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Executive Summary
Solid-state drives (SSDs) are becoming an increasingly popular choice for computer users who value the impressive speed, reliability and energy savings they provide. Although SSDs are likely to cost significantly more than hard disk drives (HDDs) on a per-gigabyte (GB) basis for the foreseeable future, a growing number of users are coming to the conclusion that the outstanding performance they provide is worth the extra cost,
especially as prices fall and SSD technology continues to improve.
SSDs which use NAND flash memory chips to store and retrieve data
allow computer systems to boot up, load applications and copy both large and small files dramatically faster than conventional HDDs. And because
SSDs have no moving parts, they are much more energy-efficient and resistant to shock, vibration and accidental drops than HDDs qualities that make them ideally suited for use in notebooks, tablet PCs, and other mobile devices.
As a result, gaming enthusiasts, corporate road warriors and other demanding PC users willing to pay a premium for higher performance are beginning to gravitate towards SSDs. PC makers are also fueling the shift towards SSDs by offering them as standard equipment in their latest ultraslim and lightweight notebooks including Samsung s Series 9, Sony s Vaio
Z Series and Apple s MacBook Air as a way to differentiate their performance.
The market for solid state drives is red-hot, observed journalist Sean
Portnoy in a recent ZDNet article.1 Indeed, market research firm Gartner
Inc. expects worldwide SSD shipments to surpass 21 million units in 2011,
twice the 10.7 million SSDs shipped during 2010.2 Gartner expects worldwide SSD shipments will reach nearly 145 million units, worth .1
billion annually, by 2015.
"Newer SSDs SATA 3.0 interfaces transfer data at up to 6 gigabits per second twice the speed of previous SATA interfaces."
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About this report
This report is intended to help readers, particularly consumers thinking about upgrading their own computers with an SSD, to better understand the advantages of solid-state storage. To assist with that evaluation process, we have collected highlights from a wide range of recent articles, reports and commentaries in a variety of leading English-language news publications and blogs. Samsung Electronics is grateful to the many journalists and technical evaluators whose articles and product reviews are summarized in this report.
A look inside
First, let s look at some of what goes into an SSD and how it works. NAND
flash memory chips are the components that provide the actual memory storage in SSDs. These chips use electrical charges to store bits of digital data in rows of densely packed transistor cells, which retain stored information even when their power supply is switched off. Enterprise-grade
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