With the help of Moore’s law, computing power has grown exponentially. Now, in order for computing power to run effectively, low latency-to-data access is vital. Conventional magnetic disks can only run so fast as their positional and rotational latency. Which is why more and more we are looking at
flash systems.
Flash Systems - Cost-Effective, Big Boosts in Performance
Although flash, aka solid-state-media and solid-state-drive (SSD), has been around for quite a while, there was reluctance to adapt to it even though the improvement in performance was clear. This was mainly due to SSD’s reliability, cost, and capacity concerns. SSDs have come a long way and all previous concerns are now outweighed by the boost in performance flash systems offer.
The Benefits of Flash/SSD
- Superior random read performance
- Low power consumption, while still providing very high density
- Flash chips lower access latency in the order of tens of microseconds, which is several orders of magnitude shorter than the 10 to 20 millisecond disk seek time.
- By organizing multiple chips in parallel, very high throughput can be obtained
- Access to a 3U system can generate more than 2,400MB/s.
Industries with the greatest need for SSDs
Most businesses can benefit from the the speed and performance of SSDs, and they’re becoming increasingly standard in business hardware, but here are the main target markets for SSDs:
OLTP: Online Transaction Processing, including stock markets, banks, and ATMs
Banks: Banks often have thousands of branches across the nation all equipped with ATM machines. With millions of users are accessing these ATMs simultaneously, banks will need a system fast enough to update these data concurrently; this is something that you can do on a flash system.
Stock markets: Stock buyers and sellers need something that is responsive in real-time. HDDs may have longer response time and they may end up losing deals because they couldn’t respond fast enough.
Online Gaming: With hundreds of users playing the same game online, companies can place limited copies of the software on SSDs for large audiences to access at the same time.
Video Streaming: Video streaming sites such as YouTube often have videos that generate millions of views. In order to support such a broad audience, a system with high performance abilities is needed.
News: Popular news sites post articles at the beginning of the day and are immediately viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. As patience is no longer a virtue for people of the modern world, if a user has to wait for a minute for the article to load, the user will most likely search for an alternative website, so performance is crucial.
What to consider When Choosing a Flash System
There really is a flash system for every purpose, so it comes down to overall needs. Flash systems tend to be optimal for the high-performance market, but there are other things to consider such as:
- Available space
- The main purpose for the system such as streaming or cloud storage
- Power efficiency requirements
- Vehicle-based and mobile systems
- A large amount of Virtualization
Our EchoStreams FlacheStreams family offers industry-leading flash systems that optimize performance, efficiency, and reliability. To find out which of our products best suits your needs, download the full eBook Introduction to Flash (SSD) Systems.
