With more computer vendors putting flash memory into PCs to replace traditional hard drives, two new flash drives will soon make it into the spotlight, a market researcher said.
Penetration of solid-state drives (SSDs) in notebooks will reach 12 percent by the end of 2009, El Segundo, California-based iSuppli Corp said in a report released on Monday.
By contrast, hybrid hard drives (HHDs) will be deployed in 35 percent of all notebook PCs within the same timeframe, the report said.
Both SSDs and HHDs are intended to replace conventional hard disk drives by using flash memory instead of rotating media. While SSDs only use flash, HHDs use both flash memory and hard drives to create a hybrid solution.
These new flash drives will make computers run faster, more resistant to shock and less energy consuming.
One of the latest examples of the emerging trend was the announcement by Asustek Computer Inc (
During the Computex trade fair in Taipei, Asustek said that using SSD will give the US$199 Eee PC a great shock-proof advantage over traditional notebook PCs, allowing for extra flexibility and a worry-free mobile computing experience.
"SSDs and HHDs have a clear performance advantage compared to traditional hard drives," Krishna Chander, iSuppli senior analyst of storage research, wrote in the report.
But penetration of HHDs in notebook PCs will rise more quickly in the near term than SSDs, as the former costs less to produce and offers a level of data integrity that can only be delivered by existing hard drive technology, Chander said.
As prices for notebook hard drives have dropped dramatically in the first half of this year, HHDs will have an advantage over SSDs in terms of absolute capacity and cost per gigabyte, the analyst said.
While SSDs are receiving much attention in light of advances in their storage capacity, Chander said performance and capacity increases of HHDs will occur at a faster pace than those of SSDs.
For now, the cost of HHDs and SSDs will remain a prohibitive factor for mass-market adoption. Prices will only diminish in the coming years and lead to a much wider usage, iSuppli said.
In addition to HHDs and SSDs, another approach to PC flash memory storage is Intel Corp's recently introduced Robson technology, also known as Turbo Memory.
As any type of hard drive can use Turbo Memory, this solution will penetrate the market faster than HHDs, which still face standardization problems, iSuppli said.
The combination of SSDs, HHDs, Turbo Memory and other solutions should propel the market penetration of flash memory used for notebook-PC data storage to nearly 60 percent by the fourth quarter of 2009, the researcher said.
Computer vendors including Fujitsu Ltd, Toshiba Corp and Samsung Electronics Co have signified an interest in using flash drives in their future products.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to