3 ms·

That is awesome. It is an utter waste of space to put SSD's into a 3.5 or 2.5" hard drive case. This also opens up the door for some very compact PCs. Rather t

by teilo 16y ago

That is awesome. It is an utter waste of space to put SSD's into a 3.5 or 2.5" hard drive case. This also opens up the door for some very compact PCs. Rather than having flash memory soldered onto the motherboard, I would like to see slots on regular PC motherboards for this. Lots of questions: Is this some standardized connector, or has Toshiba created a defacto standard? Is this just an alternate SATA plug, or is the SATA daughter controller integrated onto the motherboard itself? Edit: It's just standard mSATA. Controller on each drive. From the horse's mouth: http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2010_11/pr0801.htm?from=RSS_PRESS&uid=20101108-1204e http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2010_11/pr0801.htm?from... mSATA is a standard: http://gizmodo.com/5364485/msata-its-like-sata-but-smaller http://gizmodo.com/5364485/msata-its-like-sata-but-smaller

jacquesm 16y ago
Putting an SSD in to a 3.5 or 2.5" hard drive enclosure is indeed a waste of space, but talking 'mSATA' to what is essentially memory seems to be a waste of speed. All that work to stuff data down a serial pipe emulating a harddisk that isn't even there.
- AngryParsley 16y ago
  Flash has certain disadvantages that favor using a controller instead of direct addressing like DRAM. To make SSDs fast, you have to do wear leveling, command queueing, and parallelization of requests across all flash chips. Oh and when a cell fails, you have to remap spare cells. Doing this stuff in software would be a giant pain. You can get raw flash chips, but it's hard to get decent performance and reliability out of them. That sort of setup is usually for embedded systems where writing is rare and read performance isn't important. Firmwares for switches and routers, for example.
  - Hoff 16y ago
    While I understand your comments and that this can get hairy, also consider a softmodem-like implementation as a counter-example. A softmodem (variously also called a Winmodem) is a partial or full software implementation of a modem, and helped reduce the parts counts and the costs of modems. Ugly or not, it's a near certainty that we'll see a software (or firmware) implementation of this; some sort of "softssd" or "winssd" scheme.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
- pmjordan 16y ago
  You'd need custom file systems, etc., plus no PC BIOS will boot from something that doesn't resemble an ATA device. The whole ecosystem is based on layers of legacies, you should know that by now!
VladRussian 16y ago
now imagine these babies filling in a rack cabinet.

by teilo 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago

Putting an SSD in to a 3.5 or 2.5" hard drive enclosure is indeed a waste of space, but talking 'mSATA' to what is essentially memory seems to be a waste of speed. All that work to stuff data down a serial pipe emulating a harddisk that isn't even there.

AngryParsley 16y ago
Flash has certain disadvantages that favor using a controller instead of direct addressing like DRAM. To make SSDs fast, you have to do wear leveling, command queueing, and parallelization of requests across all flash chips. Oh and when a cell fails, you have to remap spare cells. Doing this stuff in software would be a giant pain. You can get raw flash chips, but it's hard to get decent performance and reliability out of them. That sort of setup is usually for embedded systems where writing is rare and read performance isn't important. Firmwares for switches and routers, for example.
- Hoff 16y ago
  While I understand your comments and that this can get hairy, also consider a softmodem-like implementation as a counter-example. A softmodem (variously also called a Winmodem) is a partial or full software implementation of a modem, and helped reduce the parts counts and the costs of modems. Ugly or not, it's a near certainty that we'll see a software (or firmware) implementation of this; some sort of "softssd" or "winssd" scheme.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
pmjordan 16y ago
You'd need custom file systems, etc., plus no PC BIOS will boot from something that doesn't resemble an ATA device. The whole ecosystem is based on layers of legacies, you should know that by now!

VladRussian 16y ago

now imagine these babies filling in a rack cabinet.