14 DAY TRIAL // Sandisk announced today the introduction of a new flash file management system for solid state disk (SSD) drives. According to the company, the technology will allow for random write rates accelerations at a factor of up to 100x. Still, the net speed will only be leveraged four times in the short term, while the performance increases will vary especially on the maximum bandwidth of the interface.
The speed enhancements promised are undoubtedly exciting, with a new flash file system that could provide 100 times faster speeds over existing SSDs. Yet, when analyzing the figure, one can rapidly see that it is only on theory and that it actually promises the potential of such speed increase. There are other challenges down the road, but once they're surpassed, a write speed rate in the range of 5 – 10 GB per second could be provided.
The 100x speed gain could refer to Sandisk’s own drives, as there is no other baseline of performance provided, but it is known that the company's products are not placed among the highest performing SSDs on the market. On the other hand, it could also refer to speedy SSD versions like Intel’s recently released 80 GB consumer drives.
According to Sandisk, its new ExtremeFFS flash file management system works on a page-based algorithm, eliminating the fixed coupling between physical and logical location. The SSD puts the data on the sector it considers to be the most convenient and efficient. The company says that this results in more performance and higher reliability.
The technology could provide a potential 100x speed increase, yet there are some SSDs that near the maximum interface bandwidth SATA II (300 MB/s) offers today. The next-generation SATA should provide 600 MB/s, still far from the 100x improvement that would be provided by the Sandisk’s technology. This is why Sandisk only expects a 4x performance increase for SSDs in the coming year.
If the 4x speed gain is reached, the gap between SSDs and the fastest HDDs will widen. If Sandisk's words come true, SSDs will be able to provide read speeds ranging from 300 MB/s to a maximum of 600 MB/s, while the write speeds will be 200 MB/s to 300 MB/s. Sandisk also asked for new metrics to measure SSD performance and reliability compared to hard disk drives. Two proposals include the virtualRPM (vRPM) as a comparison metric concerning the revolutions per minute, and the Long-Term Data Endurance (LDE), which is seen as the first industry metric of long-term data endurance.
“This is a lot like measuring tread wear on a tire,” said Rich Heye, senior vice president and general manager for Sandisk’s SSD business unit. “The beauty of LDE,” he added, “is that it captures endurance in one single, understandable figure. A common metric is necessary to facilitate SSD adoption moving forward”.
According to Rich Heye, SanDisk’s initial proposal has been reviewed and commented on by major PC OEMs and SSD competitors. He added that the company submitted a proposal and white paper to JEDEC, which is the main developer of standards for the solid-state industry.