Flash-SSD Price and Performance
Trends
Realizing the huge potential of Flash memory due to the growing
prevalence of portable electronic devices such as PDAs, mobile phones,
and digital cameras, semiconductor manufactures have ramped up production
capacities as well as increased Flash memory densities. As a result,
price per MByte of Flash-SSD is expected to fall by an average of
80.86 percent annually within a 5-year period starting 2004, according
to market research firm Web-Feet Research (see Figures A and B).
As we move towards 2009, the price gap between HDDs and F-SSDs
narrow significantly (a difference of about $0.05 per MByte in 2007),
while F-SSDs dramatically increase in performance over HDDs (at
100x-150x over in terms of sustained transfers and IOPS). Web-Feet
Research also predicts a significant reduction in the F-SSD/HDD
cost ratio by approximately four times, from 433:1 ($0.078 vs. $0.0018
per MByte) in 2003 to 107:1 ($0.096 vs. $0.0009 per MByte) in 2006.
Flash-based SSDs will also maintain their cost-per-MByte advantage
over DRAM-based SSDs.
BiTMICRO Networks leads the industry in pushing exponential growth
in Flash-SSD performance by introducing the 3.5-inch E-Disk Fibre
Channel and Ultra320 SCSI series with Sustained Rates of up
to 68 MBytes/sec and up to 10,500 random IOPS. In comparison, the
fastest 3.5-inch mechanical HDD spinning at 15,000 RPM can only
deliver up to 600 random IOPS. Figure C reveals that within a 20-year
period, BiTMICRO 3.5-inch Flash-SSDs will post more than 20x improvement
in sustained random R/W rates peaking at 1.6 GBytes/sec by 2008.
In terms of IOPS, Flash-SSDs are projected to reach a peak of 240,000
random IOPS (for a 3.5-inch E-Disk 10 Gbits/sec Fibre Channel) by
2008, a 24x improvement within a 20-year period.
BiTMICRO's aggressive product development will also reflect on
its 2U rack mount Flash-SSDs, providing impressive throughput for
enterprise class applications. Engineering trends strongly indicate
the possibility of packing at least 24 (double than current drive
densities) 2.5-inch drives by the year 2007, with performance expected
again to increase at least threefold in 2008 as the 2nd generation
SAS (6 Gbits/sec) SSDs are utilized. Sustained Rates for 2U
rack mount systems are expected to improve by a factor of 30, reaching
20 GBytes/sec in 2008. Likewise, random IOPS performance is projected
to ramp up drastically, rising from 110,000 in 2004 to 2,000,000
in 2008.
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