The rise of SSDs over hard drives,
debunked
Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording uses a laser diode on a disk drive's actuator arm
to more securely embed bits onto a magnetic platter.
Credit: Seagate
1.) This is the headline and photo for an article, work in
pairs and discuss what you think the article will be about.
Make a list of at least three ideas
Now read the article and check to see if your predictions
were correct.
67COMMENTS
In spite of a recent report to the contrary, solid-state drives
(SSDs) will not surpass hard disk drives (HDDs) in either price
or capacity any time soon, according to industry analysts.
In fact, hard drives will remain the dominant mass storage
device in laptops and desktops for years to come.
SSDs are expected to eventually dominate HDDs in laptops
and desktops, but that isn't expected to happen for years. At
the end of last year, SSDs were only in about 15% of new
notebooks.
And, prices for SSDs are many times higher than that of
HDDs.
For example, a data center-class HDD with 6TB of capacity
sells for $185 today and will drop to about $165 by the end of
the year -- about 3 cents per gigabyte, according to market
research firm Gartner. A 4TB HDD for a laptop sells for $95 to
computer manufacturers or about 2 cents per gigabyte.
Today, even computer manufacturers who buy SSDs en
masse are paying on average about $50 for a 128GB SSD. If
a consumer were to spend $50 on an internal hard disk drive
today, they'd walk away with 1TB of capacity.
HGST
Using Helium instead of air, HGST is able to pack more platters into a hard drive.
And HDD prices are expected to continue to drop as areal
platter density increases. Gartner predicts that over the next
five years, HDD prices will drop to as low as 1 of a cent per
gigabyte of capacity.
A variety of technologies are allowing HDD prices to continue
their steady decline, including perpendicular magnetic
recording that stands data bits in an upright, skinnier
orientation and helium-filled drives that reduce friction and
allow more platters to be squeezed more tightly together.
HDD technologies such as Bit Patterned Media Recording
(BPMR) and Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) will
result in up to 10-terabit-per-square-inch (Tbpsi) areal
densities by 2025, compared with today's .86 Tbpsi areal
densities. Industry roadmaps reveal HDD drives with up to
100TB capacity coming in the next decade.
"SSDs of any grade will still be in the 14 to 17 cent [per
gigabyte] range in 2019," said Joseph Unsworth, Gartner's
vice president of SSD research, adding that prices for SSDs
won't likely match those of HDDs, even by 2025.
As technology allowing more dense NAND flash chips has
advanced, SSD prices have plummeted. Today, consumers
can pick up SSDs for as little as 38 cents per gigabyte, but
that's nowhere near the 9 cents per gigabyte that hard drives
generally cost consumers today, according to Gartner.
But price isn't the only consideration when purchasing an
SSD. Flash memory is more than twice as fast as spinning
disks and it's far more reliable for mobile purposes because
there are no moving parts.
If there's one upgrade a consumer can make to a desktop or
laptop computer that will make the greatest difference in
performance, it's swapping in an SSD.
NAND flash manufacturers such as Samsung, Toshiba,
Micron, and Intel, have continued to shrink the lithography
technology for making flash transistors. Last fall, at the Flash
Memory Summit, Toshiba revealed its smallest lithography
process for NAND flash with a 15-nanometer, 16GB MLC
NAND wafer. The 15nm wafer was developed in partnership
with SanDisk.
Flash makers have also increased the number of bits -- from
one to three -- that can be stored per NAND flash cell, all of
which has increased density and reduced manufacturing
costs.
Today, multi-level cell (MLC, or two bits per cell) and triplelevel cell (TLC, or three bits per cell) NAND flash dominates
the market.
Samsung
Samsung's 850EVO SSD uses triple-level cell (TLC) NAND. TLC memory reduces
the cost to produce SSDs, one reason flash drives have dropped dramatically in
price.
More recently, the same flash makers have introduced threedimensional architectures that allow layers of NAND flash to
be stacked atop each other like a microscopic skyscraper.
Samsung started the trend with a 32-layer chip it called VNAND. Toshiba then followed with a 48-layer 3D flash memory
called BiCS (Bit Cost Scaling).
