Talk:Solid State Computer Systems

In 1953 Jay Forrester created the world’s first solid state memory chip, a magnetic core memory that enabled unprecedented speed and reliability in computing. He used it to hold data as a Prime storage (Main memory) on the circuit board (motherboard) for the processing unit, to enable stored complex instructions. But on the motherboard is just where solid state data/memory storage would stay for another 31 years. In the mean time IBM in 1955 rolled out the first magnetic hard drive mass data storage system known as the 305 RAMAC. It could store an unprecedented 5 million bytes (5 Megabytes) of data on 50 metal platters that spunon a central shaft; it was also as big as a car. This set the stage for Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments who kicked off the semiconductor revolution in 1958 with the first integrated circuit (that is a circuit with both capacitors and resistors). By 1971 semiconductors evolved to microprocessors and were being mass manufactured, thus beginning the home or personal computing era. That same year IBM invented an 8-inch removable floppy diskette that held 80 Kilobytes. In 1972 IBM released the IBM3340 Winchester which utilised a head and arm magnetic reading system within each of the removable 35- 70 MB spindles. That head and arm system would prove to be the foundation of all moving hard drive systems to this day. However it would be over ten more years before internal hard drives became a pc standard.

This was primarily because that comparatively tiny and fundamentally cheaper 8-inch floppy drive caught on like wild fire. Now as cheap as the IBM 8-inch was by 1976 the 5 ¼ -inch was even cheaper. In fact the company that first developed it, Burroughs, failed to roll it out because management thought it was too cheap. Shugart Associates initially took up the torch through a request from Wang Laboratories and the 5 ¼ quickly jumped from 80 Kilobytes to 360 Kilobytes by 1978. Thus the now humble floppy ruled the pc world for much of the seventies and early eighties as the primary mass data storage solution.

Now Shugart Associates was formed by Alan Shugart, an ex-IBM employee, in 1973 to form a small business computer system comparable to an IBM. When Wang Labs approached Shugart Associates in 76’, Alan had been working on the system but had no marketable results. Don Masssaro then President of Shugart realised the 5 ¼ could be a cash cow. Primarily funded by venture capitalists with controlling shares, this apparent gold mine quickly led to a disagreement between Alan and Shugart Associates. Alan wanted to continue focus on the larger overall system they did not, Alan left Shugart Associates permanently. This however would be fortuitous for in 1979 after a 3 year break Alan Shugart had a conversation with Finis Conner.

They talked about the success of the 5 ¼ floppy drive and the capabilities of the IBM platter system. Perhaps with a touch of revenge and how cool would it be to take that 5 ¼-inch space and blow Shugart Associates away with an significant increase in read and write speed coupled with reliability and most of all, a far greater data storage capacity. This conversation led to the formation of Shugart Technology which in 1980 released the first 5 ¼-inch hard drive on to the mass market called the ST-506 under the brand name of Seagate Technology.

The Seagate ST-506 hard drive could, for its comparatively minuscule size, hold a staggering 5 Megabytes of data when formatted, and over five times the 1980 standard 720 Kilobytes of the 5 ¼ floppy. It knocked the socks off the floppy with its comparatively high transfer speeds and rugged reliability. Within three years Seagate had sold over 4 million units and counted IBM and Apple amongst their biggest buyers. By the mid eighties moving platter hard drives had become a computing industry standard with the ST-506 laying down the blueprint of all hard disk to motherboard communication.

Whilst this secured the future somewhat for the platter hard drive, there was another invention in 1980 however which sounded the death knoll for the floppy disk and its subsequent evolution to the 3 ½ -inch stiffy disk. To accommodate Beethoven’s ninth symphony Phillips released the first optical disk with 74 minutes of audio time. The first disk printed and released was the final Abba album The Visitors. The Compact Disk would soon evolve into the premiere removable storage system for nearly a decade. Although until 1985 the floppy and then stiffy still held the standard of removable data storage, and even as the Optical Disk revolution was about to be unleashed, the seeds of not only its demise were being sown but that of platter hard drives too.

One year earlier in 1984 a Dr. Fujio Masuoka at Toshiba was utilising the effect of quantum tunnelling with some interesting results. The good doctor proceeded to combine quantum tunnelling with NOR (a logic gate which produces a result that is the inverse of logical) and NAND (a logic gate the responds to a truth table) and in so doing invented Flash Memory.

