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SSDs in 1997? What you say? You betcha!

They were actually out back in the 70s .. though in a form completely different than what we have now:

http://www.storagesearch.com/chartingtheriseofssds.html

1976 - Dataram sold an SSD called BULK CORE which attached to minicomputers from Modular Computer Systems and emulated hard disks made by DEC and Data General. Each chassis held 8x 256k x 18 RAM modules and had a capacity of 2 megabytes.
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I think the military had them even earlier than that ... not sure of the date though. I think 2006 is when we first had wide consumer availability with Samsung (though still at an exorbitant price).
 
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Interesting enough their access times (<60&#181;s) are better than those of most (my intel has around 100 if I believe AS SSD) modern SSDs - just the same as with HDDs 😀
 
Tsavo said:
Intel G2's, judging by how long it is taking Intel to pinch out their new drives.
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I'm amazed at the number of people still harping on the Intel drives as if they're the only ones worth using....

NEWS FLASH, THE G2 DRIVES HAVE BEEN CLEARLY SECOND FIDDLE TO SANDFORCE AND MICRON FOR A YEAR NOW.

And now we're starting to see newer, even faster drives based on new generation controllers from both...

As to why Intel has yet to release their G3 drives my guess is that they've simply been beaten and are stumped, or are complacent because people (much like yourself) still hold them in the highest regard. Why put out something new if people still keep scarfing up the old?
 
bunnyfubbles said:
I'm amazed at the number of people still harping on the Intel drives as if they're the only ones worth using....

NEWS FLASH, THE G2 DRIVES HAVE BEEN CLEARLY SECOND FIDDLE TO SANDFORCE AND MICRON FOR A YEAR NOW.
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Could you do me a favor? No really only a small one, look up "humor" some times, yes?

Also depending on WHAT you want from your drive a Intel drive is still a pretty good idea to get - the decision between reliability and performance isn't that clear cut for most.
 
Solid state drives have been around for a long while, at least at Comdex. I remember when you could buy a chassis that consisted of a board with 24-30 or so of PC-100 slots which you could cheerfully fill with 1MB of RAM each, and the chassis themselves were several thousand (It's been so long it might have been into five figures) so you could boot Windows 3.1 or NT 3.5 much faster than you were used to doing. they did not seem like enterprise-class devices, though. More like Taiwanese proof-of-concepts.
 
SSDs (Solid State Drives, remember, so RAM disks do count) have been around since the 1950s, before magnetic storage, and long before hard drives.
 
arkcom said:
Punch cards. The original SSDs.
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I was going to say paper tape was 1st, but that was sequential access. punch cards were true random access, especially after you dropped the deck on the floor.

I remember consumer level (albeit expensive) ssd drives from back in the day that you could populate with cast off RAM sticks and had a rechargeable battery backup that held the contents for 8 hours or so if the power went out. special software copied the contents of the ssd to/from your HD on boot/down.
 
bunnyfubbles said:
I'm amazed at the number of people still harping on the Intel drives as if they're the only ones worth using....

NEWS FLASH, THE G2 DRIVES HAVE BEEN CLEARLY SECOND FIDDLE TO SANDFORCE AND MICRON FOR A YEAR NOW.

And now we're starting to see newer, even faster drives based on new generation controllers from both...

As to why Intel has yet to release their G3 drives my guess is that they've simply been beaten and are stumped, or are complacent because people (much like yourself) still hold them in the highest regard. Why put out something new if people still keep scarfing up the old?
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The reason people go on and on about the intel drives is they are king for reliability. And to some people that matters more than benchmark numbers.
 
Semantics/jokes aside, the Rushmore was a breakthrough because it was a true disk replacement available in a package you could install just like a regular disk drive and attache to a SCSI controller.

