Interview with Seagate Technology
Benchmark Reviews has demonstrated a voracious appetite for high-speed storage technologies over the past few years, primarily fueled by our research and testing with Solid State Drive products. In this article Benchmark Reviews Executive Editor Olin Coles submitted several industry-specific questions directly to storage expert David Szabados, the Senior PR Manager responsible for enterprise storage, security, and future emerging storage technologies at Seagate Technology. David took time out of his busy schedule in the middle of the Seagate Barracuda XT 6Gbps SATA-III HDD product launch to directly answer many of the questions we asked. Benchmark Reviews asked Seagate questions that cover everything from increasing spindle speeds and Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording to offering SSD products, which all help shape this technology interview into an extremely rare opportunity for our readers to learn of upcoming and developmental product plans directly from the manufacturer.
Storage is a topic most people either respect and appreciate, or could care less. As a system builder for the past ten years, experience has taught me the secret to high-performance computer systems is not the processor or system memory. The biggest bottleneck of any computer is the Operating System drive. For example, an Intel Core i7-920 Processor yields an L1 cache latency of about 1 nanosecond (10-9 second) while its DDR3 memory response time takes 4000% longer when averaging 40 ns. Even when you factor in the fastest storage products, such as an SSD, you're still waiting at least 0.1 millisecond (10-3 s) for a response from the drive and the fastest hard drives may increase that wait to 4 ms. So ultimately the difference between a CPUs L1 latency (1 ns) and the fastest SSD (0.1 ms) is about 100,000%, while the fastest HDD yields a 4,000,000% difference. Knowing this, you can understand why the storage industry always welcomes technology improvements.
It's still too early to tell if or when HDDs will be replaced with SSDs, although basic wisdom indicates that both will be favored among their intended markets for a few years to come. Personally speaking, I have been a fan of SSD technology from the beginning; but even I can acquiesce to Seagate's product road map for the short term future. SSDs can't possibly touch the value and capacity delivered by HDDs, and that's not something that will soon change.
There's no argument that HDDs still capture the capacity-hungry market segment; especially since SSDs cannot compete there. But the premium high-performance desktop storage enthusiast market is losing patience with Hard Disk Drive technology, and as a result those consumers are turning towards Solid State Drive technology in large numbers. This is exactly why the new SATA-III 6Gb/s interface and 64MB cache buffer was so important to desktop storage technology, and delivered at exactly the right time. Sure, this new bump in performance will add considerable boost to the HDD market, but at the same time it's no surprise that premier names in the industry have also invested in their own SSD solutions.
Seagate answers many of the lingering questions still hanging in the air after a year of consumer attention has been focused elsewhere. This Question and Answer interview features a line of questions that fits perfectly with the launch of 6 GB/s SATA-III storage products, and doesn't sidestep the obvious concerns surrounding SSD technology. Please continue on to the next section where we begin our interview with David Szabados, and define the current state of hard disk drive technology.
About Seagate Technology LLC.
Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disk drives and storage solutions, providing products for a wide-range of applications, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Branded Solutions. Seagate's business model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers, with the goal of being the time-to-market leader in all markets in which it participates. The company is committed to providing award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world's growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at https://www.seagate.com/.
Seagate Interview: HDD Storage
In this section, Benchmark Reviews asked Seagate several questions about the company and its future plans to further expand it reach in the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) market segment. Olin Coles asks the questions (Q) and David Szabados answers (A), and occasionally we add some notes behind each question to further clarify the answer.
Q: Over the past two years a slowing global economy has reduced consumer spending and technology development for most computer-related companies. Heading into 2010, what products will Seagate introduce to the desktop and enterprise sectors?
A: Overall, the plan is to continue to deliver products with greater areal density to enable larger capacity storage in the desktop and mobile spaces. In the enterprise, capacity also plays an important role, but performance is especially key when referencing servers and storage systems because as you add additional client systems and users, the system needs to keep pace with the information loads. Incorporating security into more of our products is another important focus.
Seagate's SSD entry in the enterprise will also be available later this year, and many agree that it is timed well for enterprise volume market opportunities. We recently spent time at the Flash Storage Summit and analysts there indicated that they expect substantially stronger growth next year in this segment.
As far as the economic climate, 2009 certainly has been a challenging year for technology companies, but the consumption of storage has grown regardless of the climate. Seagate, along with its OEM customer base, sees the trend continuing. Several additional factors are driving this growth trend including new technology applications and devices that seem to emerge daily in the consumer market. Other expected strong growth areas include cloud computing in the enterprise.
