The new Apple Thunderbolt Display is much more than just a monitor: It's a demonstration of what Thunderbolt technology is capable of!

It took a while, but Apple’s Thunderbolt technology is finally proving its worth. The new Thunderbolt Display is called “the ultimate docking station” on Apple’s website, and this may just be the case. With a single cable carrying power, display, and I/O from a thunderbolt equipped MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, the Thunderbolt Display really does transform what a laptop computer can be.

A Quiet Surprise

You might also want to read Thunderbolt = Light Peak = Mini DisplayPort + PCI Express

Apple introduced the latest version of their OS X operating system alongside the new MacBook Air, the cancellation of the old plastic MacBook, and a refresh of the Mac Mini this month. With so much news, it was easy to overlook another key product introduction: the Thunderbolt Display.

But far from being a simple monitor, the new Thunderbolt Display is really the first non-storage Thunderbolt peripheral as well as a demonstration of the power of this new interconnect. Taking a step forward from previous Cinema Displays, this new monitor includes a single cable for power and video signals and also leverages Thunderbolt technology to carry I/O traffic, turning the monitor into an extension of the attached MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or Mac Mini.

The new Display uses Thunderbolt technology to expand the I/O capabilities of slim computers like the Mac Mini and MacBook Air

The Thunderbolt Display includes three full power USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 800 port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a “FaceTime” HD webcam and microphone. All of these signals are multiplexed over a single Thunderbolt connection along with the DisplayPort via signal. Attaching this display to a brand-new Thunderbolt equipped MacBook Air transforms it into an iMac equivalent, with the same I/O capabilities and performance.

Note that the Thunderbolt controller in the MacBook Pro is twice as powerful as the one found in the new MacBook Air, allowing the Pro computers to use to Thunderbolt Displays at once. This “LightRidge” chip is also found in the Mac Mini and iMac, so all are capable of dual displays.

Changing the Shape of Computers

This is the real power of Thunderbolt technology in action. By extending the PCI bus outside a computer’s chassis, advanced peripherals like the Thunderbolt Display can add full speed I/O ports without sacrificing a thin, portable form factor. The previous generation MacBook Air was seriously compromised in terms of performance, with just two slow USB 2.0 ports and no Ethernet. The new Thunderbolt MacBook Air is an entirely different league, boasting 10 Gb of external I/O that can be used for full speed Ethernet, FireWire, and (hopefully) USB 3.0 in the future.

Thunderbolt allows a slim portable computer to have the same massive I/O capability as a desktop, and it has implications for nonportable devices as well. Consider the new Mac Mini, which has slimmed down to the size of the old Apple TV. Although it lacks an internal optical drive or any other expansion capability, equipping the Mac Mini with Thunderbolt enables it to challenge the tower desktops in the future. Already, companies like Village Instruments are promising to introduce PCIe expansion chassis for Thunderbolt, allowing computers like the Mac Mini and MacBook Air to use full-size PCIe cards.

Stephen’s Stance

Thunderbolt is important not because it is fast but because it extends the PCI bus outside the computer chassis. The next iteration of the Mac Pro could be as tiny as the Mac Mini, as long as it has two or more Thunderbolt ports and an expansion chassis for video and I/O cards.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Apple’s Thunderbolt Display Shows the Future
This post was categorized as Apple, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Apple boasts that their AirPort Extreme base station is "5x faster" but which devices can connect?

Apple is not always quick to support new technologies, but they threw their weight behind 802.11n Wi-Fi as soon as hardware was available. They upgraded their access points, laptop and desktop computers beginning in 2006, though support importable devices lagged. But the capabilities of 802.11n devices varies widely, and today’s Apple devices are no exception.

802.11n Capability Refresh

Routers like this Cisco E4200 can hit 450 Mb/s data rate!

As I discussed in detail last week, there are four main technology enhancements to 802.11n: MIMO and multi-streaming, 40 MHz channels, 5 GHz radio spectrum, and various packet enhancements. Each of these is optional for 802.11n devices, and Apple has picked a subset to support.

