Just read this interesting series of articles in Nikkei Electronics, the part which really caught my eye was this part:
True, they point out later in the article that at the 'average' write rate of 20 GB/day an SSD would last 35 years even with just 3k write cycles per cell, but it's still a big step down from 10k-100k cycles. For those writing larger data sets to their SSDs on a daily basis, this could possibly become an issue.
And then there's the issue of data-retention. While 10 years isn't a lot compared to HDDs which can retain their data for decades, 1 year hardly makes it qualify as non-volatile storage for many usages, like long-term backups. Don't expect to turn on that PC after a year of storage and expect it to still contain all data on its SSD, or to see those photos on that flash card you didn't use for a while. This is an issue which most definitely needs solving.
Still, SSDs seem to have a bright future as caches in servers, especially where rapid, random data retrieval is crucial, such as in database operations.
Discuss amongst yourselves
This quote is from the 3rd page, the series starts at: http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/HONSHI/20090528/170917/SSD prices may continue to drop in the future, and thanks to high-density packaging and other technologies from the semiconductor industry, will continue to shrink in size, thickness, etc. The future indeed seems rosy for equipment manufacturers.
There is, however, a problem that still has to be overcome before SSDs can achieve that future growth. Evolution toward lower cost will be made possible by finer manufacturing technology, multi-level architecture and other advances, but these changes will also degrade NAND Flash memory quality.
NAND Flash memory quality is also beginning to drop. Chips manufactured using 90nm-generation technology in 2004-05, for example, were assured for about 100,000 rewrites and data retention of about a decade. As multi-level architecture and smaller geometry are introduced, quality is showing a sharp decline. The 30nm 2-bit/cell chips expected to enter volume production in 2009-10 may well end up with a rewrite assurance of no more than 3,000 cycles, and a data retention time of about a year. The first 3-bit/cell chips are hitting the market now, with only a few hundred rewrites.
True, they point out later in the article that at the 'average' write rate of 20 GB/day an SSD would last 35 years even with just 3k write cycles per cell, but it's still a big step down from 10k-100k cycles. For those writing larger data sets to their SSDs on a daily basis, this could possibly become an issue.
And then there's the issue of data-retention. While 10 years isn't a lot compared to HDDs which can retain their data for decades, 1 year hardly makes it qualify as non-volatile storage for many usages, like long-term backups. Don't expect to turn on that PC after a year of storage and expect it to still contain all data on its SSD, or to see those photos on that flash card you didn't use for a while. This is an issue which most definitely needs solving.
Still, SSDs seem to have a bright future as caches in servers, especially where rapid, random data retrieval is crucial, such as in database operations.
Discuss amongst yourselves