In London this week, I was invited to present on solid state storage at the SNIA Europe Data Center Academy event.  It was  a well-attended event with a good mix of  IT managers, consultants and press in the audience – including Chris Mellor from The Register who subsequently published this blog.  Chris is one of the most perceptive journalists in the industry and really nailed the key issues in his blog.  Check it out!

BTW, the presentation is among the latest batch of SNIA tutorials, which you can find here.

Some SSD advocates project that SSD price per gigabyte will cross over that of HDDs, due to slower growth in areal density of HDDs in the future than it has grown in the past.  HDD price per GB declines will slow as a result of a slower areal density growth.  The argument is that this would allow flash gigabyte prices to blow past HDD prices just as they slipped below DRAM gigabyte prices in 2004.

 Some of these advocates recently predict that 3.5″ HDDs will “only” reach 6TB by 2015.  Although we find it likely that we will have 6 TB HDDs in mass production by then, Coughlin Associates expects to see 10TB maximum announced product capacity of 3.5-inch hard disk drives by that time. 

 Slower areal density growth of hard disk drives may result from transition difficulties to new recording technologies such as patterned media and heat assisted magnetic recording.  It appears likely that we may see areal density growth slowing from 40-50% annually today to 20% or possibly even less over the next few years.  Today the HDD industry is shipping 2 TB 3.5-inch HDDs and 1 TB 2.5-inch HDDs and will likely ship 3 TB or larger (3.5-inch) drives in the second half of 2010.  If the areal density of HDDs increased only 20% annually from 2010 through 2015 this would give us 7.5 TB 3.5-inch HDDs and over 3 TB 2.5-inch HDDs.

 Although a slow down is likely during a technology transition phase it is likely going to slow down gradually from today’s roughly 40% annual areal density growth rate.  So let’s say we have one more year of 40% growth (2010-2011), one year of 30% growth (2011-2012) and then 20% growth for the three remaining years to 2010.  With a 3 TB capacity in 2010 that would give us a 9.4TB capacity in 2010.  There is enough uncertainty in these numbers that the actual capacity could be between 8 and 11 TB so let’s say the maximum storage capacity in 2010 for 3.5-inch drives is 10 TB.  Likewise because of the geometry differences the maximum 2.5-inch storage capacity would be about 5 TB. 

 If the HDD industry stays true to its history, these 10TB HDDs will cost $50, giving a price per terabyte of $5.  Meanwhile, NAND flash terabyte prices will have declined to $50-100, preventing SSDs from displacing HDDs at least through 2015!

SSSI and SSS TWG:

The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) recently noted the transition in leadership from founding Chair Phil Mills of IBM.  Phil Mills, Secretary of the SNIA Board of Directors, drove formation of the SSSI in late 2008 and was instrumental in developing the Initiative’s organizational mission and objectives as well as forming the associated SNIA Solid State Storage Technical Working Group.  Due in large part to Phil’s Herculean efforts, the SSSI was successful in attaining critical mass by recruiting 26 founding members – a number that continued to grow to the current membership of 34 SSSI member companies, along with 56 SSS TWG member companies.

SSSI Mission:

The founding mission statement of the SSSI articulated a dedication to “foster the growth and success of the solid state storage market for client and enterprise applications… that encompasses marketing outreach, education, collaboration with SSS industry standards bodies, development of SNIA SSS Specifications and Standards (such as the SSS TWG), and a close following of advancements in non-volatile memory for solid state mass storage.”

Progress to Date:

Taking stock of the SSSI at this transition point, it is clear that the SSSI has been very successful in effecting these goals.  The SSSI has active committees for Marketing, Business Development, Education, Technical Development and SSS Total Cost of Ownership.  In conjunction with the work in the SSS TWG, the SSSI has made great strides in all areas.  Deliverables achieved to date include establishment of the SSSI as THE authoritative voice on Solid State Storage Performance, collaboration and cooperation with other Standards groups and Trade Associations (JEDEC, SSDA, and others), completion of several key white papers and tutorials on many aspects of solid state storage, industry noted presentations and presence at trade shows and events, completion of a TCO calculator for SSS, on-going investigations in emerging areas of SSS technologies (such as “drive pairing” and “storage tiering”) and imminent release of the SSS TWG Performance Test Specification for Public Technical Review – the industry’s first SSS Performance Specification whose goal is to help standardize the nomenclature, metrics, methodologies, tests and reporting of SSS performance.

Looking Forward:

Phil leaves the Initiative at at time of great market activity and leaves in place a capable team to carry the SSSI forward.  The SSSI Governing Board has appointed Paul Wassenberg of Marvell as the acting SSSI Chair.  Paul has been the chair of the TechDev sub committee and allows for a seamless transition with Paul’s extensive interaction with Education, Busdev, and the SSS TWG.  Paul and Marvell are also one of the founding companies of the SSSI and has been instrumental in getting the Initiative to where it is and will be key in moving us forward.

Come Join Us:

The SSSI continues to evangelize Solid State Storage and will have numerous opportunities to contribute to standardization of the SSS industry and widespread adoption and deployment of SSS mass storage.

Thank You Phil:

The entire SSSI wants to thank Phil for his dedication, leadership and vision and hopes to take the SSSI to the next level.  In that vein, the Initiative actively seeks to expand its membership and to address topics of interest to the SSS community and the Initiative’s membership.  People and companies that have an interest in participating in this exciting industry are invited to visit the SSSI at http://www.snia.org/forums/sssi