The result of the technological advances is a 16GB chip that
can be used to produce high capacity SSDs that today offer
4TB of capacity for consumers and will likely be knocking on
8TB and 10TB in the near future -- perhaps even by the end of
the year.
For example, SanDisk hopes to release an 8TB SSD this year.
Manuel Martull, SanDisk's product and solutions marketing
director, has said the company hopes to continue doubling
SSD capacity every one to two years, vastly outpacing
traditional HDD capacity growth.
The advances in NAND flash density that have some writing
that SSDs will reach price parity with HDDs, however, is a
claim that experts balk at.
Of all the NAND flash makers, only Micron and Intel have
publicly discussed a 32GB (3D MLC) and 48GB (3D TLC)
chip, both of which are 32 layers deep. But even that memory
would not be 32 or 64 times the capacity todays NAND flash
dies. Even a 128GB single die (1Tbit) chip would only be eight
times the density increase over today's chips, according to
Gartner.
Intel
Earlier this year, Micron and Intel began shipping 3D NAND flash drives with up to
3.5TB of capacity in M.2 expansion sticks
"There's a stupefying quantity of hogwash out there," said
John Monroe, vice president of research for data center
systems at Gartner. "HDD makers are forecasting a 20TB
HDD...in 2020; my guess is the [manufacturer] cost would be
around $175 per drive.
"In 2020, let's assume a cost of $0.11/GB for a 25TB SSD,
that would be $2,750 manufacturer cost per drive," Monroe
added.
Toshiba
Toshiba's 48-layer 3D NAND flash chips
And, when it comes to data center class SSDs, on average the
price per gigabyte of capacity is still nine times higher than
HDDs, according to Fang Zhang, a senior storage analyst at
IHS research.
"I would agree that SSD vendors will eventually be able to
cram more capacity per form factor [than hard disk drives] but
this is not the same as price per gigabyte," Zhang wrote in an
email reply to Computerworld.
SSDs are, however, expected to dominate HDDs in laptops
and desktops, but that isn't expected to happen for years. At
the end of last year, SSDs were only in about 15% of new
notebooks. By 2019, SSDs are expected to be in about 56% of
notebooks and desktops. Around that same time, SSDs will
cost computer makers about $45 for a 256GB drive, according
to Unsworth.
"That's when the market will see some major shifts," Unsworth
said in an email reply to Computerworld.
According to the text are the following statements
True, False or Not Given (if the statement is not in the text)
1.) Experts think that SSDs will be in use far more than HDDs by 2025
2.) Last year 85% of notebooks had HDDs
3.) 6TB capacity HDDs will drop in price by 15 dollars
4.) The same money that you spend on 128GB of SSD would buy you 1TB of HDD.
5.) Perpendicular magnetic recording is increasing HDD efficiency by standing them
up straight and making them a bit less thick.
6.) By 2025 it is possible that SSD prices of gigabyte per cent will be similar to HDD
prices.
7.) SSD works better than HDD in gadgets that you need to carry because none of
the components move.
8.) SSD prices have risen because it is possible to fit more bits into one cell.
9.) SSD storage ability is growing a lot faster than that of HDD.
10.) In five years’ time it is believed that SSD will be in the majority of laptops.
Match the words in italics to these definitions
a.) Pressed
b.) Fit in
c.) Someone who sells something
d.) To go faster than something
e.) Fall quickly
f.) to fall (in number or quality)
g.) a tall block of flats or office building
h.) nonsense
i.) so surprising it makes you a bit dizzy
j.) the opposite
g.) A factor that you have to think about.
h.) take something out and put something else in.
Look at the highlighted sentence.
Discuss these questions in pairs
1. What’s the name for this grammar? How is the adjective changed? Is
there another way you can change adjectives for this grammatical
structure? What are the rules governing when you use which method?
Write them down.
2. The adjective is modified by the phrase ‘many times’, what other
modifying phrases could you use to make the comparison bigger or
smaller? Think of at least ten more (five for bigger and five for smaller)
and write them down.
3. What does ‘that of’ refer to? Why is it used?
Now write down a list of new technological items you’d like to compare.
Write a list of adjectives you could use
With your partner make sentences like the one above comparing them.
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