Editors Note: Despite a crippling recession in the technology sector, Seagate Technologies continued to grow by expanding its reach beyond the desktop and server markets. Netbook and All-In-One products such as the recently tested MSI Wind Top AE2010 AIO Desktop System have helped Seagate diversify their product channels while allowing them to develop storage technologies for new device platforms in the consumer electronics sector.
Q: Inside the hard drive industry, there are very few major companies selling retail-level products. How does Seagate position itself against the competition, and what do you offer that they don't?
A: Nathan Papadopulos is Seagate's senior communications manager for these products so I asked him for comment within his area: "Our branded solutions business offers a range of solutions to meet the varying storage needs of both consumers and small business professionals. From our 8TB Seagate BlackArmor NAS solutions-designed for small businesses and prosumers-down to our 250GB super-simple Seagate Replica, Seagate delivers complete, reliable storage to fit your lifestyle and technical expertise. Where Seagate is different than other hard drive manufacturers in the retail space is that we don't just sell bits and bytes. We're unique in that we deliver ‘experiencial' storage. For example, our new FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player and new FreeAgent DockStar network adapter not only help backup and protect your data, but introduce new ways of sharing your memories with friends and family. Our Seagate Replica backup appliance delivers 'no-brainer' protection for those that don't really understand or want to even think about backing up their computers. And our Seagate BlackArmor family of products delivers complete solutions from a single vendor for businesses with little-to-no IT support, which saves them time and hassle of dealing with multiple suppliers. These distinctive product and service qualities are coupled with our full 3-5 year warranty, the backing of the Seagate brand, and the piece of mind that comes for customers in knowing their data is on a hard drive they can trust. This is how Seagate stands apart from the competition."
Editors Note:In retrospect this question was not very well composed, and should not have been so specific in asking for 'retail' differences because Seagate actually dominates the Enterprise storage sector by an enormous margin. WD (Western Digital) is the biggest competitor to Seagate Technology, and their product lines are closely similar in most 'retail' areas. Both companies offer external storage solutions (WD My Book and Seagate FreeAgent), and both offer NAS products (WD My Book World Edition and Seagate BlackArmor), but only one company offers true Enterprise-level storage solutions. Believe it or not, WD lists their 10K SATA VelociRaptor as the best Enterprise product they offer. In fact, WD only offers a total of two Enterprise storage solutions in their current product line (VelociRaptor and RE4 7200RPM hard drive), and both are 3.0 Gb/s SATA-based. When you compare this to Seagate's 15,000 RPM SAS, SCSI, and 6 GB/s SATA-III options, you can see where I missed the opportunity to truly compare the two companies.
Q: The storage industry generally caters to three crowds: enthusiasts, mainstream users, and enterprise servers. What ‘flagship' product series is at the top of each Seagate product line?
A: In the desktop space, Seagate recently introduced its Barracuda XT, a 3.5-inch, 7200RPM drive that delivers up to 2TB of capacity and phenomenal performance on the strength of a 64MB of cache and a Serial ATA 6Gb/s interface. Barracuda XT is the world's first desktop drive to feature the Serial ATA 6Gb/s interface.
The Constellation ES is built from the same platform as the Barracuda XT, but it includes additional features within its design that makes it better suited for server and storage arrays. The Constellation ES includes PowerChoice, a technology that enables users to define their power saving options depending on their workload requirements. It is also available in both SATA and 6Gb/s SAS 2.0. The SAS version will be ideal for integration into existing SAS-based infrastructures.
At the top end of the enterprise arena, Seagate offers its flagship Savvio 2.5-inch form factor enterprise-class drive. This is not to be mistaken for a 2.5-inch notebook drives however. Savvio offers the same width, but is slightly taller and is designed for use specifically in 2.5-inch enterprise enclosures. Savvio is offered in 10K-rpm 300GB and 15K-rpm 147GB models and is the best choice for packing the most IOPS density in a small package at a competitive price. This form factor is definitely where enterprises are headed, and adoption of the Savvio family has been strong by major OEMs including HP and IBM.
Although the trend is moving toward the 2.5-inch enterprise form factor, Seagate will still support and produce high-performance enterprise Cheetah 3.5-inch drives. The Cheetah 15K.7 and Cheetah NS.2 each deliver 600GB of storage capacity and include the unique PowerChoice feature.
