As a tech enthusiast, you likely appreciate the astonishing pace of advancement in computer processing and data storage. Do you recall what capacity the first hard drive you purchased held? 5 gigabytes? 20 perhaps? Today even basic laptops ship with 500GB+ local storage. And blazing SSDs are displacing classic spindle drives entirely across both consumer and enterprise sectors.
Rapid storage innovation delivers thinner, tougher, more power efficient devices with near instantaneous access to apps and files. But it can prove challenging to parse the differences between exotic acronyms like eMMC and SSD when selecting your next phone or laptop upgrade!
Let‘s explore the history and evolution behind these leading technologies – from the days of hulking disk drives to today‘s solid-state marvels. And weigh their respective strengths to match the right storage medium with your needs and budget…
The Rise and Eventual Fall of Spinning Hard Drives
It all began in 1956 when IBM introduced the world‘s first "hard" disk drive – the 305 RAMAC. Enormous by today‘s standards, it consisted of 50 spinning 24-inch platters coated in magnetic iron oxide material. An array of read/write heads recorded and retrieved data from the disk surfaces. Storing just 5 MB, it was leased monthly by corporations for $3500 – over $35k adjusted for inflation!
But HDD technology rapidly improved…
1979 – The first 5.25" HDDs emerged offering 10s of megabytes for under $1000
1983 – Rodime released the first 3.5" drives targeting personal computers
1997 – IBM pushed HDD capacity to over 1 gigabyte
By the early 2000s, HDDs crossed into the terabytes…then 10s of terabytes just a few years later! Costs normalized from $10s of thousands to just pennies per gigabyte. And 2.5" HDDs enabled a revolution in affordable, high-capacity laptops.
But amid this progress, little improved regarding the fundamental mechanics – HDDs still relied on delicate moving parts vulnerable to catastrophic failure from the slightest bump or boot vibration. Heat buildup and energetically wasteful spin motors further constrained laptop runtimes between charges.
Might non-mechanical storage finally break free of these practical limitations?
SSDs Emerge: Flash Memory Replaces Spinning Platters
The roots of flash memory date back to the 1980s, but it took years to produce sufficient densities for general storage. Everything changed in 1991 with the debut of the first solid-state drives (SSDs) aimed at enterprise use – the MiniScribe F3 Series and StorageTek T978 "Elastic Disc".
Lacking moving parts, these SSDs delivered breakthrough shock resistance and far faster access times measured in microseconds rather than milliseconds. But capacities lagged substantially behind HDDs and astronomical prices limited adoption mostly to government and military sectors.
Gradually density and affordability improved to make SSDs practical for mainstream personal computing…
2006 – 32 GB SSDs become available to consumers for $500+
2008 – Intel and Micron release smaller format M.2 SATA SSDs optimizing space
2009 – Samsung launches the first high-capacity (256+ GB) consumer SSDs with the controller and memory integrated – a pivotal innovation
2015 – PCIe/NVME SSDInterface debuts enabling over 10x faster access speeds exceeding 3500 MB/s
Today SSD costs have normalized while maximum capacities now rival traditional hard drives. Leading edge PCIe 4.0 SSDs transfer data faster than RAM! And absence of moving parts enables compact, rugged designs unmatched by HDD solutions. The era of the spinning drive is coming to an eventual close outside niche legacy use.
So was SSD flash storage the pinnacle of consumer storage innovation? Well, another contender arrived in 2006 that you likely leverage daily…
eMMC Storage Matures Within Mobile
Back in 1997, an industry group called the MultiMediaCard Association founded by Siemens and SanDisk introduced the original MultiMediaCard (MMC) removable storage standard. These memory cards rapidly gained popularity – offering durably packaged NAND flash memory storage for cameras, audio players, and eventually cellphones.
But the specs were limited to just 20-50 MB/s depending on card complexity and the cuboid cards added bulk when permanently installed within devices.
So in 2006, the JEDEC standards body developed eMMC – embedded MMC – tailoring and miniaturizing the technology for permanent soldering onto motherboards. While transfer rates initially lagged SSDs substantially, performance climbed with successive versions…
HS200 – Defined bus speeds up 100 MB/s in 2007
HS400 – Doubled throughput to 200 MB/s in 2011
HS400 Enhanced – Boosts peak speed to 400 MB/s by 2013
And in tandem, steady NAND production improvements drove eMMC densities drastically higher while keeping per-GB costs exceptionally low…
2006 – First eMMCs offered just 2-4 GB capacities
2009 – Samsung introduces 64 GB model sampling
2016 – 256 GB models available
2019 – JEDEC ratifies the eMMC 5.1 Standard supporting up to 512 GB
Today‘s leading edge eMMC 5.1 solutions rival entry level SATA SSD speeds at just a fraction of the cost – demonstrating how affordable, high density NAND helps democratize rapid storage for mobile AND desktop computing!