Basic 802.11n devices operate in the same 2.4 GHz radio channels as earlier Wi-Fi technologies. Many also lack the multiple radios and amplifiers required for multi-stream performance, and Apple only supports 40 MHz channels in the 5 GHz range. This means that simple devices are limited to a data rate of 72.2 Mb per second. These compromises are often made to conserve power or due to physical space constraints, so portable devices like the iPhone lack the performance of full-fledged computers.

Most desktop and laptop implementations of 802.11n include radios capable of either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz operation, and many offer two or three antennas for MIMO and multi-streaming. From 2006, Apple has offered 802.11 draft-n wireless cards in their laptop and desktop line, and all of these boast dual stream, dual frequency radios. Beginning in 2011, Apple has introduced ultra high-performance Wi-Fi offering three spatial streams and up to 450 Mb per second data rate.

When it comes to access points, Apple has aggressively moved toward 802.11n but lacks many of the features found on competitive products. The Apple AirPort line of Wi-Fi access points currently includes both the AirPort Express, with selectable frequency and dual stream support, as well as the AirPort Extreme, which supports both frequencies concurrently as well as triple stream performance. But Apple does not allow multi-streaming or 40 MHz channels in the 2.4 GHz frequency range on any device in their AirPort line.

Apple 802.11n Wi-Fi Device Capabilities

You might also want to read Which iPad is the Best Choice? and Decision Point: Comparing the 2011 MacBook Pro Models

To try to alleviate the confusion around which devices support what 802.11n features, I created the following table. Generally speaking, any Apple access point, laptop or desktop built since 2006 includes selectable 2.4 or 5 GHz support and at least dual stream capabilities. Every Apple TV also includes 802.11n Wi-Fi right out of the box. On the portable device side, both iPad generations, the iPhone 4, and the latest iPod Touch support 802.11n, though performance is limited.

Apple Devices with Limited 802.11n Support

I love my AirPort Express, but it's limited to two streams and either 2.4 or 5 GHz

Apple’s portable devices sacrifice performance for efficiency when it comes to Wi-Fi. The iPhone 4, 3rd generation iPod Touch, iPad, and Apple TV each have just one Wi-Fi antenna, so they are limited to single stream performance. The iPhone 4, iPod Touch, and first-generation iPad also lack 5 GHz radio compatibility, though the second-generation iPad and Apple TV do include it. This means that households with these popular devices cannot use 5 GHz-only networks, making the dual-band AirPort Extreme more attractive as a base station than the switchable AirPort Express.

Unsupported Apple Devices

Many readers will find that they own devices that do not support 802.11n at all, forcing them to maintain backward compatibility when deploying new Wi-Fi routers. Some very recent devices, including the iPhone 3G S and previous and the first three generations of iPod Touch, require 802.11g to connect. On the computer side of things, pre-2006 MacBook, MacBook Pro, and iMac computers lack 802.11n compatibility. But the Mac Mini is the real standout: It didn’t include 802.11n until the Core 2 Duo refresh in early 2009.

Stephen’s Stance

Apple's 5th-generation AirPort Extreme can hit 450 Mb/s data rate in combination with the 2011 MacBook Pro and iMac

It is nice to see Apple out in front with a technology like 802.11n, considering their reluctance to support Blu-Ray and USB 3.0. Although expensive, the AirPort Extreme and 2011 MacBook Pro and iMac sport top-of-the-line specs and high performance Wi-Fi. But the lack of 5 GHz support across the board means many users will stick to the crowded 2.4 GHz spectrum, limiting performance. And I’m sure owners of recent but unsupported devices (the older iPhone, iPod Touch, and Mac Mini) will be disappointed to have to stick to 802.11g.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Which Apple Devices Support 802.11n Wi-Fi?
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

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• Rumor: Apple soldering MacBook Air SSD to motherboard (and why it’s a bad idea) (updated 2x)
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• Tech Field Day – June, Boston

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© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, July 8, 2011
This post was categorized as Everything. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Is Apple already abandoning the "blade" SSD in the MacBook Air?

