This is the IT Industrial Revolution! The spring of the storage world is coming

With the continuous development of solid-state hard disk performance, the main SATA 3Gbps interface has been difficult to continuously play the solid-state drive in the transmission speed of the performance advantages, and has a higher bandwidth of the PCI interface is clearly a good choice. October 28 Day, Intel, IBM, Fujitsu and other industrial giants announced the establishment of "SSD specification team", speeding up the PCI interface solid-state hard drive standardization step ...

Interface advantages, PCI products have sprung up

The interface of the hard disk should be IDE or SATA, which has become a "convention moralize" consensus, but the SSD does not necessarily take this path. Most solid-state drives in today's market are SATA-compliant, which is compatible with existing PC architectures. In fact, SATA, USB and other interfaces are based on the PCI bus, if you can bypass SATA such as "Storage-specific interface", so that solid-state hard disk like a board inserted in the motherboard provided by the PCI interface, so that the product shape is actually more suitable for solid-state drives, not only can read and write faster, In addition, the cost of peripheral components can be reduced by means of direct interpolation.

Into the 2010, to Fusion-io, OCZ, Micon as the representative of the storage vendors, in the PCI interface solid-state hard drive to promote a very hard, has launched a number of new products. For example, October 29 OCZ launched the second generation of products--revodrive X2, which is equipped with up to four SandForce SF-1222 and build internal RAID 0, so the performance rose again, almost to the SATA interface Solid state drive three times times, The fastest reading and writing speed can reach 740mb/s and 720mb/s. PCI interface solid-state hard drive is more fierce, even the semiconductor industry giant Intel also heart, in this year's Spring Festival and autumn of the IDF Summit held a number of related technical lectures.

According to Gartner, a leading market research institute, there will be SAS, SATA and PCI interfaces for solid-state drives in the next few years, with the latter taking the lion's share in future markets. Compared with traditional mechanical hard drives, it is not difficult for solid-state drives to read and write faster than 1gb/s. For performance-oriented enterprise users, the SATA 6Gbps interface is still a performance bottleneck, and the PCI interface's solid-state drive should be a good solution.

PCI need to be popular and wear "tight hoop"

Although the current market has a variety of PCI interface solid-state hard disk products to choose from, performance is also very good, but the existing PCI SSD in terms of versatility, compatibility, etc. still have a lot of deficiencies, the lack of industry standards is the most important reason. As a result, industry giants such as Intel, IBM, Dell and Fujitsu set up an "SSD specification team" at the end of October to promote the ease, compatibility and scalability of PCI interface solid-state drives, while reducing the cost of use.

It is reported that the future PCI interface solid-state hard disk is expected in interoperability (that is, SATA 6Gbps, SAS hard drive work together, sharing information compatible ability), shape design and support hot plug three aspects of standardization, which will significantly reduce the user's difficulty in purchasing, Followed by a sharp rise in production and sales and a sharp reduction in costs.

In addition, based on the PCI interface of solid-state hard disk currently in the Host Controller Interface (HCI) on the unified standard, which led to every solid-state hard disk manufacturers need to provide special drivers for their solid-state drives, the lack of standards makes PCI solid-state hard disk development has a great "hidden trouble"- SSD manufacturers need to have a driver for each operating system, which increases the verification cycle and the corresponding cost of PCI solid-state drives. Intel is currently actively working with other vendors to develop a standard called NVMHCI (Non-volatile Storage Host Controller Interface). This is a bit like the 2000 flash standards, when the operating system using different flash, the need to install different drivers, very troublesome, and later in the operating system "unified" driver, the implementation of Plug and Play, Flash can be quickly popularized.

Solid-State drives have been characterized by their high performance, very small size and ultra-low power to receive people's favor, but its price and durability has always been the user's focus on the factors, which durability determines the use of solid-state hard disk life, which is directly related to the user's use of the effect and cost. In the memory field has the absolute right to speak of JEDEC (United States electronic device Engineering Joint Commission) shortly before the release of the much-awaited solid-state drive standard specification, the new specification clearly defined the use of solid-state drives, durability requirements, but also developed a solid state hard disk durability classification standards, This provides a solid-state hard disk comparison based on the application level, which allows users to compare different products and make it easier for them to choose their own models.

