[damiensmunki]

...and lived to tell the tale? Seriously...do we have any evidence that these things even exist? I keep waiting for some kind of information on performance, but I'm thinking these are distant cousins to the Loch Ness Monster. I really wish Apple would quit hiding these from reviewers.

[abbaZaba]

quit being so dramatic. of course they exist. do you really need to be so dramatic about a notebook? they'll review as soon as it's possible.

[mduell]

The performance of SSDs is well reviewed. The cheap ones are slow and the expensive ones are fast; Apple's price falls about in the middle, so it's hard to say which they went with.

[Simon]

At MWSF Steve said (right around 1:02:30):

...these are a little pricey but they are fast...

So unless he's outright lying the SSD drives are going to be worth their money.

[OreoCookie]

They have been available for quite some years. They are still very expensive and have been available in limited quantities only. Nowadays they're becoming more mainstream. As mduell points out, there are slow (cheap) ones and fast (expensive) ones. Since Apple is a major player in the NAND business, I don't think they'll use very cheap SSDs.

[Simon]

It's actually quite simple for MBA owners: the SSD drive will certainly be faster than the built in 1.8" HDD and that's the end of the story. Because currently there's no other choices.

• The MBA's 1.8" HDD is a 5mm model. That means it's a single platter device. IIRC the only manufacturer of high capacity single platter devices is Toshiba. And 80GB is the maximum they currently offer. They have mentioned a 120 GB device but it will likely be at least another year until it hits the market.

• Samsung offers 1.8" SSDs that fit the MBAs sapce constraints. They recently announced 128 GB devices. Unfortunately those won't work in the MBA because of the MBA's PATA connection - the Samsung devices are SATA.

[damiensmunki]

quit being so dramatic. of course they exist. do you really need to be so dramatic about a notebook?

Sorry to have offended your delicate sensibilities, old man abbaZaba. It was an apparently failed attempt at humor. Seriously...lighten up. Life will be a whole lot more enjoyable once you do.

[ctt1wbw]

How much of a difference is the SSD drive going to be versus something like a 150 buck 16 gig usb thumbdrive? Noticably faster or what?

[Dork.]

Rememeber that, in general, Flash is much faster for reads than writes. If your application involves lots of writing to the SSD, don't expect that much of a speed improvement. And you're going to want to try and avoid having so much stuff going on that you use the SSD for swap space.

But as Simon has mentioned, the SSD will probably be faster, even for writes, than the 1.8" HDD. We're going to have to wait and see a Spec sheet to know for sure.

[damiensmunki]

Rememeber that, in general, Flash is much faster for reads than writes. If your application involves lots of writing to the SSD, don't expect that much of a speed improvement. And you're going to want to try and avoid having so much stuff going on that you use the SSD for swap space.

That's disappointing. Having not read much about SSD's, I was assuming they'd be faster than most HDD's at everything. In fact, I was hoping the SSD could compensate for the fact that the MBA only has 2GB of RAM. /sigh

[Dork.]

The SSD drive in the MacBook Air may very well be faster than the HDD on writes, I don't know the specs. All I'm saying is that, in general, flash is much faster on reads than writes.

[OreoCookie]

This really depends: there are ssds that leave even very fast desktop drives in the dust: up to 96 MB/s read and 71 MB/s write throughput isn't `bad', all with an access time of 0.1 ms (that's about 40-50 times faster than 15k SCSI drives). But as you can see from the linked article, there are slow ones, too.

SSDs are nothing new, they've been around for a long time. They used to use RAM modules for that and they were super fast and super expensive.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by ctt1wbw 

How much of a difference is the SSD drive going to be versus something like a 150 buck 16 gig usb thumbdrive? Noticably faster or what?

5-10x faster if Apple is buying the good ones.

And 16GB USB sticks are more like $80 these days.

[Simon]

I think it's safe to assume that if Apple wants to sell the $999 SSD upgrade to people there needs to be a convincing reason to do so. The most obvious I can think of is that the SSD will shatter the MBA's HDD in terms of raw performance. And that's for reads as well as writes.

Keep in mind the HDD you're comparing this SSD to is a pretty weak contender. According to Toshiba's specs it has a maximum internel throughput of 171 - 377 Mbits/sec. In real world benchmarks that could easily translate to something short of 20 MB/s. That is way below what even a lower capacity 5400 rpm 2.5" HDD does.

[Simon]

We have first reports of people getting their fingers on the SSD model.

Here's a short but very positive report.

"I got to play with the 1.8/SSD model. All of you who opted for this configuration are in for a real treat -- it is speedy. Basically, sub-one-bounce application loading. I wasn't able to do anything heavy-duty, of course, but the feel I got was of a total performance package on par with a current MBP. It left a strong enough impression on me that I'm seriously considering abandoning my plan of upgrading later and opting for the SSD now."

Interesting to read that the performance of the SSD seems to make up for the slower CPU clock when it comes to user perceived performance.

[daSilVetZ]

i just played with one (ssd version) at an apple store...


i MUST say that reading about it, pictures, and videos, DO NOT DO IT justice. AT all.

I wouldnt buy one for performance reasons but oh boy is it amazing in person.

[Retops]

Well, I went to the local Apple store to buy a MBA and they had none to sell. No idea when they will get stock. They had two demonstration units, each with the 64GB SSD in them. I had a chance to look at them for a while and have two comments that might interest folks:
1. Without adding any software, out of the box, the drive has 30 GB free. The demonstration machines had nothing at all on them except what comes from Apple.
2. Response time was super fast, much faster than my Macbook Pro. ILIfe applications popped open very quickly. Impressive. Of course, I would have liked to see how Office, Tinderbox, and Scrivener (my daily applications) would have worked.

Now to decide if I can afford to spring for the SSD version or not.

[Cadaver]

There was one on display at my local Apple store as well. I rebooted the machine so I could get a sense of how the SSD really performed (since re-opening apps doesn't really show how fast the drive is, since much of the app may still be cached in RAM).

Rebooting was faster than the 1.6/HDD model next to it, but it was still slower than the stock black MacBook (160GB HD) on the same table. Off a fresh reboot, iTunes opened in about 2 1/4 bounces. Quit and relaunch opened in 1 bounce. My MacBook with a 160GB drive shows the exact same numbers. The 1.6/HDD model opened iTunes after a fresh boot in 4 bounces, and relaunched it in about 2.

While not even close to a true benchmark, from playing with both models for about 30 minutes, I can say the SSD is faster definitely faster than the 1.8" 80GB HDD, is only about equal in speed to a conventional 2.5" HDD for opening applications and documents (the sample documents and templates I found in iWork). Might be faster for database queries, but exactly how many people will do that on a MBA. I'm not criticizing the SSD in the MacBook Air, but its not like having a 15K RPM SAS drive or 10K RPM SATA Raptor hard drive in there either.

[imitchellg5]

Benchmarks

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

Benchmarks

Just FYI - my MacBook:
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.1 (9B18)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model MacBook3,1
Drive Type WDC WD1600BEVS-00RST0
Disk Test 46.98
Sequential 57.10
Uncached Write 72.89 44.75 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 70.40 39.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 32.68 9.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 86.73 43.59 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 39.91
Uncached Write 15.49 1.64 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 94.06 30.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 66.36 0.47 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 100.44 18.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]