Reportlinker Adds Intel’s Braidwood: Death to SSDs?

NEW YORK, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/ –

Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue.

http://www.reportlinker.com/p0154017/Reportlinker-Adds-Intels-Braidwood-Death-to-SSDs.html

Executive Summary :

Intel is on the verge of introducing a new chipset that will incorporate NAND on the motherboard. This technology, with its promise of SSD-like performance at a modest price adder, is likely to sweep the PC market. In this study Objective Analysis explains the technology, its potential market, competing technologies, and how the NAND and DRAM markets, the PC market, and the SSD market will all be impacted by this new twist on an old technology.

Key Findings:

- It seems that everyone knows that NAND belongs in the PC, but there are differing views as to how and where it belongs.

- Software support is key to the acceptance of a NAND layer in the computing hierarchy.

- Prior approaches, including the Hybrid HDD and Intel’s Turbo Memory or Robson failed due to faulty software support, an issue that is being addressed by Intel with the company’s new Braidwood technology.

- Once a NAND memory layer is proven to be beneficial it will find rapid acceptance. Objective Analysis expects to see Braidwood adoption sweep the market in only four years.

- No matter how high the acceptance of this technology, its contribution to NAND revenues will remain low peaking at about 7% of total market revenues.

- Since a NAND layer will offer near-SSD performance for less than 10% of the price of an SSD, fewer PC buyers will purchase SSDs than do today, even though today’s SSD penetration is only about 1%.

- SSDs will not be the only casualty of this technology. Over time OEMs and endusers will find that they get a bigger performance boost for their dollar by adding NAND than by adding DRAM, and the DRAM market’s megabyte growth will decline further, causing revenues to shrink over the long term.

Contents .. iii

Executive Summary 1

What is Braidwood? 2

What is ONFi? 2

Braidwood Shown at June Computex. 4

Key Underlying Technologies . 6

Elements of a Standard HDD… 6

Caches and Memory Performance .. 7

NAND’s Nonvolatile Advantage 8

Problems with NAND… 8

NAND in the Memory Hierarchy .. 10

Memory Hierarchy.. 11

Hybrid HDDs 14

Intel’s Robson or Turbo Memory . 14

Turbo Memory: What Went Wrong? 15

Windows 7 Enhancements Incremental 16

The Braidwood Approach.. 16

Why Braidwood Makes Sense when SSDs Don’t . 17

Braidwood vs. SSD Bandwidth . 18

Benefits of a NAND Layer . 21

Power Consumption 21

Access Speed 23

Faster Boot-Up. 23

Speedy Program Launch 24

Reliability. 25

Shock Tolerance 25

Summing Up the Advantages 27

Software Support is Required 28

Why a Cache Needs Software Support . 28

Pinning and The “Instant-On” Myth. 29

Legacy Issues 31

Alternatives to Braidwood .. 32

Conventional Architecture (No NAND) .. 32

Strengths … 32

Weaknesses … 32

Solid State Drives 32

Strengths … 32

Weaknesses … 33

Increased DRAM Main Memory.. 33

Strengths … 33

Weaknesses … 33

Cost Implications of Braidwood 34

How NAND Costs will Add to PC Costs 34

Cost vs. Benefits of Each Approach . 36

Consumer Reaction to Braidwood’s Cost 36

Braidwood’s Future . 38

A Forecast for Braidwood Shipments… 38

Revenue Forecast . 41

Braidwood’s Impact on the NAND Market 43

Key NAND Suppliers Face Trouble . 44

How Braidwood will Impact the DRAM Market .. 45

Summary… 50

Methodology 51

Figures… 52

Tables… 53

Author 54

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    Nicolas Bombourg
    Reportlinker
    Email: nbo@reportlinker.com
    US: (805)652-2626
    Intl: +1 805-652-2626

SOURCE Reportlinker