Apple is once again on the cutting edge of PC design, reportedly ditching traditional storage controllers and turning to motherboard mounted flash storage for the new MacBook Air. Although most discussion so far has focused on the merits of this particular solution, the repercussions of such a move go far beyond Apple’s sub notebook and point to a new era when SCSI and ATA interfaces no longer dominate.

What Apple May Do

We will not know for sure until reviewers get their hands on the expected MacBook Air refresh later this month, but rumors suggest that Apple will do away with the SATA controller when they moved to Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPU architecture.

Readers of this blog may recall that Apple previously switched to an all SSD storage lineup in the last MacBook Air refresh. This system used “blade” SSDs, but these include a traditional SATA controller and interface to the motherboard which is a substantial performance bottleneck. Reviews show that the MacBook Air, while quick, does not reach the level of I/O performance theoretically possible from flash memory.

If Apple integrates the flash controller and NAND modules directly onto the motherboard (and logically attached to the PCI express bus), performance will improve dramatically. Users of enterprise PCIe SSDs have already seen the incredible performance that these solutions are capable of. It is not exaggeration to say that a PCIe SSD is as much of an upgrade over a SATA or SAS SSD as they are over a traditional rotational hard disk drive.

Industry Implications

Moving from an SATA SSD to a true integrated storage design is not a trivial task. Flash memory controllers are still required to manage the unique characteristics of the chips involved, and the operating system drivers must be modified to address memory directly or through these new controllers.

Apple is ideally suited to making this shift, since they control both hardware and software design. It would be much more difficult for HP, IBM, or Dell to make this move, since they would need to coordinate with Microsoft to produce a successful product. Conversely, Microsoft would be hard-pressed to demand that their hardware OEMs make such a change since it would require extensive engineering and testing on their part.

If Apple does indeed abandon a traditional SATA interface for storage on the MacBook Air, they may consider doing the same across their entire product portfolio. The iOS devices (the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Apple TV) have already made this shift, another engineering advantage for Apple. One imagines a next-generation line of MacBook Pro and iMac computers with lightning fast SSD in addition to traditional SATA optical and hard disk drives.

These new computers from Apple will perform so much better than similarly specified Windows PCs that the entire industry will be forced to make a similar shift. But Apple already holds a dominant position in the NAND flash memory industry thanks to the purchasing might that comes from iOS. This puts every other computer maker at a disadvantage both financially and in terms of order fulfillment.

Stephen’s Stance

As techies moan about the lack of upgrade options presented by a soldered in SSD, they miss the bigger industry picture. For too long, computers have been held back by traditional SCSI and ATA controllers. These are both a performance bottleneck and an impediment to innovation. A shift to an integrated PCI storage model makes much sense tactically and strategically for Apple, and I expect that these rumors are true. Furthermore, this move will put even more stress on Windows PC makers. Once again, Apple is outmaneuvering the competition.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Implications of the 2011 MacBook Air’s Unconventional SSD
This post was categorized as Apple, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

A timely question from a comment on my cheap Momentus XT post and continued in my inbox:

How well does [the Momentus XT] perform in a Mac laptop? What I’ve noticed is substantial slow-down on my older MB Pro when there’s a lot of virtual memory usage (e.g. when running several apps plus Parallels.) For my next MBP (hopefully in the next 2-3 months), I’m considering 2 options:

1. Buy [the 500 GB Momentus XT] hybrid drive now, put it into my 1st gen MB Pro, and then move it to a new MB Pro when the boss lets me buy one.
2. When I get the new MB Pro, replace its hard drive with a 128 GB SSD, and put the rotating drive into an external (FW800) enclosure.  I’ve been tracking my disk utilization, and I figure I can live pretty comfortably within 128gb most of the time, as long as I have storage to move stuff I want to keep around but don’t use every day (e.g. mail archives, my iTunes stuff which I only use on the road, etc)

The interesting thing is these options are just about the same price, not counting the external drive enclosure.

