Rumor Mill Indicates SSDs Closely Watched

Implications: Solid-State Drives (SSDs) may be ahead of their time, but they are certainly generating a lot of press!  Companies who don't want to get left in the dust need both to understand this technology, and to understand why their customers would or would not like to purchase it.

Analysis:  In late March Avian Securities claimed that there were significant returns of SSD-based PCs at a major PC OEM.  According to information an Avian analyst heard in Asia, the un-named OEM was seeing returns of 20-30% based upon a combination of hard failures and these systems’ inability to perform to user expectations.  Industry reporters later observed that Dell Computer was the only major PC OEM to ship SSDs in volume.<br>Lionel Menchaca, chief blogger at Dell Computer, was quick to point out that the report’s claims “don't even vaguely resemble what's happening in our business” and that the 20-30% figure was off by an order of magnitude from typical SSD-related returns.  Menchaca also said that “global reliability data shows that SSD drives are equal to or better than traditional hard disk drives we've shipped.” <br>A few days later, Matt Kohut from Dell competitor Lenovo chimed in, saying that “the article circling the Internet is fear mongering meant to drive readership. On the other hand I do doubt that return rates (for SSDs) are as low as traditional hard disk drives.” <br>Without knowing more about Avian’s research model we will not step into the fray about the firm’s reliability claims.  But what about basic SSD end-user satisfaction?  After all, PCs that ship with SSDs tend to be priced about $1,000 higher than their HDD-based counterparts, and the SSDs they use are typically smaller in capacity than their HDD counterparts.  In other words, since their price/performance essentially makes SSDs luxury items, do customers find the SSD experience luxurious?<br>Although we can’t provide any hard data for this argument, there are lots of indications that users may not be gaining performance benefits by switching to an SSD.<br>The original article said that SSD-based notebooks are slower than HDD notebooks when running applications like video streaming.  This agrees with other data that we have heard from HDD analysts who point out that sequential reading and especially writing are intrinsically fast with a hard disk drive, perhaps even faster than SSDs that tap into their inherent parallelism to accelerate throughput. <br>There also may be some issues relating to the drivers currently used, since the technology is new, and these drivers may not be fully optimized this early in the game. In fact, Dell themselves have said that today’s SSDs are sometimes slower than HDDs when executing applications that exchange data in small packet sizes, one example being Microsoft Outlook.<br>SSD companies sell their products based upon promises of better reliability, lower power (extending battery life), faster throughput, and quieter operation.  In truth, few of these promises materialize when consumers switch from an HDD to an SSD.  This seems to stem from a combination of immature SSD controller technology and poorly-tuned software, both of which should improve over time.  Although Objective Analysis has faith that SSDs will eventually find widespread use in the PC, we don’t expect this to occur until substantial benefits can be realized for a reasonable cost.  Today we are very far from that point.<br>This works against the very strong SSD campaign being mounted by Samsung and Toshiba, the more modest campaigns of SanDisk, Micron Technology, STEC and SMART Modular Technologies, and the very modest campaigns of companies like Intel, Silicon Systems, BIT Micro, and others.  Certain controller makers like Silicon Motion and Phison will also see little growth from SSDs until their time comes.<br>A very thoough examination of the outlook for SSDs can be found in a report: The Solid State Disk Market: A Rigorous Look, available at: http://www.Objective-Analysis.com/Reports.