14 DAY TRIAL // Nobody can deny the fact that SSD drives bring major performance improvements when paired together with a PC, but latest reports suggest that consoles too can benefit from the improved transfer rates, leading many to believe next generation PlayStation or Xbox units will drop HDDs in favor of solid state disks.
Although these are nothing more than speculations at this point, some tests posted on the Beyond3D forum indicate that installing a Corsair F120 SSD drive inside a PS3 console leads to quite a decent bump in performance.
According to these findings, installing an SSD unit decreased game load times in Gran Turismo 5, the game allowing for a big chunk of its data to be copied onto the hard drive, meaning the console won't have to rely on the Blu-ray drive anymore in order to retrieve the required files.
Based on these findings, Shacknews suggests SSDs are to become standard in next generation consoles as future PlayStation and Xbox models should rely on solid state disks for their storage needs.
However good it may sound, there are a few problems with Shacknews' speculations as replacing the 160GB, 250GB, or 320GB HDDs that are to be found in present day consoles should prove to be quite an expensive move as long as NAND prices don't fall dramatically.
Furthermore, the PS3 is equipped with a 5,400-RPM notebook drive, so even installing a 7,200-RPM model should prove to be quite an improvement, especially if we take into consideration the read and write speeds that present day HDDs are capable off.
Another option, would be to go with a hybrid drive, such as Seagate's Momentus XT, as this type of storage unit is extremely well suited for repetitive tasks such as game loading since it can store the frequently accessed data inside its fast NAND cache.
Unfortunately, these are nothing more than speculations at this point, although I do feel that a hybrid drive should make a nice addition to next-generation consoles. (via Tech Report)