Cell Flash memory is reportedly limited to 40 Megabytes/second reads and 20 Megabytes/second writes.

Mass production of an 8GB Solid State Drive based on the technology is expected by the end of 2008. This "high-speed" drive is expected to carry a significant premium and will first be targeted at the professional market.

Meanwhile, for general consumers, prices on more conventional NAND flash appears to be falling, with prices dropping as much as 75% since August 2007. The dropping price of NAND Flash made the offering of SSD possible in the MacBook Air, though still at premium prices. These price drops should also trickle down to Apple's other Flash-based products, such as the iPhone and iPod Touch. The iPhone has been rumored to be due for a revision sometime this year, with the possibilities of increased storage and the introduction of 3G networking.

Article Link
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2008/02/03/faster-nand-flash-ssd-in-late-2008/
It's not like you can't add a SSD aftermarket to any other Mac. :rolleyes:

It's kinda obvious that the technology is going to get faster and cheaper with more consumption. Does anyone know of any hard drive makers on the SSD field?
 
Pmc

It would be nice if we could move to directly PMC (programmable metallization cell) which is 1,000 more effective than existing flash memory, at 1/10 of the size. Hopefully by 2009.......
 
SSD is too new for me to buy. I mean 32GB for over $900??? Totally not worth it for me. I give it about 1-3 years for the prices to drop.
 
When I read 128gb SSD option for half the price of the current SSD upgrade, thats when I start to get my credit card out.

Reading 8gbs makes me think of an iPhone, not a portable computer.
 
It might be entertaining if someone managed to mod a 1.8" magnetic drive plus a SSD like the upcoming Sandisk Vaulter into the 2.5" bay in a notebook. I think the two together might weigh less than a 2.5" drive, and might be a really interesting combination.
 
noodle654 said:
SSD is too new for me to buy. I mean 32GB for over $900??? Totally not worth it for me. I give it about 1-3 years for the prices to drop.
Click to expand...

I'm with you man, it's price vs. tech advancement

I'm willing to hold out a little....
 
A little more competition between technologies will do us all some good.

Let each consumer make their ideal choice based on the capacity, cost, and speed of their "disk."
 
BREAKING NEWS: Samsung in 2020 will release 100TB flash NAND drive with the search speed of 1tb per second.

more news to follow in 2019.
 
What's your prediction?
How many years until SSD is the standard?
I'm guessing 2-3 years.
 
In today's world, as companies come out with higher capacity HDD, consumers seem to be finding more and more ways to fill them up. Therefore, I think it would be difficult for SSD to be the standard in 2-3 years. I can see companies making the standard a 32Gb SSD (os load) and secondary 500+gb HDD a standard. People need 250Gb today, 500Gb by the end of the year, and will require 1Tb by the end of 2009 just to do their "everyday" computing. It will be hard for SSD to keep up with the capacities. Again, as I mentioned would be nice if SSD is adopted as a startup disk-type standard.
 
dual64bit said:
In today's world, as companies come out with higher capacity HDD, consumers seem to be finding more and more ways to fill them up. Therefore, I think it would be difficult for SSD to be the standard in 2-3 years. I can see companies making the standard a 32Gb SSD (os load) and secondary 500+gb HDD a standard. People need 250Gb today, 500Gb by the end of the year, and will require 1Tb by the end of 2009 just to do their "everyday" computing. It will be hard for SSD to keep up with the capacities. Again, as I mentioned would be nice if SSD is adopted as a startup disk-type standard.
Click to expand...


Totally agree. 32GB SSD for OS and main apps. 1TB GB HDD for storage.

I was absolutely impressed by the MacBook Air today when I had it in my hands.... but I'm going to hold off 'til WWDC for either a MBP with similar tech and nearly as slim (with more ports) or the 2nd Generation MacBook Air.
 
Probably another 6 to 10 years before the Mac Pro just comes with SSD. It would be nice to see major jumps in performance, capacities, and low cost that make standard drives obsolete.
 
BornAgainMac said:
Probably another 6 to 10 years before the Mac Pro just comes with SSD. It would be nice to see major jumps in performance, capacities, and low cost that make standard drives obsolete.
Click to expand...

At least, yeah... the MP and computers like it won't switch until development of the kinds of things people do on them reaches a space where disk size is not a premium. Magnetic HDs will also increase in capacity, and when there are multi-TB magnetic drives on the market, you know MP owners will be going after them, because they can use them.

On the other hand, I could see something like the MP coming with a Vaulter type option that puts the OS on a SSD, perhaps.
 
Problem: Prices of SSD are rtificially high!

This is what I gather from the info I've seen. The SSD manufactures just have the price of their hardware way to high. Lets face it the price of Flash storage has been dropping like a rock, I'm not convinced that the costs of the so called SSD are worth what is being asked for them.

In any event what is really needed is an update to the Touch and iPhone. These are the devices that cry out for more Flash right now.

Dave
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back