Editors Note: Benchmark Reviews will offer comprehensive articles on the Seagate Constellation and Savvio 15,000 RPM hard drives in the very near future, and plan to expand on the new 2.5" Enterprise Form Factor.
Q: Seagate was one of the first storage companies to introduce a hard drive with 32MB of cache buffer, which allowed a 7,200 RPM drive to compete with a 10,000 RPM product. Why hasn't there been a 64MB cache buffer introduced?
A: The new Barracuda XT now includes 64MB of cache as does the Constellation ES. With regard to cache, it should be noted that increased cache does not always equate to increased performance in all areas. The large cache tends to improve performance of video streaming and editing, gaming and other applications that rely heavily on sequential reads and writes. Therefore these apps, unlike random-seeking server environments, take advantage of predictive algorithms to fill the cache buffer and increase performance.
Editors Note: At the time this question was posted, Seagate had yet to reveal their Barracuda XT and Constellation ES disks (which launch with this interview). From a performance stand point, there is quite a bit of truth to David's statement of "more is not always better", because the data would have to cycle through the cache which adds a delay (in nanoseconds) to algorithm interpretations. The larger the cache, the longer the delay, presuming the same speed of DRAM is used.
Q: Most consumers would agree that 1TB is more than enough storage space, even when multimedia sharing is taken into account. Will Seagate continue to grow disk capacity through technologies such as perpendicular storage, or will you develop an improved fundamental design at some point?
A: We will definitely continue to focus on areal density and increase capacities through perpendicular technology as well as exploring other methods for the future (e.g. Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording, Bit Patterned Media). As far as advancing the technology, we project that we can achieve areal densities of about five Tbits per square inch or more using HDD-based technology. This gives us a conservative roadmap for at least the next decade. In comparison to today, our Barracuda XT is shipping with an areal density of 368 Gigabits per square inch, so there is plenty more room to grow.
As far as capacity needs to the consumers and others, we are seeing continued success and adoption of high-capacity storage as high-definition video, home media servers, gaming downloads, bit-rich content such as photos and other bandwidth-hungry applications and content drive increasing demand for terabyte and multiple-terabyte consumer storage capacity. Telling evidence of this trend is that consumers accounted for more digital storage than business in the United States for the first time in 2008.
Another key point to consider is that there are many newer devices and applications, whether we're talking about cell phones, video game consoles, DVRs, or NAS devices for the home or small business, that all consume storage because of the applications stored on many other machines across the Internet and other networks. New content is being developed at an exponential rate both by software designers of the applications, but also by users themselves (think YouTube, blogs, forums, network sharing, etc.). Therefore, while capacity needs certainly are growing at the backbone of the internet, there is no doubt that this will also mean more storage will be needed at the local, or client consumer end as well.
An example of a local storage-intensive application I see growing are the companies providing licensed television and movie content that can be purchased and downloaded directly to home PCs. As bandwidth has grown, content has grown with it, and once high-definition becomes the mainstream viewing experience for our PCs, it will demand much more storage. In the future, we'll wonder how we were able to get by with "only" 1 or 2TB of storage.
Editors Note: It is utterly amazing that end-user computers needed more storage capacity than corporate enterprise servers did in 2008. Clearly the next generation of storage devices (such as DVRs and NAS products) really have become a staple for personal entertainment and SOHO businesses. I know many of the readers here at Benchmark Reviews have mentioned multi-terabyte storage in their personal computers, especially in HTPCs and home servers, but I still wonder how much is enough.
Seagate SSD Technology
Q: Benchmark Reviews has experienced and tested Solid State Drive products since they were first available, and it appears that SSDs will one day replace the hard drive. When do you suspect this might happen, and will there be any markets that sustain HDD technology?
A: Seagate believes that SSDs are an exciting technology, and they are also the right technology for the most IO-performance demanding applications. We're excited about delivering true enterprise-class reliability and endurance to these demanding applications as our own SSD solutions emerge.
Seagate's overall perspective however is that SSDs and HDDs will coexist for a variety of reasons and we do not see SSDs replacing HDDs anytime within the next several years. The top industry analysts from Gartner and IDC also hold a similar view.