Also regarding the Intel vs. other (Sandfarce?) there is no comparison. I've used them all and put money on Intel right now. Some of us do more than run ATTO all day and can actually use something called IOPS and reliability. :biggrin:
 
in 10 years we'll be laughing at the current situation: SSD's were $1.50 per GB?!? Capacity of just 256GB?!
 
Makaveli said:
The reason people go on and on about the intel drives is they are king for reliability. And to some people that matters more than benchmark numbers.
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I could not agree more. Reliability is indeed King and I have significantly more confidence in Intel (especially the G2) than any other vendors' drives.

Additionally, my 80 GB G2 performs so well, any additional increase in performance will only be either inconsequential or apparent only through a benchmark application. The new generation of drives will not begin to provide the truly dramatic improvement the G2 gave in comparison to a HDD.

That is why I am going to buy an Intel 120 GB G2 sometime in the not to distant future. It is tried and proven and its performance leaves nothing to de desired.
 
Makaveli said:
The reason people go on and on about the intel drives is they are king for reliability. And to some people that matters more than benchmark numbers.
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I have an Intel X-25M 80GB and a OCZ Vertex LE 100GB and in normal daily use I can't really see any difference in the performance.

Intel definitely has a better toolbox and the firmware upgrade process is much better and does not require a Linux disc or removing the SSD from the computer and putting it in another system.
 
RhoXS said:
I could not agree more. Reliability is indeed King and I have significantly more confidence in Intel (especially the G2) than any other vendors' drives.

Additionally, my 80 GB G2 performs so well, any additional increase in performance will only be either inconsequential or apparent only through a benchmark application. The new generation of drives will not begin to provide the truly dramatic improvement the G2 gave in comparison to a HDD.

That is why I am going to buy an Intel 120 GB G2 sometime in the not to distant future. It is tried and proven and its performance leaves nothing to de desired.
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I have both a 80GB G2 and a 120GB Vertex 2. I didn't really notice a day-to-day usage difference between the two, but my Intel G2 hasn't had any issues while my Vertex 2 had some BIOS compatibility issues and started freezing/dropping out of a couple machines I tried it in. I was able to keep it on long enough to get some data off of it, but it took a Secure Erase to get it working again. I'm not trusting it to store data anymore. I'll be RMAing it soon, but of course I worry about getting a 25nm Vertex 2. It would have been easier if I went with a 120GB G2 in the first place.
 
Rubycon said:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1997_Oct_27/ai_19917940/

To say we haven't come a long way... 😀

30-40MB/S, up to 1.6GB. :biggrin:

Quantum's Rushmore Ultra SSDs are available immediately. Pricing starts at $6,750 MSRP for the 134MB drive. D:

Imagine what we'll be using in 2024! 😱
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pretty cool to look at how far technology progressed.

The first portable music player design was from 1979: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,419522,00.html
Intel has been selling solid state chips commercially since 1988 (invented "circa 1980" by a toshiba employee invented it)
I once saw an article claim that said 1979 music player design called for solid state memory.

Anyone knows what the first commercially produced portable music player to use solid state memory was?
 
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Rubycon said:
That was closer to a RAM disk though. 😉
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well, yeah, if it was core ram then yes, it's exactly like a ram disk. then again, core ram is non-volatile (actually extraordinarily robust compared to IC ram, survives EMPs and stuff), so is there really any difference? from a very basic model, storage is storage.


and the stuff in your OP is basically a ram disk, uses DRAM.
 
This is what blew me away:

1997 SSD Article said:
DRAM prices have continued to drop dramatically, allowing Quantum to pass on cost savings for its SSD technology to end users. With today's announcement, the cost of high-end SSD performance has now dropped to below $40/MB MSRP, which makes SSD a very competitive technology when compared to mid-range server memory upgrades.
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We're talking just under $40,000 for 1GB of SSD back in 1997! A typical 80GB SSD of today (which is significantly faster) would run in the range of $3 Million! That is progress!!! 13 years later you get 3 million dollars worth of SSD for under $150!
 
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