I’ve had the Seagate 500 GB 7200 rpm drive in this (2.33 Core 2 Duo, 2005 vintage) laptop for a couple years now.  The fans kick in whenever anything disk-intensive goes on (e.g. mobile account rsync) and that is much more likely to happen when it uses more than 512 MB swap.

The current laptop is maxed out at 3 GB, the new one WILL have a full 8 GB, which should be a big help in reducing/eliminating swapping.

Weighing The Alternatives

It sounds like you’re looking at things the right way: Focused on lower cost and greater benefit without getting taken in by the coolness of SSDs or hybrid drives. And you’re also bringing up a key usability consideration: That external drive enclosure. So let’s weigh the merits.

How Does The Momentus XT Really Perform?

The Momentus XT is a nice compromise between "spinning disk" capacity and SSD performance with an emphasis on low cost

It’s really hard to benchmark a hybrid drive like the Momentus XT. An integrated hybrid drive, the Seagate includes an on-disk controller that attempts to keep its 4 GB of SLC flash memory full of the data you’re likely to ask for. So it’s always trying actively to predict what you’ll need and move that data between disk and flash. This is very different from an SSD, which always uses flash, or a hard disk drive, which mostly relies on the spinning disk for performance.

Most benchmarks are designed to hammer on the underlying storage media, actively bypassing cache. This really causes issues for the Momentus XT in benchmarks like Iometer. The best test of this drive I’ve seen is over at Storage Review, since it includes underwhelming Iometer tests and more-impressive Storagemark results. If you only looked at synthetic tests like Iometer, you’d think the Momentus XT was worthless. But the “workload trace” tests of Storagemark have it outperforming the 10,000 rpm Western Digital VelociRaptor!

The reality is somewhere in the middle: My friends Robin and Howard have both used a Momentus XT in their MacBook Pro, and were happy with its performance. They tell me the Momentus XT makes their computers feel much faster. But another friend, Greg, reports some serious issues with Windows crashing and an odd noise from the drive. Maybe it’s more stable in a Mac than a PC?

In my opinion, the Momentus XT is a nice compromise between “spinning disk” capacity and SSD performance with an emphasis on low cost. If I was going to upgrade my internal hard disk drive today, I’d buy a Momentus XT in a second. After all, I’m using a Mac and the additional cost is negligible. Plus, I tend to carry lots of data around – mainly video files for Final Cut. This last is the reason I haven’t “gone hybrid” myself: I already installed a 640 GB Toshiba drive!

What Are The “All-SSD” Tradeoffs?

The other option is to go all SSD, and this is what most computer vendors (including Apple) have selected for their high-end machines. Flash SSD technology keeps improving, giving better performance and a more-favorable cost/capacity balance. I don’t think 128 GB SSDs are yet available for the same $120 that gets you a Momentus XT, but that would get you the well-regarded 60 GB OCZ Vertex 2. A 128 GB SSD is likely to cost almost $250, changing the economic argument somewhat.

Capacity, performance, or low cost: Pick two!

Just about any SSD you pick will absolutely destroy the Momentus XT in both benchmark and real-world performance, but you’d never come close to the hybrid drive’s capacity without doubling the cost of the MacBook with a Kingston V+Series 512 GB device.

This is the SSD curse: Make do with less capacity and more performance or spend an arm and a leg.

Is SSD+HDD An Option?

Then there is the alternate path you suggest: Use both a hard disk drive and an SSD. There are two options here:

1. Replace the laptop’s optical drive with a hard disk drive using an adapter like the $99 MCE OptiBay
2. Use an external FireWire or USB drive, or repurpose your drive using a case

That second choice might not be an option for everyone. Do you really want to lug around a portable hard drive and cable? Do you want to connect it if you’re on a plane or in a meeting? Then there’s the fact that Macs don’t yet have native USB 3.0 or eSATA, so you’re looking at a maximum of 70 MB/s from a FireWire 800 port.

