Although flash-based Solid State Drives have yet to meet the capabilities of spinning disks in terms of capacity, SDDs continue to improve in both overall capacity per drive and cost per gigabyte.

Researchers Grupp, Swanson, and Davis recently examined 45 different NAND-based flash chips from 6 manufacturers. They’ve come to discover a tradeoff between flash media density on one hand and reliability, endurance, and performance on the other. 

This presents a significant problem for enterprises that hope to improve performance without sacrificing capacity, as they are either limited by the performance of Hard Disk Drives or the capacity of SSDs.  Ultimately, the pace of improvement in flash technology is slowing, and SSDs may not overtake traditional hard drives in capacity and reliability. 

Check out this short white paper to learn more about the results of this study and what you should know if your organization is or plans to utilize SSDs.