The advent of Flash-based primary storage is likely to be one of the most significant changes to mobile computing in 2008 as prices fall, capacities rise and speeds accelerate.

Flash has been an increasingly important medium for secondary storage over the past decade, helped by growing sales of digital cameras and music players, but only a few devices have used the technology to replace directly a PC hard drive. These have included Samsung’s Q1 Ultra line of ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs)and Sony’s Vaio UX, both of which use a 32GB solid state disk (SSD).

The advantages of Flash are several. Because there are no moving parts, the drives are more robust than standard hard drives. There are also advantages in terms of battery life. Weight and space savings are also possible.

The big disadvantages, are capacity and price. Flash drives in 32GB capacities currently cost many times that of conventional hard drives. The good news is that prices should fall quickly as economies of scale take over.

Web-Feet Research has predicted that the market for Flash storage will grow in value from $570m in 2007 to $6.6bn by 2010. Meanwhile, electronics analyst firm iSuppli predicts that the number of laptops and UMPCs being sold with Flash will rise from fewer than 150,000 in the first quarter of 2007 to 24 million by the end of 2009.
These figures, however, include hybrid drives that use Flash for fast access caching and boot up, but a standard hard disk for storage.

Storage capacities are also rising. In the first half of this year, Samsung plans to offer 128GB in 1.8in and 2.5in formats. A 1.8in drive that is just 5mm thick will also be available for ultra-thin laptop designs. Later this year, BitMicro Networks plans an 832GB SSD that uses a 2.5in form factor.

Other developers are aiming at different designs for smaller form factors. Intel will release its fingernail-sized Z-P140 Flash drives with 2GB capacities this quarter and aims to have 16GB capacities by the end of the year.

However, experts do not expect a sudden transition from rotating media to solid state.

“Price declines on spinning drives will mean there remains a significant price difference for some years to come,” said Claus Egge of analyst IDC. “For certain form factors, it’s only a question of time when the industry buys Flash rather than spinning.”
Andrew Reichman of Forrester Research said, “Consumer laptops need high performance and are highly sensitive to shock, so Flash-based drives at about 100GB make a lot of sense.”

However, things are not so simple with enterprise applications. “The biggest problem with Flash remains the read-write-erase cycle and write performance penalty,” Reichman said. “Flash has a limited life-span since the cells wear out after a fixed number of read/writes. Additionally, it is slower on write than spinning disk, but faster on reads,” he added.

Flash will not change mobile storage overnight or wipe out the need for hard drives, but it is sure to become more visible in 2008.