Either way, you’re talking about manually deciding which data resides on the SSD and which goes on the hard disk drive. Since Mac OS X is not nearly as friendly as Windows about using multiple drives, you’re certain to waste some of that expensive SSD capacity on rarely-used data. That’s fine, it just drives up the cost of the SSD+HDD combination.

One caution regarding SSDs in Apple machines: Mac OS X does not support TRIM, so ordinary SSDs will run into serious performance issues once they start filling up. You need a very aggressive SSD controller to maintain the awesome speed you start with. Something like the Kingston V+100 which uses the latest Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller with the updated firmware Apple uses in the MacBook Air.

Stephen’s Stance

I would never want to rely on an external hard disk drive solution, I need too much storage, and I’m too cheap to buy an OptiBay, let alone a decent-sized SSD. If I was in your shoes, I’d have just two options:

1. Spend $120 and get the Momentus XT for pretty-good performance and single-disk capacity
2. Spend $130 and get the 60 GB OCZ Vertex 2 for awesome performance and hack together some kind of OptiBay alternative

Although the second choice sounds like fun, it’s not a great idea in a laptop. I’m also not too good at manually managing data and would rather have something do it for me. This is why I’m so keen on the Momentus XT!

Given your circumstances, I suggest getting the Momentus XT now for your current laptop and seeing how you like it. If it doesn’t give you the performance you want, you can always go the SSD route with the new MacBook Pro and cry over the you $20 you wasted buying a hybrid rather than a regular 7200 rpm 500 GB drive. For what it’s worth, Apple currently charges $300 extra for a 128 GB SSD.

One word of caution, though: You mention that one of the main causes of performance issues for you is excessive swapping from virtual machines. This is a real red flag performance-wise. The Momentus XT has only 4 GB of flash, and your swapping VMs are going to eat that up, leaving none to accelerate other functions. You might find that the hybrid is even slower than a regular drive in this use case, since the controller would constantly be juggling gigabytes of data between flash and disk. An SSD will do much better with VM swapping, but if you’re not using TRIM you’re going to hit a wall sooner or later. The only real solution for a Mac user is to max out the RAM rather than trying to monkey with faster storage.

A Reader Talks Back

Here’s the opinion of a reader who upgraded his MacBook Pro to use the Momentus XT:

“To follow up on our previous discussion, I decided to buy the hybrid Momentus XT. It’s been in the laptop about 24 hours, and here are first impressions:

1. Getting into a pre-unibody MacBook Pro is no picnic!  I had to get a Torx #6 screwdriver and used about 6 different little containers to hold all the different kinds/sizes of screw.  And getting the top/keyboard assembly off of its clips was a struggle.
2. Right away I noticed the machine ran substantially cooler as measured by the fan speed.  The previous drive was a Seagate Momentus 500gb/7200 rpm 7200.4, and during disk intensive sessions e.g. TimeMachine backups the fans would crank up to 5000 rpm; they’d be pretty noticeable.  With the hybrid, during the same kind of backup activity, the fans have not run faster than 3200 rpm, which is comfortably below ‘notice’ sound levels.
3. The machine feels a bit faster, but Parallels definitely felt faster.  When I launched Parallels, the machine’s swap usage climbed to 2gb (on top of other stuff I run).  Before that would cause a significant hit, but with the hybrid the overall performance, and the performance inside Parallels, felt faster.

So I think this upgrade is a win if you’re considering replacing an existing drive with a 500gb/7200 rpm drive, just on the basis of reduced heat.  What remains to be seen, of course, is the reliability of this drive (I’ve had bad luck with Seagate 3.5″ drives.)”

