Hot Idea for a Faster Hard Drive

ScienceNOW ^ | 7 February 2012 | Jim Heirbaut

[2ndamendmentpa]

Somewhat related:

SSDs have a ‘bleak’ future, researchers say

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224322/SSDs_have_a_bleak_future_researchers_say

[neverdem]

Ping

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.

[mylife]

Is it better that core memory?

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

Is this totally different from HAMR?

[C210N]

With that, gotta include the seamstress...

[rawcatslyentist]

I've had a Sony Magneto-Optical drive since the early 90's.

Writes magnetically, reads optically. Common name Mini Disc. Later recycled into the PSP UMD game carts.

[mamelukesabre]

I’ve often wondered why they never put two or four heads on a single hard drive platter. You would essentially have two or four hard drives in one(depending on the number of heads. Then each head would be sequentially synchonized so that one head would read/write one bit, the next head the next bit, and so on. So if you have 4 heads, there would be 4 separate tracks each reading and writing slightly out of phase. You would quadruple your speed with 4 heads without increasing the RPMs of the platter. If a hard drive had 4 platters and 4 heads per platter, you’d have 16 times the speed.

[mylife]

It’s hard to believe we were using that stuff 30 years ago.

[KoRn]

I recently bought a SSD for my primary home machine, and it’s incredible. The boost in performance was just amazing. I never knew how crappy the ‘old’ hard disks were until trying out one of these. From the time I hit the power button, around 5 or 6 seconds later, I’m logged in and using the computer. All apps that use the disk a lot also got a dramatic boost in performance.

The disk actually increased the “Windows Experience Index” for Windows 7 on my computer to a 7.4 out of 8.0.

[cynwoody]

It’s hard to believe we were using that stuff 30 years ago.

Not only that, but the seamstress doesn't look the least bit Chinese.

[SoConPubbie]

SSDs have a ‘bleak’ future, researchers say

The take away from that article is the last paragraph:

" . . . . .

Considering the diminishing returns on performance versus capacity, Grupp said, "it's not going to be viable to go past 6.5nm ... 2024 is the end."

However, even with TLC flash at 6.5nm, Grupp calculates that SSDs will continue to outperform hard disk drives on throughput, 32,000 IOPS to 200 IOPS, respectively."

[SoConPubbie]

SSDs have a ‘bleak’ future, researchers say

The take away from that article is the last paragraph:

" . . . . .

Considering the diminishing returns on performance versus capacity, Grupp said, "it's not going to be viable to go past 6.5nm ... 2024 is the end."

However, even with TLC flash at 6.5nm, Grupp calculates that SSDs will continue to outperform hard disk drives on throughput, 32,000 IOPS to 200 IOPS, respectively."

[Getready]

Great, we now get to watch trash faster, and we can store
more of it at a faster rate!

[Vendome]

uhm, no.

Get rid of plates and go SSD or crystalline type structures.

flpping something on a record player isn’t going to make it faster just tighter.

[trebb]

Great shades of the past! My first career field in the AF was maintaining communications gear (tape/card punches/readers) and the “brains” of the show had 512 bytes of core memory. Neatly packaged in a box about the size of an attache case.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem. Kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte...

[SunkenCiv]

SSDs use less power than HDD (and will continue to), weigh less (and will continue to for some time, possibly indefinitely), and remain speedier (give or take manufacturer), which probably points to SSDs in all mobile technology in the short and middle term (at least), and HDD capacity increasing and cheaper in fixed boxes, such as home vid, desktop PCs, and ‘the cloud’.

[ShadowAce]