Believe it or non, it has been 35 years since the very first solid-state drive (aka solid-State Department phonograph recording) hit the market. Suchlike all SSDs, that model was designed to appear to a reckoner like a traditional rotating disk, while storing and retrieving information far faster than traditional hard drives could. Such devices are called "solid" because they carry no moving parts, only memory chips.
Finished the years, the computer industry's quest for faster, cheaper, higher-capability SSDs has driven memory board engineering in ways none one could ingest foreseen in 1976, including the use of SSDs every bit the primary entrepot component in some consumer PCs.
In the next 15 slides, you'll witness the evolution of the solid push back, from a bulky, lewdly expensive server adjunct to a tiny consumer box (with hundreds of gigabytes of capacity) that anyone can buy for $50.
The World's First SSD
In 1976, Dataram introduced the world's first solid-commonwealth drive, the Bulge Core. The merchandise consisted of a wheel-mount chassis–mensuration 19 inches wide aside 15.75 inches tall–that held adequate to eight individual memory boards, each packed with 256KB of RAM chips. In whole, the Bulk Core system could provide a massive 2MB of storage for minicomputers such as the DEC PDP-11 and the Information General Nova. Data-access times ranged from 0.75 milliseconds to 2 milliseconds, depending connected the controller board. (Today, SSDs on a regular basis have 0.06ms access code times.)
A Bulk Core setup, including a controller board and 256KB of repositing, cost $9700 in 1977, which is equivalent to $36,317 today. At that pricing order, a 1TB SSD (which costs about $1100 today) would have cost $152 billion.
Photos: Dataram Corporation
Storage locker-Sizing SSD
The STC 4305, which emulated the IBM 2305 barrel-storage unit, represented a evidential boost in the capacity of SSDs. A 4305 cabinet could hold functioning to 45MB of data, which information technology stored using flush-joined devices, a refreshing approach at the clip. Such a system, including the requisite dual comptroller cards, would set you back $400,000 in 1978 (close to $1.5 million in today's dollars). If that sounds wish a lot for storing the equivalent of one within reason sized smartphone app, consider that this device was 52 percent cheaper than the membranophone-storage equivalent IBM sold-out.
Photos: Storage Technology Corporation
Orchard apple tree II House of cards Store
Magnetic bubble memory has properties similar to innovative flash retentivity in that it doesn't lose data when you shut off its office. However, the applied science hit a wall up in terms of capacity early, and ne'er gained widespread use.
Although bubble memory had been around since the middle-1960s, it wasn't until Intel free a 1-megabit bubble memory flake, the 7110 in 1979, that consumer-plane products started using the technology. In 1982, the chip appeared in a few portable computers such as the Gridiron Compass, likewise as in an other Malus pumila II SSD called the MPC Bubdisk, shown Hera. The Bubdisk held 128KB of data, and retailed for $895.
Photos: Time of origin Technology Association, MPC
Apple II RAM Disk
In 1982, Nolan Bushnell's diddle company Axlon began selling a line of Chock up disks for home PCs such equally the Apple II and Atari 800. The Ramdisk 320, intended for the Apple II, retailed for $1395 and held 320KB of data in a box the size of a Disk II driveway. Since IT stored information on conventional RAM chips that would fall back the data if powered off, the 320 enclosed a 3-minute reversible barrage.
Photo: Axlon
S-100 Plug-In SSD
RAM disks existed for each types of computers in the crude 1980s, including those based along the old S-100 bus common (introduced in the Altair 8800 in 1975). This 1982 advertisement from a Byte magazine issue shows a 256KB "RAM DISC" card developed by SD Systems that sold for $800.
Photo: Coyote State Systems
More Early PC SSDs
Axlon was unmatchable of many companies producing SSDs for personal computers. The 1983 PION Interstellar Drive worked with many another models of home computers and held up to 1MB of storage. Its 256KB baseborn configuration sold-out for $1095, while each additional 256KB lineup cost $595.
The Synetix 2202 plugged into an Apple II slot and delayed to 294KB for $529. Both products utilised volatile RAM chips that needed constant power to keep back data.
Photos: Pi-meson, Synetix
The World's Beginning Blink SSD
In 1988, a bittie Alabama-based PC vendor called Digipro revealed a prototype of the world's low solid drive to utilize flash memory, which the introduction of Intel's NOR flash memory chips earlier in the year had made possible.
Called simply Flashdisk, Digipro's add-i board for IBM PC compatibles could guard up to 16MB of data. It shipped in January 1990 in 2MB, 4MB, 6MB, and 8MB capacities, with the high-end version selling for $5000. An Country twinkling accompany called M-Systems created its own flash-drive prototype in 1989, but didn't market information technology until 1995, making Flashdisk the first trice SSD to market.
Photo: Digipro
Early 1990s Server SSDs
In the early 1990s, photoflash storage was still costly and rare, and IT didn't boast the same data-access times American Samoa dynamic RAM-based SSDs did. So much Crash-based SSDs were useful mostly in large waiter applications that demanded high-velocity information access.
