Solid state drive growth and pricing
PC memory maker OCZ Technology Group will this month release a 1 terrabyte solid state drive (SSD) for general use. The price tag of the drive will put this out of the reach of the average home user but it is an indication of what users can look forward to.
Solid state drives have long been predicted to replace traditional mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs) as the default choice of PC makers, but until recently their capacities have largely been too small to be a useful replacement. Solid state drives are also still significantly more expensive than their HDD counterparts, although this is starting to change quickly with prices being dropped regularly by most SSD makers.
SSDs have a number of advantages over traditional mechanical drives including better lifespans, lower power consumption and the potential to significantly increase read and write access to disks. Unlike traditional hard disk drives which have mechanical parts which are liable to wear out over time, SSDs are not limited by mechanical parts. The other advantage of this is that they are faster because, in part, they don’t have to locate data on a disk physically and are better at retrieving data fragmented across a drive.
The other major advantage of SSDs are that they consume less power than mechanical hard disk drives which need to spin their disks at significant speeds during operation. Lower power consumption is particularly attractive for laptop makers looking to squeeze out more battery life. And at the other end of the scale, datacentre operators can significantly reduce their electrical bills with lower-consumption SSDs.
Capacity and pricing
While capacity constraints have always been one of the major obstacles to wider adoption, this is also changing. OCZ’s 1TB Colossus SSD is the start of a a new generation of high-capacity SSD drives which will, over time, drive down prices in the lower end of the market which is good news for consumers. The Colossus 1TB is not the largest SSD made to date but it is one of the first commercial releases. Back in early 2008 BiTMICRO announced a 1.6TB SSD but, despite much publicity, has never turned this into a commercial product.
The other constraint on SSD adoption is price and at US$2 200 (around R17 000) the Colossus 1TB SSD makes it clear that prices still have some way to go before they are comparable with hard disk drives. A 1TB HDD will cost little more than R1 000 locally so there is a hefty R16 000 price difference between the two.
The differential will, however, decrease rapidly over the next couple of years and already this year most SSD makers have announced significant price cuts and industry research suggests that 60% annual cuts in the price of SSDs are to be expected over the coming years. That 60% annual decrease in prices is borne out by Intel’s announcement in late July that its new 34 nanometer-based SSDs will be 60% cheaper than previous versions.
One of the final challenges now facing the SSD market is the ability to read and write to them at ever faster speeds. With a terrabyte of data to search, fast access speeds are becoming increasingly important. The OCZ 1TB drive has read access of 250MB a second and write access of 220MB/s, which is impressive for a device that weighs less than 400 grams and can be slotted into a 3.5-inch drive bay.
With capacities increasing as quickly as prices are dropping, consumers can expect to start seeing SSD drives as the default in most products within a couple of years.
SSD growth and pricing – give your views
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