Samsung announced a 500,000 R/W cycle on their server-grade NAND flash. I thought that was pretty smart – even though the “several month” project didn’t sound like it involved a lot of engineering.
Then Flash analyst extraordinaire Jim Handy, who runs Objective Analysis, saw my post on ZDnet where I talked about the announcement. He reminded me that in October ’06 I’d written
. . . the cells are actually good for closer to a million read/write cycles. If true, Samsung is silly not to adjust their spec upwards, even to 250k. Engineers can be their own worst enemies sometimes when it comes to promoting a cool new product.
A mere 21 months later Samsung got with the StorageMojo program.
The StorageMojo take
Better late than never.
Samsung knew sooner than I did that flash has some serious deficits as a storage medium. The 500k “server-grade” moniker is a way of attacking one of those deficits – longevity – in a way that should reassure customers and increase margins.
What Samsung has lost is 2 years in building customer awareness of server-grade flash. Now it looks more reactive than proactive. Not a bad move, but sooner would have been better.
Comments welcome, of course.
I wonder what sort of price premium they’re going to tack onto this “server grade” SLC, and whether or not it’s pin-compatible with their current crop of chips. Do you have any insights into this?
Hmmm – first at Storage Soup, and now here: I wonder (to use your own phrasing) whether EMC actually assigned you to bird-dog positive comments about the new Samsung flash through the blogosphere and make unfounded negative suggestions about it, or if it’s just your own idea of what constitutes being a loyal employee.
– bill