PCIe SSDs like Micron’s new P320h offer mindbending performance and enterprise class reliability. Although expensive, these devices are in an entirely different league from any other storage option. Micron promises to bring the PCIe P320h to market at nearly $15 per gigabyte, a substantial discount over other PCIe SSD competitors.
Fusion-IO
Commodity Hardware Always Wins
The history of technology moves in fits and starts, but one trend trumps all else: An inevitable shift from fine-tuned specialized gear to general-purpose commodity building blocks. We see it in both hardware and software, and at all levels of the industry, from chips and wafers to operating systems and networking devices. Take a step back and you’ll certainly agree: Commodity hardware always wins (eventually).
Unconventional SSDs: PCI Express Mini Card (Mini PCI-E)
With Apple almost certain to introduce a new MacBook Air, questions have turned to the specifics of the hardware to be used. A leaked pre-production photo features an odd memory configuration (not to mention four batteries), a device I immediately recognized as an SSD-on-a-stick. With this high-profile introduction of a new SSD stick form, I thought it was time to cover these unconventional new storage formats.
Hybrid SSD/Hard Disk Drives: This Time For Sure!
Hard disk drive makers are adding flash storage to their conventional spinning-platter drives to improve performance and are targeting the performance PC market. Wait a second, haven’t we seen this before? As Rocky eventually said to Bullwinkle, “but that trick never works!”
Is Flash A Disk Or A Cache?
There is a battle shaping up in the enterprise storage industry. On one side are those who see flash storage as an upgrade for the disk drive, and on the other are those who see it as a cache between the CPU and the drive. It’s a fundamental difference of opinion – flash chips can […]
