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Home > Archive > Data Storage > June 2006 > Flash density beating hard drives
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Flash density beating hard drives
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| Paul Rubin 2006-05-14, 7:11 am |
| I noticed something kind of interesting but probably not all that
meaningful. The density (GB per cubic cm) of flash cards now beats
hard drives (dimensions from data sheets):
3.5" HD (750 GB Seagate Barracuda):
26.1 mm x 101.6 mm x 146.99 mm = 389.78 cm^3 = 1.924 GB/cm^3
2.5" HD (160 GB Seagate Momentus):
9.5 mm x 69.85 mm x 100.2 mm = 66.49 cm^3 = 2.403 GB/cm^3
Secure Digital (4GB Transcend):
32 mm x 24 mm x 2.1 mm = 1.6128 cm^3 = 2.48 GB/cm^3
Mini-SD (2GB Transcend):
21.5 mm x 20 mm x 1.4 mm = 0.602 cm^3 = 3.322 GB/cm^3
200 or 250 GB notebook drives will catch up with mini-SD. However,
1 GB Micro-SD (Transflash) cards are advertised but not yet available.
They will be ahead of hard drives in density for quite a while:
15 mm x 11 mm x 1 mm = 0.165 cm^3 = 6.06 GB/cm^3
So, it's mostly just a matter of write wear, speed, and cost.
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| Jeff Jonas 2006-06-06, 1:16 am |
| In article <7xves9gmjk.fsf_-_@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:
>I noticed something kind of interesting but probably not all that
>meaningful. The density (GB per cubic cm) of flash cards now beats
>hard drives (dimensions from data sheets):
>So, it's mostly just a matter of write wear, speed, and cost.
The bad news: FLASH chips have a limited number of write cycles
the good news: FerroMagnetic nonvolatile RAM is already in production:
no write limit
the strange news: had bubble memory development continued,
high density 3d solid state rad-hard NVRAM would've been a reality
(according to a NASA tech briefs article with the diagrams).
--
-- mejeep deMeep ferret!
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