When any new technology comes to market, challenges exist, and this is certainly the case with SSDs in this early stage of the emerging market. While initial performance specifications are impressive, the early products offered have fallen well short in terms of enterprise reliability and endurance expectations in part because of wear-leveling issues with the solid state cells in heavy write environments. Moreover, cost of SSDs - as much as seven times that of hard disk drives - remain a barrier to their widespread adoption in what are often cost-sensitive computing environments. Worse yet - the industry is lacking in a common language, and how the stated reliability specification from one manufacturer is achieved can vary widely from the specification provided by another manufacturer. OEM system makers - especially in the enterprise - need specifications communicated in a common and standard way. Remember that an OEM system builder is putting its name on the line when delivering a system, and reliability is especially crucial.
Properly architected, Seagate believes SSDs CAN be designed and built to meet the demanding needs of the enterprise, and companies like Seagate who have decades of experience are best poised to be successful in doing so.
Editors Note: After the debut for Western Digital's Enterprise-level SiliconDrive III SSD back in June, which featured read and write speeds of only 100/80 MBps respectively, it was difficult to consider the SiliconDrive III a real threat to other Solid State Drive products launched in 2009. Perhaps the slow warming to their largest competitors new product is what caused Seagate to re-think their SSD strategy and ensure that when they come to market, that they'll have a product that sells in volume. Benchmark Reviews is rather obsessed with SSDs, but details on the Seagate SSD product are extremely thin and it appears that they're only focused on the more expensive Enterprise-level SLC products. It could be quite some time before casual end-users are computing with Seagate SSDs in their laptop or desktop systems, but time will tell.
Q: How is Seagate poised to sustain its business model during a transition towards SSD technology?
A: As Seagate is storage agnostic, the plans are to support and build HDDs and SSDs based on its customers needs. We continue to make considerable investments in the development of both technologies. We are fortunate that we have over three decades of experience working directly with the largest OEM system makers. We work closely with them to forecast and build to their expectations and have earned our position as a premier and trusted supplier. The OEMs are certainly eager to adopt Seagate SSDs because of that trust, and because they understand that we have the resources in engineering and design to reduce the chances of releasing a product that will not live up to its stated expectations. That said, they remain very interested in our HDDs as well, because from a cost, reliability, and capacity standpoint, HDDs work very well, and will continue to do so, in a number of applications for years to come.
Editors Note: Seagate Technology, who is (and has been) best know for Enterprise-level storage products on the SCSI and SAS interface, may appear to have an advantage over WD (Western Digital) who depend on consumer storage products for the bulk of their revenue, but in reality WD already has the SiliconDrive III SSD shipping to buyers. Since both WD and Seagate are focused on the SLC/Enterprise market for their SSD products, it will be interesting to see how well each company does against newly minted SSD Enterprise storage leaders such as Fusion-IO, Samsung, RunCore, Intel, OCZ, and MemoRight.
Q: Overall reliability and endurance specifications are a concern for SSDs. How is, or will this be done compared to HDD reliability which has been typically rated with MTBF?
A: There are standards groups that are working on this. All of the major storage makers, including Seagate, are actively involved in these working groups and committees. JEDEC is one of the organizations leading the way to develop the necessary standards.
The early market claims that SSDs are "more reliable" than HDDs simply because they have no mechanical parts has caused additional considerable confusion. These claims were often based on mathematical formulas, and have not been confirmed by actual empirical field data. HDD's have 100's of millions of drives in the field that confirms the MTBF/AFR specifications quoted. The actual number of SSD units in the field is still a very small sample size and bring into question some of the very high claims some are making.
Editors Note: There are already several organized committees dedicated towards standardizing Solid State Drive technology. The SSD Alliance (SSDA) was the first, but this Taiwan-based organization operates on the interest of a 'SSDA compliance program' that labels approved products 'SSDA Certified' similar to 80-PLUS for power supply units. Other organizations (with less marketing) interest include JEDEC, the Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI), and International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA). With four different standards committees operating, you might think there would be a common agreement among them; but there isn't.
Q: It's been discovered that Seagate postponed the release of its SSD product. Can you explain why this decision was made and when such a product might be available?
A: A number of conditions delayed Seagate's SSD, which is currently planned for formal announcement before the end of 2009. Market conditions and pricing certainly is one issue. Remember that Seagate builds solutions for its customers based on the ongoing discussions of what its customers' needs are. When the economic downturn began, our customers grew understandably cautious and conservative. Seagate remained committed to working on SSDs, but there was not a need to push and race to the market if there was only a small interest. With our revised and most current plans, we feel we will be releasing the SSD at an ideal time for our customers and the marketplace. It's important to put the SSD story in perspective. It's an exciting technology and has received much press, but actual adoption numbers and sales have been very low in comparison.
