Reportlinker Adds Are Hybrid Drives Finally Coming of Age

NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue:

Are Hybrid Drives Finally Coming of Age

http://www.reportlinker.com/p0324112/Are-Hybrid-Drives-Finally-Coming-of-Age.html

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Four years after an ill-fated initial introduction Hybrid Disk Drives, the combination of a standard hard disk drive and a small NAND array, are making a resurgence. No longer hampered by troubles stemming from operating system malfunctions the new rendition of this technology promises to sweep the PC hard drive market.

This Objective Analysis hybrid disk drive study explains the technology, defines its potential market, explores competing technologies, and explains the impact of this new twist on an old technology on the NAND, PC, and HDD markets.

Key Findings:

• Modern hybrid HDDs have absorbed data management functions that were earlier promised in certain operating systems. This removes the new products' dependence on external factors.

• Numerous good alternatives to hybrid HDDs already exist, but the economics of hybrid HDDs are likely to make them win out over all of these technologies.

• Objective Analysis forecasts for the hybrid HDD market to grow to 600 million units by 2016 to account for $34 billion in revenues.

• Although hybrid HDD unit shipments will be a large share of overall HDD shipments, the NAND in these drives will amount to no more than 5% of the total NAND flash market in 2016.

• Once hybrid drives, or some similar technology, find acceptance, Objective Analysis expects to see these products sweep the market in only four years.

• Although it is widely acknowledged that NAND belongs in the PC, there are differing views as to how and where it belongs. This will impact acceptance of hybrid HDD technology until consumers decide on a preferred solution.

Contents

Executive Summary 1

Introduction: Why Are Hybrid HDDs Needed? 2

Memory Hierarchy Gap 2

Why the Gap is Growing 3

Filling the Gap with DRAM 4

NAND Flash Prices Bring Changes 5

A New NAND Step in the Hierarchy 6

NAND SSDs Displace Enterprise HDDs 7

Adding NAND to the Storage Hierarchy 8

History of the Hybrid Drive 10

Early Stages 10

The HHDA 10

Samsung 11

Seagate 11

Vista Support 11

Rebirth of the Technology 12

Intel's Braidwood 12

Seagate's Momentus XT Hybrid HDD 12

Other Hybrid Drives 13

What's Different This Time? 14

Anatomy of a Hybrid Storage System 14

New Hybrids Use Internal Managers 15

What Does this Manager Do? 15

Hybrid Hard Disk Drive Architecture 17

Standard HDD Principals 17

DRAM HDD Caches 18

DRAM Write Cache Risks 19

NAND HDD Caches 20

Nonvolatility 20

NAND's Idiosyncratic Writes 20

Hybrid Drives: A NAND Cache in an HDD 21

Hybrid HDD Benefits 23

Faster Data Access 23

Reduced Power Consumption 24

Greater Shock Tolerance 26

Improved Reliability 26

Benefit Summary 27

A Case Study: The Seagate Momentus 28

Can a Hybrid Drive Deliver "Instant-On"? 33

Fast Boot Will Drive Demand 35

How Much Will It Cost? 36

How NAND Costs will Add to HDD Costs 36

Cost to the Consumer 37

Alternatives to Hybrid Drives 39

Standard Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) 39

Larger DRAM 40

NAND Caches External to the HDD 40

Boot Drives 41

Paired SSD & HDD 42

Automatic Data Placement 42

Tiering Software 43

Replacing the HDD with an SSD 45

Hybrid Drive Forecast 47

Hybrid HDD Forecast 47

Impact to the NAND Market 51

Hybrid Share of Total NAND Market 52

Summary 54

Methodology 55

Figures 56

Tables 57

Author 58

Jim Handy 58

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Personal Computer and Server Industry: Are Hybrid Drives Finally Coming of Age

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