Capacity/Price: The Future of Solid State vs. Magnetic Storage
Thursday, 9. August 2007, 21:55:06
Solid State refers to any type of storage that requires no moving parts. Hard drives, optical drives, and disk drives, all require moving parts; thus, they are not solid state. Examples of solid state storage would be flash memory and ROM, which typically use much less power than hard drives. The N64 was the last console to use Solid State.
In the computer world, there is a term called "Moore's Law". It's not really a law at all but an observation made a few decades ago that the press blew out of proportion (as they do with everything). This observation said something along the lines of "every 18 months, density of computer components doubles". For the past 30 years, this has been roughly true with hard disks, RAM, processors, and most other components.
Yet, over the past decade, one component has been doubling in density about every four months! This technology is flash memory (in NAND or another flavor). I remember a year ago when I bought a 1GB SD card on sale at radio shack for $85US. Now they are practically giving them away. In 2000 I bought an 8MB MemoryStick for about $50US. Two years later I got a 256MB one cheaper.
The Wii, as we know, uses 512MB of flash memory internally and can handle SD cards up to 2GB (or 4GB for some models). It is inevitable that Nintendo will have to "flash" the OS eventually to allow more storage capacity for SD cards if the console can handle them, because 4GB (and not being able to read directly from them) just doesn't cut it for some people with the download service infrastructure coming into play.
Below I have create a table that shows estimated comparisons between buying a hard disk or a flash card now and into the future do show that in a few years, flash memory will overtake hard disks in capacity, pricewise, if they continue to grow the current rate. I will use USB thumb drives and PC external hard disks as a comparison:
Based on this estimation, flash memory can potentially match hard disk capacity and price by the end of 2009. Relating this to consoles, this is still very well in the realm of the current generation. Also, flash memory will surpass the capacities of both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD in a year. Could this mean the future of gaming will be cartridges once again (as the DS cards are) or downloads to flash memory?
In the computer world, there is a term called "Moore's Law". It's not really a law at all but an observation made a few decades ago that the press blew out of proportion (as they do with everything). This observation said something along the lines of "every 18 months, density of computer components doubles". For the past 30 years, this has been roughly true with hard disks, RAM, processors, and most other components.
Yet, over the past decade, one component has been doubling in density about every four months! This technology is flash memory (in NAND or another flavor). I remember a year ago when I bought a 1GB SD card on sale at radio shack for $85US. Now they are practically giving them away. In 2000 I bought an 8MB MemoryStick for about $50US. Two years later I got a 256MB one cheaper.
The Wii, as we know, uses 512MB of flash memory internally and can handle SD cards up to 2GB (or 4GB for some models). It is inevitable that Nintendo will have to "flash" the OS eventually to allow more storage capacity for SD cards if the console can handle them, because 4GB (and not being able to read directly from them) just doesn't cut it for some people with the download service infrastructure coming into play.
Below I have create a table that shows estimated comparisons between buying a hard disk or a flash card now and into the future do show that in a few years, flash memory will overtake hard disks in capacity, pricewise, if they continue to grow the current rate. I will use USB thumb drives and PC external hard disks as a comparison:
$100 HD Flash Aug 2007 300GB 8GB Dec 2007 360GB 16GB Apr 2008 425GB 32GB Aug 2008 500GB 64GB Dec 2008 600GB 128GB Apr 2009 710GB 256GB Aug 2009 850GB 512GB Dec 2009 1TB 1TB Apr 2010 1.2TB 2TB Aug 2010 1.4TB 4TB Dec 2010 1.7TB 8TB
Based on this estimation, flash memory can potentially match hard disk capacity and price by the end of 2009. Relating this to consoles, this is still very well in the realm of the current generation. Also, flash memory will surpass the capacities of both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD in a year. Could this mean the future of gaming will be cartridges once again (as the DS cards are) or downloads to flash memory?
WIDGETIZE
Lynge # 5. March 2008, 19:18
I think it wil be download only or a minor cross over
you already see that every console gets a lot of online content - and its getting a serious problem for the Wii taht it only got 500 mb memory ...
geekrecon # 6. March 2008, 06:40
Big Dawg # 13. June 2008, 13:30
as far as wii is concerned, 4 gig sd cards would be just fine if direct reading/writing was enabled via an update. after all, wiiware games seem to have a maximum size of around 43mb, and swapping cards(when one is full) isn't as big of an inconvenience as copy/delete/download.
geekrecon # 13. June 2008, 23:09
Also, I'm sure Nintendo will have a software patch eventually to allow SDHC cards beyond 4GB since the difference between SD and SDHC seems to just be block read/write size. (Although I could be wrong there.)
Alex_SGR # 13. January 2009, 20:57
If the capacity is there, we'll find a way to use it. Even if its simply with higher definition of current media (video or audio at higher bit-rates), or data pollution (i.e. things we keep saved but never again access) or that we simply compress less and get better performance as a result etc. etc. It'll get filled.
Case in point: today I have ~300 DVDs. Assuming 6GB/disk thats ~1.8TB of storage that would be needed to convieniently carry them about on one drive. These days its actually possible to do that, and the convienience trade off is definatly worth it for a lot of people (e.g. why chose a DVD to take to a friends house or lug around 300 when you move home when can rip all your exsiting collection to one portable drive and take it anywhere? And easily back it up? and it takes a fraction of the space?)
In 5 years time how many BluRay disks will I have? Or will I have bought all my movies online via a download service so that I don't need to worry about disks any more.
geekrecon # 14. January 2009, 14:27
My second computer held 2GB, running Windows 95 OSR2. I used it for my early Web design and to hold some multimedia. I eventually ran out of space and bought a CD-R/W drive.
I bought a 13GB drive for that computer to store multimedia when I first used high-speed Internet. I eventually ran out of space, and I bought a DVD-R/W drive.
I later bought a 120GB drive for non-linear video editing. Space went fast. By this point, some files were too big to burn to DVD.
Then I bought a laptop (which I'm using now) that had a 90GB drive. I networked the two computers to share files. Both the 120GB and 90GB started really pushing their limits. I've been backing up data on a Web server and sharing files to my wife's computer.
So basically any size storage a person has, it can eventually be used.