The first thing to note is that several drive manufacturers believe mSATA will become the industry standard for mobile computing platforms. And Intel is not alone in the mSATA market; last month, Samsung began shipping its own mSATA SSDs to system manufacturers. Samsung's PM800 line of mSATA drives offers capacities of 32GB, 64GB and 128GB.
Mini-SSDs close a technology gap created when SSDs were first introduced several years ago. To date, SSDs have been designed using traditional 2.5-in. hard drive form factors to offer an easy upgrade path for users and to give computer equipment manufacturers flexibility in their choice of storage devices, according to Jeff Janukowicz, an analyst at research firm IDC.
But the 2.5-in. form-factor approach doesn't take advantage of one of the key attributes of SSD: Its form is flexible because it's essentially made up of chips on a circuit board. Mini-SATA SSDs let vendors and system manufacturers design and develop drives with unique sizes and shapes depending on what buyers want.
"As a result, I expect [computer manufacturers] to increasingly leverage nontraditional, flexible form factors, like Intel's 310 mSATA modules, to meet the device's requirements," Janukowicz says.
Overall, IDC expects the use of SSDs to increase at a 67% compound annual growth rate from 2009 to 2014. "I expect the use of flexible form factors, like mSATA modules, to grow to almost 60% of shipments by 2014," Janukowicz says.
Mini-SATA drives are about one quarter the size of a standard 2.5-in. laptop SSD and one-third the thickness. Each one weighs just a third of an ounce. They are mainly being marketed to equipment manufacturers planning to incorporate small-form-factor SSDs -- about the size of a business card -- in portable devices such as tablets.
It is also ideal for dual-drive systems. The Serial ATA (SATA) data transfer protocol (which is supported by the SSD 310) allows data to be moved seamlessly between a hard disk drive and the smaller SSD over a PCI Express (PCIe) mini-connector.
However, mSATA drives use a PCIe slot, which is not natively supported by today's desktops, laptops and netbooks. Equipment makers will have to modify their products to include a PCIe slot.
And that's in the works. For example, both Lenovo and DRS Tactical Systems, a military PC manufacturer, plan to use mSATA drives in their upcoming dual-drive machines. In a dual-drive machine, the mSATA device acts as an operating system and application drive, increasing overall system performance by about 60%, while a hard drive or higher-capacity SSD remains the mass storage device.
This independent paper from senior analyst Jon Collins at FreeForm Dynamics considers how Web-based security threats are evolving, within the context of IT trends including mobile, home computing and other forms of remote access that could potentially increase the attack surface of the companies. It defines the scale and types of threat, what to look for in a corporate web security solution and compares the different types of technological approach available to companies and the processes that need to be considered for effective protection.
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