Editors Note: The very same thing was said for LCD technology when it first became an option for replacing CRT monitors, and with DDR3 system memory. History indicates that a slow adoption does not prevent a product from becoming the industry standard without any warning. A 'formal announcement' is not the same as a readily-available product, and it paper launches are not uncommon in the computer hardware industry. While Seagate has given more details on their SSD product in this interview than previously shared, there still remains a very large cloud of mystery. Hopefully Seagate will entrust Benchmark Reviews to debut this technology when the time is right.
Q: The major hurdle for current-generation SSDs has been the handling of used ‘dirty' NAND blocks, which yield reduced performance over ‘clean' unused blocks. Most manufacturers have created a tools based around TRIM, so will Seagate SSDs follow this pattern or create a unique command of their own?
A: I went to Rich Vignes, Seagate manager for enterprise Product Line Management, for his thoughts: "Enterprise is a complex landscape of OS's, where many of the OS's today don't offer support of the TRIM command. TRIM is still the process of becoming an industry standard and Seagate has played an active role in the endorsement of this standard. Therefore Seagate is positioned to offer TRIM on its SSD products, but we have not determined whether to provide tools for non-TRIM supporting OS's beyond the tools currently available."
Editors Note: At such an early point in Solid State Drive evolution, there doesn't seem to be any standards governing this very critical aspect of SSD performance. Seagate appears to be creating their own, just as Samsung, Intel, and Indilinx have done. At some point this issue needs to be addressed, and I have a feeling that only the Operating System can properly manage it. Windows 7 support TRIM characteristics, but prior O/S's do not. Because of a myriad of controller technologies on the market now, and due to be on the market soon, it seems that the most feasible solution is allow the O/S to control functionality.
Final Thoughts
There's a high level of anxiety that goes along with interviewing a company you've known about for decades. The first hard drive I ever held in my hands was a Seagate SCSI disk, and throughout the years I've had hundreds more Seagate and Maxtor products get installed into the systems I was building. So with so much respect for the Seagate name, I had to ensure my questions were just as equally direct as they were respectful. Asking the questions was only half the battle. Whenever a company's marketing representative meets with the press, you never really know what kind of answers you'll receive. Sorting truth from fiction inside the computer hardware industry is especially difficult to nail down, and so it came with a pleasant surprise that Benchmark Reviews received the same respect in return that we extended out to Seagate.
In less than three months, the 2010 CES will take place in Las Vegas (Nevada) and the new products will spill forth from the pages of press releases and product launches. From the sounds of it, Seagate isn't waiting for CES before they announce their SSD product line, but considering that they've delayed their launch once already, it may be forgivable to have it happen again. Besides SSD technology, which isn't meant to be the focus of this interview, Seagate has seized on the opportunity to launch the industry's first SATA-III 6 Gbps hard drive. The new Barracuda XT features a 64 MB cache buffer for improved response times and transfer speeds, so perhaps Solid State technology really does have some road left to travel before ousting HDD technology from the desktop. 
Looking Forward
From everything we've just learned, 2009 is going to end with a bang for Seagate Technology. The economy is slowly recovering, which means that projects will also slowly return towards a demanding release schedule. This isn't to say that 2009 didn't begin with a bang, as well. In the latter half of 2008 Seagate Technology made legal complaints against the veteran SSD manufacturer STEC, and when the air finally cleared going into 2009 those complaints disappeared. This only serves to add an additional layer or speculation onto Seagate SSD products, and builds upon rumor.
As 2009 rolls into the 4th and final quarter of the fiscal year, Seagate has bet a sizable amount of future longevity riding on the success of their SSD product line. Certainly the Barracuda XT and Constellation ES will generate momentum for the company, but SSDs are the future, and you're either part of the bigger picture or you're not.
Special Thank You
When it's your job to guard company secrets and proprietary knowledge, it's understandable if you don't answer the critical or sensitive questions. Benchmark Reviews deeply appreciates the forthright attitude Seagate demonstrated throughout this interview, and this was one of the few times a manufacturer has let it all out.
Benchmark Reviews sincerely thanks David Szabados, and Seagate Technology LLC, for their time and cooperation to help make this interview possible. David Szabados is Seagate's Senior PR Manager responsible for enterprise storage, security, and future emerging storage technologies.
Questions? Comments? Benchmark Reviews really wants your feedback. We invite you to leave your remarks in our Discussion Forum.
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