Analysis

posted on 16 June 2008 16:27

SanDisk sees solid solid state drive (SSD) markets in the UMPC, notebook and server blade areas but not yet for storage arrays.

UMPC SSD use

Don Barnetson, who is senior director of marketing at SanDisk, explained that SSDs were cheaper than hard disk drives (HDD) for ultra-mobile PC (UMPCs) like the Asus Eeee machine. He says the reason is that such UMPCs only need 8 - 16GB of capacity as they are basically Internet-accessing PCs rather than full-fledged notebooks, netbooks if you will.

A 8 or 16GB chunk of 2-bit multi-level cell (MLC) flash costs less than 40GB of 1.8-inch hard drive which might be priced at $50.00. As you reduce the price of hard drives they reach a floor formed by the cost of the mechanical components. That's not the case with flash as any flash SSD, whatever the capacity, is built out of the same small building blocks and the price scales pretty linearly.

The flash also has a lower power draw and better reliability than an 1.8-inch microdrive.

The growth in sales of these UMPCs is hugely impressive. Originally conceived as an alternative to the Negroponte OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) cheap laptop for the third world they have evolved into netbooks augmenting laptops for the developed world. Gartner research indicates there were zero sales in 2006, 600,000 units in 2007 and a forecast 27,400,000 in 2011. The SSD revenues from that level of sales will be substantial.

Is SanDisk working on higher MLC densities? "We're absolutely working on the 3-bit and 4-bit MLC levels. There are no products to announce yet."

He said that flash SSDs are also being used at the top end of the notebook market, with products such as the MacBook Air costing $2,000 - 3,000 and needing 32-64GB of flash. "As flash becomes more cost effective then SSD use will move down to laptops costing $1,500 and then down further. ... As consumers get good enough density at an affordable price point then they will adopt SSDs."

In effect flash SSD use is moving into the mainstream notebook market from two sides: the low-level UMPC end and the high-end notebook area. That looks like a pincer movement.

Server SSD use

Barnetson said that SSD technology is being used in the server area in two ways. The first is for blade servers: "The O/S for each blade used to be stored on 2.5-inch hard drives but it is becoming SSD instead because of its lower power consumption. That's moving quite rapidly." Single-level cell (SLC) technology flash with 16 - 32GB of capacity is used, as the server OEMS are quite conservative

IBM blade servers were cited as an example here.

Secondly, flash SSDs are being used to provide a high-performance tier zero in arrays such as EMC's Symmetrix because of their speed: "SSDs are capable of doing random reads nearly one hundred times faster than fast hard drives." They also have dramatically lower power consumption.

These tier zero SSDs are being used to augment fast Fibre Channel drives. Is SanDisk in this market?

Barnetson said: "We don't currently have drives we're offering with Fibre Channel. The focus has been on serial ATA." What about SAS with its coming 6Gbit/s SAS II interface, faster than 4Gbit/s Fibre Channel?

"We don't currently have a product in that space." He observed that it is a fairly common tactic when a new technology comes along to use existing technology interfaces so that the adoption cost of the new technology is reduced, it being relatively easy to put a 3.5-inch form factor SSD with a Fibre Channel interface into the same storage array slot as a 3.5-inch FC HDD.

However, that may well not be the best interface moving forward and what emerges will be interfaces that make better use of the new technology. There is lots of overhead in the FC HDD interface that doesn't need to be there for an SSD resource.

As a flash SSD producer SanDisk feels it is well-placed in the market, Barnetson saying: "We feel that we have significant advantages. We make both the flash and the drive."

What this thinking indicates to me is that SanDisk may well feel that a Fibre Channel SSD interface is going to be relatively short-lived and that a SAS interface might be more appropriate. It also suggests to me that it wouldn't be too surprising if SanDisk announced an SSD product line for storage arrays targeted at the high-performance, tier zero type storage application but not using an FC interface.

Dan Barnetson used to work for Samsung Semiconductor by the way. He was there in 2006 and joined SanDisk in March this year after being director of market development for Nanosys which also had a flash technology interest amongst others.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}