The replacement to flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) will be pushed forward by Microsoft's launch of Windows 7, according to Taiwan's memory specialists.
Mark Lai, compliance committee director for SSDA, an alliance founded by a group of NAND flash players including Toshiba, A-Data Technology, Transcend, Phison Electronics and Silicon Motion to advocate SSD standardization work, said that the industry is targeting a 10-year data retention life for SSDs, but is facing limitations due to the number of write/erase cycles flash chips can endure.
To help alleviate this, Windows 7 has been designed to identify SSDs in a system via the ATA command set ATA8-ACS and will configure itself to reduce unnecessary read-write cycles made to the drive among other improvements, Lai detailed.
SSDA plans to introduce testing standards for SSDs under Windows 7 in June or July 2009, said Lai.
Source:: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090330PD211.html