Understand SSD

Conclusion

As you could have discovered it in this article, SSDs are complex storage units, in their design, manufacturing and usage. Some users might then consider that they are "unfinished" product resulting from a "quick and dirty" business/marketing campaign, but one should keep in mind that their performance levels are already dramatically higher than our usual disc-based storage units. In addition part of the optimization has to come from the OS side to fully benefit from the power of SSDs. 

So, the usual question: should you get a SSD today? Yes, if you are ready to invest in a storage unit at more than 3 € per GB that will quickly be outdated in one year on both performance level and storage space, and that will only bring its substantial speed gains for every day usage.

So, the best strategy might be to wait a bit: future generations of SSDs will offer even higher performance at a lower price thanks to thinner engraving process (34 nm and lower), mass production of MLC X3 chips, better controller, and optimization of OS for SSDs will bring their usage completely transparent for the end-user. 

On the long-term (5 years? 10 years?), SSDs will evolve to other type of memory: dropping ROM for adopting RAM. Indeed several RAM-based persistent technologies (preserving data even when the unit is not powered) should now complete their development phase and switch to mass production. Some technologies might be cheaper and faster than the current flash memory while being easier to handle: RAM-based memory can work similarly to a disc-based HD (2 operations mode instead of 3 for SSD), with faster access time, so there will be no need of wear-leveling, TRIM command and other optimizations developed today to adapt performance of NAND flash based SSD.