The editorial started with "Solid State Drives (SSDs) and other flash-based devices..". After I read the editorial I decided that more needs to be known about SSD by the general SQL Server community.
SSD has been used in production environments for many years. It is not something new. It can dramatically lower the amount of time it takes to accomplish tasks, by 2/3rds in my case.
The reason that SSD has not been widely adopted is that enterprise quality SSD currently costs an arm and a leg.
Flash SSD is the hot topic because it is fast & cheap. I would be happy to use Flash SSD for what it is good at in my enterprise, but it has not proven itself to me to be reliable in enterprise environments, using the long track record of Static & Dynamic based SSD as the baseline for measurement. In other words: You get what you pay for.
IMHO, more knowledge about what types SSD are out there needs to be spread to the community at large.
SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) is a good resource, and has a web site dedicated to all the types of SSD at http://www.snia.org/forums/sssi/knowledge/education. It is well worth the time if you are interested in or thinking about buying SSD. Be aware that SNIA is a vendor association and that the resources can reflect that.
A real interesting article to me is "Storage Class Memory - the Future of Solid State Storage" at http://www.snia.org/forums/sssi/knowledge/education/Storage_Class_Memory_-_the_Future_of_Solid_State_Storage.pdf
Here is a list of the types of SSD technology out there from the SNIA article and other sources:
Flash MLC (Commercially available)
Flash SLC (Commercially available)
Static RAM (Commercially available)
Dynamic RAM (Commercially available)
Flash & Static RAM/DRAM combo (Commercially available)
FeRAM (Ferroelectric RAM) (Commercially available)
MRAM (Magnetic RAM) (Commercially available)
PCRAM (PCM, Phase Change Memory) (Advanced Development)
Improved Flash (Advanced Development)
Solid Electrolyte (Development)
Memristor (RRAM, Resistive RAM) (Early Development)
Racetrack (MRAM variant) (Basic Research)
😉 Brad