Slip Sliding Away

As if we weren'thaving enough fun integrating flash and RAM SSDs into the datacenter; startupDataSlide is proposing a new magnetic storage device that promises to deliverperformance well beyond today's flash based SSDs.  

The device, now inprototype form with a capacity of 36GB, is made up of a sandwich using 3rectangular sheets of Corning's ultra flat glass with the diamond like carboncoating used on hard disks as a lubricant. The center sheet has a sputtered magnetic coating like typical harddrives while the top and bottom sheets have massive arrays of read/write headsprinted with the kind of lithographic processes used to create LCD panels andintegrated circuits.

The center sheet isslid back and forth by a piezoelectric positioner and a return spring. By usingenough heads to dedicate a head for each data sector the linear motion requiredis just about 100 microns or enough to move the data sheet a little more thanone sector's distance.

DataSlide's technologyis reminiscent of a go-fast technology of the past, the head per track disk ofthe early 80s, in an everything old is new again kind of way.  I've loved the concept of head per track eversince I used one as a frame buffer on a digital special effects system I builtfor Orion Pictures in 1985. The idea behind head per track disks was if themechanical motion of the heads from track to track, which took 30ms or more inthose days, was the limiting factor in performance just add more heads so theydon't need to move. Using one head persector trumps even that old technology but a head per track disk could readand/or write from all its heads at once. 

The row and column addressing scheme used by DataSlide Hard RectangularDrive limits it to 64 active heads at a time. Of course the 500MB/s and 160K IOPS they get out of 64 heads is prettyimpressive especially when you consider that the current market leader STEC'sZEUS IOPS only claims 46K IOPS for read and 16K for writes and "World's fasteststorage" TMS's RamSan 300, which is DRAM based, 200K. DataSlide claims theirperformance is the equivalent of a 96K RPM disk without the pesky sonic boomeffects or flying shrapnel such a disk would create.

Of course 36GB isn'tall that much nowadays, although DataSlide may be able to stack 3 or 4 RHDs ina standard 3.5" drive's shell, and like holographic storage the vibrating harddrive may be a year away forever.  It'sstill pretty cool to dream about it.  


See: http://www.dataslide.com/technology.html for more info.