SanDisk discusses SSD technology, part one

The lower cost of of solid-state drives (SSDs) has led to higher demand, although there is plenty of work left to be done before SSDs are found in larger amounts of notebooks and PCs.

To help give us a unique insight into SSDs and how the technology is changing, CDFreaks spoke with SanDisk, which recently announced its own new SSD technology that could help shape the future.

A consumer who purchases a laptop with SSD storage should expect three things:  improved reliability, performance and better battery life, SanDisk recently told CDFreaks.

"Most PC users have had a HDD let them down at some point in their life – the results are often catastrophic with irreplaceable data loss, downtime and lost productivity as you rebuild the system," said Don Barnetson, SanDisk’s Senior Director of Marketing for the SSD line.

Speed also is a strong selling point for SSDs over HDDs, and will be used in future marketing pushes by manufacturers.

"SSDs are a whole lot faster than HDDs," he added, "and getting much better each year."

Although some manufacturers have started to use SSDs in their notebooks, it seems the enterprise storage market, not PCs, will become the next spot for SSDs.  Reliability for home users is important, but is absolutely vital for those who work in the enterprise market.

A combination of faster speeds, less power consumption, lower temperatures, and increased uptime help companies choose SSDs rather than HDDs. 

Even with important upsides compared to HDDs, a major reason why SSDs aren’t more widely adopted at the moment is due to the high price tag on current drives.

"SanDisk has worked very hard to reduce SSD costs by continually shrinking our NAND flash device lithography; from 120nm SLC in 2005 to 43nm MLC today – reducing the amount of silicon required to store a bit of data by approximately 15x."

Shrinking NAND lithography has reportedly helped prices decrease 50 percent per year since 2004, and prices will continue to drop.

CDFreaks will post part two of the discussion with SanDisk tomorrow, with a focus on SanDisk’s latest SSD technology, and why it will make a difference.