Processors Toolkit

Story: Memory price hikes make SSDs less attractive

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Price hike could damage the data centre

The other issue which this story raises is energy consumption. SSDs are key to netbooks not just because of low weight but, more importantly, their low energy consumption. And that's why they're being considered - and in some cases even deployed - in the data centre.

Stick one or more one of these on your server, eg as the OS disk, which mainly reads rather than writes (slow writing is the SSD's Achilles' heel), and the machine will fly - and consume a lot less power. Over hundreds of servers, it adds up to a considerable saving in energy consumption, heat production, and refrigeration costs. And with energy consumption at the top of the agenda for data centre managers, theyr are scrutinising SSDs as one way to help mitigate spiralling energy costs - and to boost their installations' green cred too.

The memory market has always been more price-volatile than the magnetic storage media business, as this price hike proves, and it could be one reason why data centre managers start to think twice before plumping for solid state disks in a big way.

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