Hitachi-LG Data Storage is currently planning its second generation Hybrid Drive. The storage unit builds on an optical unit that also has integrated SSD storage technology, and the second generation uses 25nm technology and Blu-ray player.
The memory maker revealed Hitachi’s plans in a recently published statement and it decided to ask a couple of questions to HLDS head Jack Lee. Among others, Lee got to explain his view on Hybrid Drive and how it fit into Hitachi’s line-up.
The Hybrid Drive is an Optical Disc Drive (ODD) with embedded NAND Flash memory, providing a combined storage configuration of an ODD+HDD+Flash Storage in the same platform architecture. It’s primarily targeted at the thin & light notebook PC applications. In standard notebook applications where there is still an HDD or SSD used for longer-term storage, the Hybrid Drive would be used for caching and launching applications, which provides an increase in system performance.
Since Hybrid Drive builds on a slim optical Micron’s new 25nm technology has been the key to get enough storage in this format. Excitingly Hitachi has chosen to use a Blu-ray unit as the base. The idea is for Hybrid Drive to replace the regular optical drive in notebooks, where it then will bring both better system performance and still support optical media.
According to the source Hybrid Drive will both read and write Blu-ray media, while the SATA 6.0 Gbps interface will offer 256GB of storage. The second generation Hybrid Drive will be available in March 2011.
