Solid State Drives (SSDs) are integrated circuits that store data without any moving parts. By comparison, hard disc drives (HDDs) store information on a rotating magnetic disc. Because of this simplicity, SSDs have revolutionized the form and function of computing devices. Smartphones, for example, rely on SSDs.
The benefits of SSDs over HDDs are legion. They are smaller, mechanically simpler, faster to read and write data than their hard disc cousins. They are also more energy efficient.
So with many computer manufacturers and datacenter operators looking to reduce their carbon footprints, it’s easy to imagine that all this makes the choice of memory easy.
But all is not as it seems, say Swamit Tannu at University of Wisconsin in Madison and Prashant Nair at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. SSDs have a dirty secret.
Tannu and Nair have measured the carbon footprint per gigabyte of these devices across ...