Previous to the great Dr Flash there were only two types of solid state memory RAM (Random Access Memory) and ROM (Read Only Memory). ROM memory is data permanently burnt onto a chip and can never be changed, whilst RAM temporarily holds information but can be read and written over nearly infinitely but only when computer is actively on. So, turn off the juice and all data is wiped from the RAM, or use ROM memory chips, stiffy disks, CR-ROMS and platter hard drives to store permanent data. That was until Dr Flash, what he invented with Flash Memory was limited RAM memory that was also ROM memory. Because of the nature of the erasure process from which the name Flash actually originates which limits the random access process and was somewhat slower than ROM or RAM. For this reason and the biggest controlling force in the mass computer industry, costs of manufacturing, it was to be relegated for 14 years before it entered the industry in a very big way.

In the meantime CD-ROM’s evolved to DVD’s and jumped from 550 MB to 4 GB and platter hard drives jumped from 100 MB to 40 GB.

But in 1998 Sony using an improved NAND Flash Memory released the 128 MB Memory Stick to support a multitude of new memory hungry devices with processor chips and within 9 years became the prime removable rewritable mass data storage system. Yet this was again just the beginning.

Back in 95’ a company called MSystems, began mass manufacturing the first solid state hard drives (SSD’s) using NOR Flash memory. The drives were mainly for military and government use where reliable performance far outweighed costs in extreme situations like Space and long range missiles.

This initiated a race into SSD’s but more importantly a switch in research from the expensive NOR Flash to the NAND Flash. With USB Flash sticks coming into high popularity the costs of NAND Flash manufacturing appropriately lowered from high demand. Since the Flash boom of 98’ the last ten years have seen SSD’s radically rise in capacity and drop in price and size. September 2007 saw the release of a 160 GB Flash hard drive albeit it rather pricy for mass consumption.

It was however in October 2007 that Samsung rolled out the new SSD 64GB, a NAND Flash hard drive off its assembly line at only 1.8 inches in size. Which all leads back to the title of this article as Samsung has indeed ushered in a new age of affordable solid state computing. An age of quiet computing that will only be heard by its whisper of cooling fans, and probably not even that for much longer what with the advances in cooling. Yes silence is golden but total solid state motionless computing means is faster access times to data, potentially larger amounts of data storage, smaller components and data storage reliability. However the one ruling factor is as the name solid state implies, no moving parts, no motors to run, no disks to turn, no friction, no wear and tear. This is not to say these solid components don’t ever wear out but it is comparative to motion components e.g. hard disks, DVD drives etc. at a far slower rate and considerably less prone to accidental damage. You try dropping a Flash Stick and a wired running platter hard drive out a two story window and odds are the Flash Stick will be A OK, but not so with the platter hard drive.

The average platter hard disk in 2007 is proclaimed have a life span of about 600,000 hours or 74 years, but as a non-stop user of platter hard drives since 1988, I know that it is more realistically about 4-6 years tops. The average, cheap by the dozen, Flash Stick on the other hand can be written over 1 million times before reaching error saturation tolerances over the inbuilt memory controller. But this over a nearly infinite time period barring contact with intentional destruction or weapons of mass destruction. So sure the Samsung’s SSD 64GB’s is not 1TB (1000GB) as released in the form of the Hitachi Deckstar 7k1000 platter hard drive in early 2007. Just as the CD-ROM trumped the stiffy in the late eighties and was trumped by the Flash Stick in the late nineties, so to will SSD’s ultimately trump platter hard drives.

Well it can’t be soon enough, when I booted up my first computer and heard the constant whine of the hard drives I naively thought well why the hell they can’t just use more RAM instead. So for me it’s been a dream of solid state computing that has taken 19 years to evolve and now is within my grasp. Now if I can just have that implant and do away with the monitor, mouse and keyboard in my lifetime I’ll die happy. (Add that along with the sorting out the earth’s ecosystem and colony space-ships departing for new planets and I’ll be positively enlightened :)

by Ivor W. Hartmann

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=40

The FX5624 6 LAN Industrial Firewall/Router Platform is a compact low power consumption embedded system with a 600MHz Fanless Celeron M CPU and 1GB DDR2 memory included (upgradable to 2GB with a DDR2 DIMM). The FX5624 can be booted from Compact Flash memory using its built in externally accessible Compact Flash Adapter, or from a 2.5in SATA Hard Drive or SSD mounted internally (SATA data/power cable provided)