Fujio Masuoka is credited with inventing NOR and NAND flash, the two main types of flash memory, while he worked for Toshiba in the 1980s.
Use cases have since expanded to general enterprise workloads and mission-critical applications as the cost of flash has dropped and businesses have attempted to take advantage of its performance and low-latency benefits. Initial deployments focused on the acceleration of input/output (I/O)-intensive applications, such as databases and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs). Flash is more prevalent in notebooks than desktop computers.įlash storage adoption continues to grow in enterprise storage systems. This rugged nature enables the drives to maintain function through these events, which protects data. In notebook computers, flash storage offers the additional boon of being more resistant to the high gravitational acceleration bumps and drops these devices often receive in their mobile lives. Smartphones and MP3 players have abandoned the mechanical HDD flash provides advantages in compactness and power consumption. Flash storage in consumer devicesįlash memory is in wide use in consumer devices. The cache buffers the data going to and from a number of chips, which enhances speed. The flash controller is often multichannel, working with a random-access memory (RAM) cache. The memory chips store data, while the controller manages access to the storage space on the memory unit. Most flash storage systems are composed of memory chips and a flash controller. The result is several orders of magnitude less in latency. Flash drives have no mechanical limitation for file access, which enables access times in microseconds, rather than the millisecond seek times required by mechanical HDDs. A typical Serial Advanced Technology Attachment ( SATA) flash drive consumes 50% or less of the power required by mechanical SATA hard disk drives (HDDs) and may be capable of sequential read speeds of more than 500 MB per second in consumer drives - faster than even the fastest enterprise-class mechanical HDDs. Because there are no moving mechanical parts involved, power consumption is lower. It is most often packaged in surface-mounted chips attached to a printed circuit board. How does flash storage work?įlash stores data using a charge on a capacitor to represent a binary digit ( bit). Flash is packaged in a variety of formats for different storage purposes and is often referred to as solid-state storage because it has no moving parts.
The size and complexity of flash-based storage varies in devices ranging from portable USB drives, smartphones, cameras and embedded systems to enterprise-class all-flash arrays ( AFAs). Flash memory is common today in small computing devices and large business storage systems. Flash storage is any type of drive, repository or system that uses flash memory to keep data for an extended period of time.
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