Date:
Tuesday , January 13, 2009
Author:
Kyle Bennett
Google +1

Ask an Intel Solid State Drive Engineer

Intel recently offered our readers the opportunity to ask one of its engineers questions about Intel Solid State drives. You guys obliged with a more than enough questions. Today we get the answers.

Solid state drives have take a much higher profile in the last year or so, but especially since Intel entered the market with a product that out performs every other SSD we have ever seen. We took a look at the simple device in September of last year and now have moved all of our motherboard testing over to Intel SSDs. The drives are cool, quiet, and extremely fast. On the downside, the drives are extremely expensive for a desktop build coming in around $500 for an 80GB drive. Obviously early adopters will pay the price, but surely we will see prices come down on these SSDs in the future.

I would like to thank Jonathan Schmidt and Intel for giving us this opportunity today. If you have any interest in solid state data drives, this is a must-read! I will now turn things over to Jonathan.

Thanks for everyone's questions. I can see that there is some curiosity with SSD technology, and much of that seems to be due to some key misconceptions being passed around. I'd like to take this opportunity to answer as many questions as I can, and hopefully clear up some of the rumors.

Before I get started, I should mention what I can't talk about. There were a number of questions relating to future products, and I don't blame anyone for asking, but I'm sure you can understand that I won't be leaking any answers. Next, I know everyone is worried about how much extra SSDs cost over HDDs. I'm going to conveniently dodge those questions and focus on the more technical side. Lastly, our legal department would have me point out that my comments here are taken from my own experiences working with solid state drives, and don't necessarily represent Intel's positions, strategies, or opinions. With that out of the way, let's get going.

Q. What environmental factors affect SSDs?

A. Thanks to the lack of moving parts, SSDs are more rugged against acceleration and vibration than a standard HDD. Also, the lack of magnetic storage reduces the risk of damage or data loss from magnetic interference. These are major motivations for the use of flash memory in mobile devices like phones and mp3 players. In a laptop computer the HDD tends to be fairly well mechanically insulated, but I suspect an SSD based laptop is still more durable. Laptop manufacturers might be able to shed an extra bit of weight by reducing the padding around the HDD area if an SSD is used (SSDs are also lighter than laptop HDDs, so the overall weight savings could be substantial). In a typical desktop PC I don't think there are any environmental concerns to be aware of.

Someone asked whether airport security scanners affect SSDs, which I found interesting. I don't have an authoritative answer but the physical technologies in an SSD are the same as what is used in other types of flash media (USB keys, SD cards, cell phones, etc). I suspect there will be more shielding around an SSD as well (drive case, laptop body), so the risk is probably not worth worrying about.

Q. How can I be sure my SSD will be reliable?

A. There are multiple issues here and I'll try to touch on each. First of all, flash memory is a well established technology, so long term studies have been done and the results are fairly well known. Flash cells do have a limited number of read/write cycles and this is one of the major reasons that SSDs haven't been popular until recently. Fortunately, the industry has progressed to a point where the limits are far away enough that engineers can make a useful product out of it. The Intel SSD datasheet claims 5 years minimum useful life and what they mean is regardless of your usage, your drive will function for the full duration. You might get far more than 5 years if you aren’t quite so rough with it.

The Intel SSDs implement the ATA SMART monitoring feature set, and it is probably your best source of information for signs of failure. I don’t work in failure analysis so I don’t have the details, but you can be sure that the protection of user data is top priority.

Q. Why are SSDs not targeting a 3.5" form factor?

A. Mostly because a reasonable amount of flash memory isn't physically very big, so it will fit into a smaller 2.5" or 1.8" form factor. What I mean by "reasonable amount," is enough memory that the product will provide storage to do something useful with it, and also that it is affordable enough to buy. Filling a 3.5" hard drive with flash chips would be very expensive.

There might be a slight misconception here that SSDs are targeted for laptop use only due to the lack of traditional desktop form factor, but that certainly isn't the point. Desktop PCs are intended to benefit from SSD technology as well. It is easy enough to mount a 2.5" SSD in a 3.5" drive bay using a set of adapter rails. Thankfully the cables are the same for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA drives.