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Are Hybrid Hard Drives A Good Alternative To An SSD?
This post was categorized as Apple, Ask a Pack Rat, Everything, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

It won't be long before other manufacturers adopt the new SATA SSD form factor introduced in the MacBook Air

More information about the unconventional SSD used in Apple’s new MacBook Air. As I discussed in my previous coverage of this new flash form factor, it resembles a PCI Express Mini Card but is much smaller. Toshiba has now proved my speculation that the device uses SATA signals rather than the PCI Express lane used by the similar AirPort card. We also know that the lauded performance of the device is due to its chips and controller rather than skipping SATA in favor of PCIe as some had speculated.

Toshiba Blade X-gale™ HG Series SSD

Toshiba is one of the world’s largest NAND flash manufacturers, and the company uses these chips to produce integrated solid state disks (SSDs) for OEMs. Toshiba’s SSD product offerings are divided into two lines: The mainstream SG series and the high-performance HG Series. The SG line includes standard SATA, slim SATA, and mSATA cards, the latter using the Mini-PCIe form factor. These products only promise 50 MB/s of write performance, while the HG Series can top 180 MB/s writing.

The new "Blade X-gale" SSD form factor used in the MacBook Air is part of the high-performance HG Series from Toshiba

Since the MacBook Air’s SSD is part of the third-generation HG series, its performance is much better than the SSDs used in typical netbook-class computers. NAND flash drives typically suffer during writes, but Toshiba promises sequential write performance for the HG Series of 180 MB/s, matching the read performance of their SG Series. This is almost as fast as the 3 Gbps SATA interface used!

Tiny SSDs like these can only use a few high-density flash chips, so eking out this kind of performance is doubly impressive. The “blade” form factor is about the size of a large USB flash drive and includes just four NAND chips on the top of the board. Toshiba includes both read and write cache in their controller, as well as encryption hardware which is apparently disabled by default. The device supports TRIM, even though Mac OS X does not (yet).

Toshiba offers Blade X-gale SSDs in 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB models. Apple apparently uses all three, offering the smaller pair in the 11 inch MacBook Air and the larger two in the 13 inch model. These products are not available at retail yet, and Japanese reseller PhotoFast has apparently withdrawn their GM2 SFV1 Air Upgrade Kit which used similar modules, so there’s no telling when MacBook Air owners will be able to upgrade.

The 256 GB module is 3.7 mm thick, 1.5 mm more than the 64 and 128 GB siblings. One assumes that this reflects its use of 8 NAND chips rather than 4, and this might lead to better performance as well. Speaking of dimensions, the card is actually 24 mm wide and 108.9 mm long. My previous guesses were quite a bit off.

Stephen’s Stance

This new SSD form factor is certainly intriguing. Although no standard name has been coined at this point (Toshiba’s name, “Blade X-gale,” is a trademark), we will be watching with great interest to see if it catches on. I’ll be calling it a “blade SSD” until I hear a better name.

The compact dimensions of the connector and module itself should be welcomed by tablet and portable device manufacturers, and the fact that it can carry PCI Express as well as SATA signals makes it very appealing. The next-generation NAND chips should easily double capacity within the next year, too!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Toshiba Offers “Blade” SSDs (Like Apple’s MacBook Air)
This post was categorized as Apple, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

• We kick off this week still focused on Apple (of course) and their new MacBook Air. Although some have suggested it uses a mSATA or PCI Express Mini Card, it definitely does not. Read Apple’s Unconventional New MacBook Air SSD for more information.
• While we’re at it, I posted a video about How to install an internal Apple SuperDrive in an external USB case. Watch for a post soon!
• Finally, I posted another preview: Iomega Bundles Capacity and Performance in New External SSD Drive
• A blast from the past, (not so) Recent comments about FCoE and iSCSI from a 2007 discussion featuring some big names in storage
• Jay posted Drobo FS – A review – worth a read if you’re looking at the FS
• Then there’s Simon’s excellent piece on Running VMware vSphere on an HP MicroServer
• The Keyboard Cult looks at folks like me who love keyboards (mine is a 1987 IBM Model M)
• Four hidden features in vSphere 4.1 is another great read
• Last there’s the Storage Gorilla with Man Bites Dog – Why IBM (and everyone else) should fear EMC’s acquisition of Isilon Systems

