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Flash-SSD Price and Performance Trends

Realizing the huge potential of Flash memory due to the growing prevalence of portable electronic devices such as PDAs, mobile phones, and digital cameras, semiconductor manufactures have ramped up production capacities as well as increased Flash memory densities. As a result, price per MByte of Solid State Flash Drive is expected to fall by an average of 80.86 percent annually within a 5-year period starting 2004, according to market research firm Web-Feet Research (see Figures A and B).

As we move towards 2009, the price gap between HDDs and Solid State Flash Drives narrow significantly (a difference of about $0.05 per MByte in 2007), while Flash-Solid State Drives dramatically increase in performance over HDDs (at 100x-150x over in terms of sustained transfers and IOPS). Web-Feet Research also predicts a significant reduction in the F-SSD/HDD cost ratio by approximately four times, from 433:1 ($0.078 vs. $0.0018 per MByte) in 2003 to 107:1 ($0.096 vs. $0.0009 per MByte) in 2006. Flash-based SSDs will also maintain their cost-per-MByte advantage over DRAM-based Solid State Drives.

BiTMICRO Networks leads the industry in pushing exponential growth in Flash-SSD performance by introducing the 3.5-inch E-Disk Fibre Channel and Ultra320 SCSI series with sustained R/W rates of up to 68 MBytes/sec and up to 10,500 random IOPS. In comparison, the fastest 3.5-inch mechanical HDD spinning at 15,000 RPM can only deliver up to 600 random IOPS. Figure C reveals that within a 20-year period, BiTMICRO 3.5-inch Flash-SSDs will post more than 20x improvement in sustained random R/W rates peaking at 1.6 GBytes/sec by 2008. In terms of IOPS, Flash-SSDs are projected to reach a peak of 240,000 random IOPS (for a 3.5-inch E-Disk 10 Gbits/sec Fibre Channel) by 2008, a 24x improvement within a 20-year period.





BiTMICRO's aggressive product development will also reflect on its 2U rack mount Solid State Flash Drives, providing impressive throughput for enterprise class applications. Engineering trends strongly indicate the possibility of packing at least 24 (double than current drive densities) 2.5-inch drives by the year 2007, with performance expected again to increase at least threefold in 2008 as the 2nd generation SAS (6 Gbits/sec) SSDs are utilized. Sustained R/W rates for 2U rack mount systems are expected to improve by a factor of 30, reaching 20 GBytes/sec in 2008. Likewise, random IOPS performance is projected to ramp up drastically, rising from 110,000 in 2004 to 2,000,000 in 2008.

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