DEC, for instance, offered ii lines of SSDs in the early 1990s. The EZ5x series of 5.25-inch SCSI-based drives shipped in capacities of 107MB ($13,999) to 428MB ($47,099). The faster ESE50 series offered capacities from 120MB ($40,000) to 1GB ($135,000). With prices equal that, Celestial latitude's largest SSD client was belik Tony Stark.
Photos: Digital Equipment Corporation
1990s Workstation SSDs
The deuce dynamic Aries-based solid-state drives you see here, the NewerTech Dart Drive (which held up to 512MB) and the ATTO SiliconDrive II (which stored-up to 2.6GB), both used the SCSI port. Priced in the many thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, some were aimed at the high-end Sun workstation market. They offered blisteringly fast access times (0.02ms for the SiliconDrive II) compared to velar drives of the day.
About RAM SSDs of the 1990s contained both a battery backup and a hard disc that would automatically store the RAM record's contents if power were lost.
Photos: NewerTech, ATTO
Parturition of the Modern Flaunt Push back
In 1995, Land firm M-Systems set the template for the modern flash-based SSD with its Fast Flash Disk (FFD-350) series, one of the first flash SSDs to transport in the 3.5-inch form factor that most hard drives used at the time. The archetypical FFD-350 models used the SCSI interface and shipped in capacities from 16MB to 896MB. With prices typically in the tens of thousands of dollars per drive, these SSDs constitute use for the most part in warriorlike and aeronautical applications that demanded rugged data storage.
Over the close decade, M-Systems continued to expand its FFD line, with higher capacities, faster accession times, and different designs, as shown on the outside.
Photos: M-Systems
Rise of the Cheap Flash SSD
In 2003, Pass introduced a line of dash modules that emulated Parallel ATA IDE hard drives, which were common in consumer PCs at the time. Each module, much smaller than a traditional PATA Winchester drive, included a 40- or 44-trap PATA connector and shipped in 16MB to 512MB capacities. Large capacities followed in later years.
Engineering science altered from mass-grocery store flash media cards (commonly used in digital cameras) made Transcend's modules dramatically little expensive than their predecessors. With prices opening as low as $50, they were some of the first commonly available tasteless-supported SSDs for consumers.
Photos: Surpass
Flash SSDs Go Mainstream
In 2006 Samsung free unity of the initiatory mass-market flash SSDs, a 2.5-inch 32GB repel with a PATA interface ($699) designed as a drop-in permutation for laptop hard drives. SanDisk followed in 2007 with its own 2.5-inch 32GB drive, the SATA 5000.
Using wear-leveling technology, flaunt SSDs in 2006 were confident of many more rewrites than swank media cards at the time, bringing them closer to replacement mechanical hard drives for unremarkable use up. This new generation of products triggered a consumer SSD market explosion that continues to this twenty-four hours.
Photos: Samsung, SanDisk
Pushing the Limits
New SSD technologies are soh fast that the SATA port most solid drives use has become a bottleneck. So manufacturers are continuing the grand custom of putting SSDs on plug-in cards, as exemplified by the two products shown here. The $1495 DDrive X1 plugs into a spare PCI Expressed slot and provides 4GB of high-speed DRAM storage. It too includes 4GB of flash for backup in case the force goes out.
The Unification IoDrive Duo also ships in a PCI Express card formatting, just information technology utilizes a peculiarly designed variant of flare memory to achieve sustained read speeds of 1.5 GBps (that's fast). Available in capacities from 128GB to 1.28TB, the IoDrive Duet carried a base price of $5950 at its launching in 2009.
Photos: Nuclear fusion reaction, DDrive
Current Events
Today's consumer SSDs keep getting faster and cheaper thanks to untested flash chips and higher-speed SATA interfaces. For example, the 160GB member of the Intel 320 SSD serial, shown here, currently retails for nigh $320 and offers sustained read speeds of 270 MBps.
Manufacturers are also experimenting with raw ways to package SSDs, as illustrated by the Viking Standard SATADIMM: It uses a spare 240-pin Drachm slot on your motherboard to host a tiny, 25GB to 400GB flash-based SSD. Only time will separate if this novel format–which still uses a SATA cable to channelize data–volition gain widespread use.
Photos: Viking, Intel
The Later of SSD Storage
Where will the future of solid-state drives take us? Expect to see more SSDs embedded directly on computer motherboards, in higher capacities, and with greater read/write speeds. SSDs will likely become both bigger and cheaper than traditional hard drives sometime in the next tenner, rendering spinning platters obsolete.
We will also see new forms of SSD computer storage media, such as phase-change memory, which give notice possibly crack greater capacity, speed, and strength than up-to-the-minute twinkle technology can. Hither you can see a prototype PCME faculty called Onyx, which is under development at the University of Calif. San Diego.
Wherever SSDs take us, at least we know they bequeath take United States of America there very quickly.
Photos: UCSD Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory
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