Solid State Goes to War

Solid State Disk (SSD) technology received another boost this week with BitMicro's announcement of a 1.6-Tbyte disk drive, which it claims is tough enough to withstand battlefield conditions.

Unveiled at the WEST 2008 military communications show, the 3.5-inch Ultra320 SCSI drive is aimed at the military, aerospace, and manufacturing sectors. BitMicro also claims that the drive is the world's first to offer up to 1.6 Tbytes of capacity.

Designed to provide storage in hostile environments outside of the traditional data center, the Ultra320 can operate at temperatures between minus 40 and positive 85 degrees, according to BitMicro. The drive can also handle 1,500 Gs of shock, which is equivalent to about a seven-and-a-half foot drop.

"It's the largest [SSD] that I am aware of," says Jeff Janukowicz, research manager at IDC, adding that the drive's ability to withstand battlefield conditions reflects growing demand for specialized storage.

Unlike traditional disk drives, there are no mechanical components within SSDs, which makes them a good fit for extreme conditions. "If you think about what is going on in the military, there is [a lot of] electronics, both in equipment and the kit that people are carrying in the field," explains Janukowicz. "Traditional disk drives dont have the rugged ability."With F-16 fighter aircraft relying on solid-state technology within their flight recorders, Janukowicz expects to see the Ultra320 deployed in data-hungry military surveillance and monitoring equipment.

The U.S. military has already urged storage vendors to start developing gear capable of withstanding the rigors of battle, and an entire sub-industry has now emerged for storing armed forces and intelligence data.

SSD technology has been gaining momentum recently, most notably last month, when EMC became the first big-name enterprise storage vendor to add the technology to its systems.

BitMicro is also pushing the Ultra320 at enterprises looking for high capacity and speedy data access. Because SSDs use RAM or flash technology instead of traditional magnetic or optical media to store and access data, access speeds are typically much faster than traditional disk. Instead of 5 milliseconds for magnetic disk, SSDs can offer access speeds of as little as 20 microseconds -- eliminating I/O bottlenecking.

"The big benefit in the enterprise that SSDs provide is faster access to your data," says Janukowicz. "This could be used for online transaction processing, design modeling, and hosting Websites."User group Wikibon has also identified SSD as a hot storage technology, particularly the NAND offerings touted by the likes of BitMicro and EMC's partner STEC. Previously, cost meant that this form of flash was limited to users with very high I/O needs, although Wikibon feels that this situation is starting to change.

"The price of flash-based NAND is dropping steadily, driven in part by economies of scale realized through increasing demand in consumer applications," the organization explained in a recent note. "Flash disks are beginning to appear in high-end portable computers, and, inevitably, as prices fall this technology will replace disks in an increasing number of applications."

IDC is already predicting massive growth for SSD technology, with revenues growing from $373 million in 2006 to $5.4 billion in 2007, driven largely by the drives' ability to work in hostile environments.

BitMicro has not yet revealed pricing information for the Ultra320, although the vendor has confirmed that the drive will be available in configurations ranging from 16 Gbytes to 1.6 Tbytes. The drives will be in the hands of early adopters next quarter, with general availability sometime in the third quarter, according to the vendor.

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