Since all kinds of flash memories feature different transfer rates according to the kind of operation performed at a given moment (e.g., random access reads versus random access writes, random access reads versus sequential reads, etc), could SSDs be considered as random-access devices?
Of course, if the access time (latency) is not the same for all operations (as definitely it is the case with SSDs), in principle neither SSDs or any other flash-based storage device should be thought as random access. On the other hand, the latency for a given access is independent from prior accesses: you are supposed to access any memory position you want by simply presenting an address in a given bus (as opposed to search for markers between records stored sequentially, as it is the case with tapes). In fact, many people wonder how long is gonna take for flash-based storage devices replace RAM sticks. So, should flash-based devices as SSDs be thought as "true" random access devices?