Subscribe to my Google Reader feed or follow me on Twitter to see these in real-time.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, October 26, 2010
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Everything. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

• The MacBook Air was a major topic of discussion, but I focused on the storage side of things (predictably)
  • Apple Replaces Operating System DVDs with the Software Reinstall Drive
  • Unconventional SSDs: PCI Express Mini Card (Mini PCI-E)
  • Apple’s Unconventional New MacBook Air SSD
  • Apple signals disk free notebooks way to go
  • HDDs’ Burgeoning Capacities: Aspiring To Cut Off SSDs At The Knees (a counterpoint)
• Iomega is back with an external USB 3.0 SSD: Iomega Bundles Capacity and Performance in New External SSD Drive
• Chris Evans is tackling some serious enterprise storage “as a service” concepts. This week it’s Billing:Enterprise Computing 4 Pillars – Billing for Tiered Storage
• HP is showing some serious interest in attracting enterprise IT pros, and Greg Ferro tackles it in HP ExpertONE certifications announced
• Mark Bowker questions conventional wisdom regarding server virtualization in A Virtual Reality Check
• And finally, Steve Duplessie points out the amazing circumstances that made storage the talk of the town in Hey Baby, Wanna See My LUN?

Subscribe to my Google Reader feed or follow me on Twitter to see these in real-time.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, October 22, 2010
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Everything, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The new MacBook Air includes tiny SSD and AirPort cards

Apple updated the ultra-slim don’t-call-it-a-netbook MacBook Air this week. Along with a wimpy out-of-date CPU, the new Air features all-SSD storage of an entirely new and apparently proprietary type. Let’s take a look and see what we can see.

Just The Facts

You might want to read my piece about Unconventional SSDs: PCI Express Mini Card (Mini PCI-E) or the updated information in Toshiba Offers “Blade” SSDs (Like Apple’s MacBook Air)

The MacBook Air isn’t supposed to be upgradeable, and Apple went so far as to use a special 5-point Torx-ish safety screw to keep us out. As revealed by iFixit, just about everything inside is soldered in except for the Wi-Fi and SSD cards. Apple, shockingly, included an inside shot of the 13″ Air on their official Design page, showing that both machines use the same SSD connector.

Is this new form factor called a “blade SSD”?

• The Air uses a new type of connector that looks a lot like a Mini PCI-Express slot but definitely isn’t.
  • The connector is exactly the same width as the USB shield: That’s about 7 mm, not the 24 mm of a Mini PCIe slot.
  • This connector is used for both the AirPort (Wi-Fi) board and the SSD, so it’s not some kind of shrunken SATA port.
  • The SSD has contacts on only the “bottom” side with what looks like a ground plate on the “top”, while the AirPort seems to have contacts on both sides (or at least on “top”).
  • The connector is split with six pins on one card edge and 12 on the other. A one-sided version thus has 18 pins (plus ground) while a two-sided variant has 36 pins. For comparison, Mini PCIe is a two-sided card edge with 8 pins and then 18 pins, for a total of 52 pins.
• System Profiler reports that the SSD and AirPort connect to the NVidia MCP89 chipset in different ways:
  • The SSD is a SATA device on the AHCI lines. While it’s possible that Apple could have designed an internal SATA controller and be presenting it on a PCIe lane, it’s much more likely that it’s really using SATA over the new connector described above. Since SATA needs just 5 or 6 pins plus ground (4x data and 3.3 volts and 5 volts of power), there are plenty of connectors for it.
  • The AirPort (802.11n Wi-Fi) card, on the other hand, appears to be using a PCI Express lane. Since PCI Express also needs just 6 to 8 pins, this fit, too.
• The cards are much smaller than conventional Mini-PCIe cards as well:
  • The SSD is 24×108.9 mm, much smaller than the 30×51 mm typical of Mini-PCIe SSDs. This compact size makes the Toshiba NAND chips appear to be giants, but they’re really the same chips used on other SSDs.
  • The AirPort card is really compact at about 22×30 mm.

