Bill, No moving parts doesn't mean they don't wear out. There's a lot of redundant capacity in those babies to handle cell failures due to writes. This is why you'll see Flashdrive articles talk about "wear leveling" algorithms, and also one of the reasons why you won't see Enterprise Flashdrives on the shelf at Frys.
They do have huge potential to provide greener high performance, especially in environments where short stroking of the HDD is the norm and I'm sure customer acceptance will bring the price down from the current premium. I'm not sure about your access time comments. So far the performance I have seen is very impressive. Can you elaborate? Ron > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > Bill Fairchild > Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 10:56 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [IBM-MAIN] "A foolish consistancy" or "3390 cyl/track > architecture" > > The Flash Drive concept makes the most sense - no moving parts. The geometry > is emulated by the microcode. They just need to get the access time lower. > > Bill Fairchild > Rocket Software > > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > Eric Bielefeld > Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 1:50 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: "A foolish consistancy" or "3390 cyl/track architecture" > > Ron, > > Thanks for clearing up how the current drives actually work. It just seems > like IBM could get away from the track and cylinder stuff, which > artificially restricts the amount of storage you use > > Eric > > Eric Bielefeld > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