2011,USB 3.0 Universal Year

Talking about the development of USB 3.0, "pain and happiness." The news of USB3.0 was disclosed at the IDF conference in fall 2007. Then USB3.0 in 2008 11 was formally established next generation data transmission interface standard. At that time, we also saw the latest USB 3.0 cable and interface in kind.

Two years later, USB 3.0 did not replace USB 2.0 as expected and became the next generation I/O interface overlord. This is certainly related to "USB 3.0 Godfather" Intel's ambiguous attitude (Intel intends to promote another fiber interface technology called Light Peak), but the third party USB 3.0 control chip shortage is an important factor that can not be ignored. At present, the real development of USB 3.0 control chip manufacturers only NEC, Granville, Asmedia, such as a small number of gigabyte, far from the market demand for huge motherboard and peripheral products "appetite." According to data from research institutions, this year the number of USB 3.0 chip shipments is expected to reach 20 million, 2011 has doubled to 40 million.

Gruel situation, the third party USB 3.0 control chip prices have been high, especially the nearly 90% market share of the NEC chip price of nearly 6 U.S. dollars/star, which directly led to the current USB 3.0 Peripheral products Limited to a small number of mobile hard disk, hard disk box or flash, and prices are often very expensive, Usually used for high-end display or enthusiasts taste, ordinary users can only look at the sigh.

As the saying goes, the bell needs to be tied. USB 3.0 standard to quickly spread out, the chipset manufacturer support is "necessary", after all, through the Third-party control chip to achieve USB 3 is a stopgap, the original USB 2.0 is a strong proof of popularity. Fortunately, recent Intel and AMD's two major semiconductor giants have said they will provide native support for USB 3.0 in the next generation of platform products, with AMD planning to release the Fusion APU processor code-named Llano next year, as well as carrying hudson-d3/ The Lynx and Sabine platform for the M chipset (for laptops and desktops, respectively), which support 4 USB 3.0 interfaces natively. Intel recently told its partners that next year's plan, the new mobile platform "figuratively River" will adopt the 22nm process Ivy Bridge processor, and natively support USB 3.0.

Of course, the mainstream PC platform to provide USB 3.0 support is only "infrastructure", when we can see a richer, more affordable USB 3.0 peripherals products, it means that the USB 3.0 era really come. In USB 3.0 peripherals, flash memory is undoubtedly the most persuasive product. Now there are manufacturers "shot", the United States established storage vendors Super Talent (governance just recently) launched a model for USB 3.0 Express Duo USB 3.0 Flash, the appearance and performance of this product is not outstanding, but its killer is the price of--8GB, 16GB sold only 95 yuan and 195 yuan (RMB) almost and the current market of USB 2.0 products No difference, very competitive.

With the upstream manufacturers to promote, coupled with the active cooperation of the midrange equipment manufacturers, USB 3.0 popularization, perhaps in 2011 years.

Written in the last

Solid-State drives are entering more and more high-end users ' systems, but the real power of solid-state storage is at the enterprise level, which is precisely the heavy multithreaded task and the need to input and output large amounts of data in a short time. While many systems are upgrading SAS or SATA 6Gbps, this bandwidth still fails to meet the needs of many enterprise-class workloads, and the PCI bus becomes a new darling, as is USB 3.0.

Of course, SATA interface or PCI interface is a form of product, regardless of the manufacturers push which side, they are more to consider their own interests. From the consumer's point of view, we are more concerned about the price of solid-state drives. In the past year or two, in addition to high-end server market, industrial/military market and high-end commercial notebook market, consumer solid-state hard disk is still very highbrow, although this year some of the so-called low-priced products, but the capacity is 32GB/40GB, the manufacturer's propaganda focus or " Using a low capacity solid-state hard disk as a system disk, large-capacity mechanical hard disk storage data. ”

I hope that in the fourth quarter of this year, NAND chip manufacturers into the 20nm-level manufacturing process, the relative product yield and proportion can be greatly improved, and ultimately reflected in the solid-state hard disk product price, because its pure reliance on product performance to attract consumers ' eyeballs, It would be better to reduce sales prices to stimulate consumers ' desire to buy.