It appears that Apple (or their supplier) has developed this new form factor to be even thinner and narrower than the already-small PCI Express Mini Card format. One wonders if other vendors will adopt this new smaller “Air Card” format as well.

Apple's "Air Card" connector is single- or double-sided with up to 36 pins

Stephen’s Stance

If the MacBook Air had used a PCI Express-based SSD like the Fusion-IO or OCZ models, it really would have been a revolutionary move. But booting a computer from a device like this would have been challenging, requiring revisions to the EFI firmware, drivers, and Mac OS X itself. Therefore, it is not surprising to see a SATA connection used instead. So no, Robin, this isn’t the end of SATA (yet).

Yup, it’s SATA. More information is available in my article, Toshiba Offers “Blade” SSDs (Like Apple’s MacBook Air)

Some will undoubtedly complain about Apple’s proprietary format, but this is neither a new development nor a particularly damning one. Most modern Macs, including the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini, already use proprietary AirPort daughter cards and no one howled in protest when they switched from standard PCI Express Mini Cards. Having the storage on the same type of connector is good from a bill of materials standpoint, saving Apple a few dollars. And this is not an upgradeable machine. Moaning about the low-spec Core 2 Duo CPU and soldered-on 2 GB of RAM is much more sensible than whining about a proprietary SSD.

Images from Apple, Inc. and iFixit.com

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Apple’s Unconventional New MacBook Air SSD
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This is Apple's new OS reinstallation media: A read-only flash drive

Along with the apparent Mini PCI-E SSD, Apple introduced another storage feature with the late-2010 MacBook Air: The Software Reinstall Drive. Although not mentioned in the product introduction, the read-only USB drive is a clever solution for a device with no optical drive. Here’s what I’ve discovered about it so far.

Not a Flash Drive

Although Apple did not include USB 3.0 hardware on the new MacBook Air, they did add a second USB port, which users will certainly appreciate. The USB-connected SuperDrive appears to have disappeared along the way to the 2010 Air, replaced by the read-only Software Reinstall Drive. But as Apple’s FAQ reveals, this is not a simple USB flash drive.

First, it is important to realize that the drive is read-only. It cannot be reformatted and reused. Apple does not appear to be getting into the portable flash drive market, which is a good thing considering that it’s a highly-competitive low-margin business.

Second, the drive is apparently keyed to the particular MacBook Air it came with. This is probably a simple software check using the system serial number rather than some special hardware restriction. But it means that the (key-less) copies of iWork won’t work on other Macs you may own. Apple says nothing about the Snow Leopard and iLife software included, however, so those may be installable on other Macs. Or perhaps the FAQ is incorrect in mentioning iWork and only includes OS X and iLife.

Like the install DVD, the Reinstall Drive can be used to boot a Mac for system recovery or reinstallation. It can also be used to enable hardware test mode on the MacBook Air. The drive does not contain Boot Camp drivers or Apple’s DVD/CD Sharing software, however.

Stephen’s Stance

This is not a major industry shift; it’s a clever solution to the MacBook Air’s lack of a DVD drive. I’m intrigued by the Software Reinstall Drive mainly because it points to a continuing shift in the storage industry from towards flash storage. HP did the same thing with their Blackbird 002, and others have also apparently done this in the past.

So why is this noteworthy? Apple was first to eliminate the floppy disc, and they have been moving away from optical disks for some time. Now we have a laptop with no hard disk either, and the software reinstall is via USB drive. I call that a trend.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Apple Replaces Operating System DVDs with the Software Reinstall Drive
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