HDDs and Flash Memory: A Marriage of Convenience

Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates, and Jim Handy, semiconductor analyst from Objective Analysis have written a new joint report, HDDs and Flash Memory: A Marriage of Convenience (around 50 pages, $5,000).  

This report explores how flash memory and hard disk drives can combine in modern computer systems to provide performance approaching that of a solid state drive at a cost comparable to that of today’s HDDs. ‘Paired Storage’ is the name given by the Storage Networking Industry Association to this new storage architecture.  

This combination is so compelling that the authors project a 53% adoption rate in desktop computers and a 25% adoption rate in notebook computers by 2016.  

Furthermore, today’s media tablets are not powerful enough to provide for the needs of many business and power users.  These needs will lead to a new category of ‘fat tablet’ computers that combine some flash memory with hard disk drives along with other enhancements to. The report projects that 40% of the total tablet market will be ‘fat tablets’ by 2016.

Other important findings from the report are:

• Flash will become a necessary component in computing systems driven by a growing performance gap between DRAM and rotating storage.
• The first hybrid HDDs have appeared from Seagate combining flash memory and hard disk drives but more hybrid drives may follow.
• Paired storage using separate flash and HDD storage devices are already being used to help bridge this gap. Data centers and high performance computing use paired storage today. This will migrate to the broader PC in the future.
• Several paired storage approaches are being tried today with no clear winner. The report details a number of these: Hybrid HDDs, flash on the motherboard, SSDs teamed with HDDs, and others.
• Hybrid HDDs are now available only from Seagate, but they will become widely available from most HDD makers soon. These devices add flash memory to standard hard disk
• Manual data placement is the most common means of managing the flash today, but several new software products will automate this task, offering much better results at a lower cost.
• Paired storage helps reduce system power consumption while improving system performance.

The paired storage market will grow to 328 million units by 2016, with an additional 41 million units shipping in the tablet market creating a new category of ‘fat tablets’.

The report ends with profiles of companies spearheading efforts in paired storage technology.