Samsung To Unveil First Commercial Hybrid Hard Disk Prototype For Windows Vista

Samsung Electronics announced that it is exhibiting the first commercial prototype of a Hybrid Hard Disk (HHD), the next-generation hard drive for notebooks and PCs that integrates NAND flash memory with rotating magnetic storage. The HHD will be exhibited with two cache densities, 128MB and 256MB, at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in the Seattle on May 23-24, 2006.

The Hybrid Hard Disk eliminates the need for the hard disk to constantly spin whenever a computer is operating on battery power, and is less susceptible to damage from jarring or being dropped since it is idle most of the time.

Every time the cache is filled, the rotating drive spins to "flush out" or transfer data from the cache, spinning only a few seconds every 10-20 minutes. As cache the Samsung HHD uses the proprietory OneNAND flash with 108MB/s read and 18MB/s write data-rates. The functionality is automated by the high-performance HDD SOC which supports 3.0G Native Command Queuing SATA and an OneNAND interface. The HHD saves between 8 and 25 seconds of boot-up time and extends battery life by about 8-10% depending on the model of computer, the press release claims.

In addition, the HHD allows PC manufacturers to deploy value-added features, such as direct media experiences with instant-boot functionality and accelerated processing for specified applications.

Samsung will sample its HHD with customers beginning next quarter and it will ship in large quantities by January, in conjunction with the Windows Vista rollout.

Source: Samsung Electronics

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