New storage hierarchy for consumer computers

Computer architectures utilize a hierarchy of memory and storage. With the development of flash-memory based solid state storage for computers, the consumer computer storage hierarchy is becoming more complex. Solid state storage and hard disk drives are already being combined in data centers to provide significant performance improvements at a reasonable cost. Computer storage including some flash memory and HDDs can boost overall system performance while still providing low cost mass storage. Recently there have been several product introductions for combining solid state storage with hard disk drives in consumer computer applications. This paper analyzes these various hybrid storage architectures examining the way they work and comparing them to each other as well as conventional HDDs under typical consumer computer working environments.