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About me

My posting summary

1 to 4 of 4

My comments

• Flash memory market for data storage will expand BUT there is a concept called floor cost that is important when you look at the potential rate of growth. That is, HDD's have a floor cost of ~$50 and once you are willing to pay that you get a whole lot of storage. Flash memory (specifically NAND) has the ability to undercut HDD floor cost. For example, today you can see that a 2GB single NAND memory chip is selling for well under $10. Add a a controller and you have a SSD (solid state drive) for well under $20. So if $20 is all you have to spend flash is it. On the other hand, if all you care about is GB/$ HDD's always win as can get almost a TB for $200.
  
  Since we are talking about high definition content, HDD's are the way to go today because each HD movie is 5-10GB and I want to store hundreds.
  
  Regarding the comment on Flash being required for speed you need to be careful. Flash is slower, much slower, then HDD when it comes to sustained write rates and flash needs to be erased before writing. Typical flash write rates run 5-10MB/s so I'm not sure I want to store 10GB of data at that data rate. Where flash has a speed advantage over HDD is in the area of initial latency or first access. This is why you are seeing caching applications being used in laptops. Intel has something called turbo memory which uses flash between main memory and the HDD that boosts performance. If you get a chance to see the demo, you will be amazed. In reply to: "Seagate CEO: Blu-ray won the battle but lost the war"

  January 9, 2008

  0 replies

• HDD's are expensive? As compared to what? As I wrote, I purchased 750GB disk for my Dish STB for ~$189. Right now i have about 100 HD movies saved on my external 750GB drive.
  
  Lets do the math 100 HD movies x $25 Blu-ray disks = $2500
  
  Expensive? I think not my friend.
  
  Ed In reply to: "Seagate CEO: Blu-ray won the battle but lost the war"

  January 9, 2008

  0 replies

• Flash memory market for data storage will expand BUT there is a concept called floor cost that is important when you look at the potential rate of growth. That is, HDD's have a floor cost of ~$50 and once you are willing to pay that you get a whole lot of storage. Flash memory (specifically NAND) has the ability to undercut HDD floor cost. For example, today you can see that a 2GB single NAND memory chip is selling for well under $10. Add a a controller and you have a SSD (solid state drive) for well under $20. So if $20 is all you have to spend flash is it. On the other hand, if all you care about is GB/$ HDD's always win as can get almost a TB for $200.
  
  Since we are talking about high definition content, HDD's are the way to go today because each HD movie is 5-10GB and I want to store hundreds.
  
  Regarding the comment on Flash being required for speed you need to be careful. Flash is slower, much slower, then HDD when it comes to sustained write rates and flash needs to be erased before writing. Typical flash write rates run 5-10MB/s so I'm not sure I want to store 10GB of data at that data rate. Where flash has a speed advantage over HDD is in the area of initial latency or first access. This is why you are seeing caching applications being used in laptops. Intel has something called turbo memory which uses flash between main memory and the HDD that boosts performance. If you get a chance to see the demo, you will be amazed. In reply to: "Seagate CEO: Blu-ray won the battle but lost the war"

  January 9, 2008

  0 replies

• He is right on. If you have terabytes in your house, like I do, you will use it TODAY to store HD movies sent over your current satellite. Dish already allows this and I am filling them up. What I see happening today is you will rent blu-ray's for "first run" movies but use HDD to store what you will watch over your satellite. I see no reason to buy DVD's anymore.
  
  The end goal of course is to get HD first run movies into your home and this will take time. Once you watch HD content on 65" plasma 1080P television there is no going back. In fact, the quality of the movie theatre starts to look bad. This will drive solutions.
  
  Ed In reply to: "Seagate CEO: Blu-ray won the battle but lost the war"

  January 8, 2008

  2 replies