REVIEW: Samsung's New 32 GB Solid State Disc Drive

[Dïscfärm]

A review and simple set of benchmarks of the "upcoming" Samsung solid-state drive (SSD) for notebook computer applications -- or for any computer system that can accept a 2.5-inch form factor hard drive. Actually, the drive is already being made available in the Samsung Q30 notebook for the Japanese market.

On the downside, expect this 32 GB drive to be pricey.



http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003624

 

[ddrueding]

Want it. If anyone sees this drive for sale, sing out.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm underwhelmed.

 

[Explorer]

If anyone sees this drive for sale, sing out.

From the vibes I keep receiving, this drive could sell for US$750 ~ $900 as an aftermarket part.

 

[sechs]

Why isn't this drive beating the crap out the mechanical disks?

 

[LunarMist]

It probably has low STR. I'd rather see a comparison with 7200 RPM drives than 5400 RPM drives.

 

[iGary]

Why isn't this drive beating the crap out the mechanical disks?

It probably has low STR. I'd rather see a comparison with 7200 RPM drives than 5400 RPM drives.

The flash memory that Samsung is using in this SSD is probably mid-grade (or slower) flash, which will help keep the cost down. Samsung's goal in designing this drive was probably to have a drive that performed similar overall to a 7200 RPM notebook drive without breaking the bank.


Ironically, we were recently chatting some about M-RAM in the "DDR-3" subject thread. Back in around 2001 or so, when IBM was playing up uses for M-RAM, one of the markets that IBM wanted to attack with M-RAM was the flash memory market (both the removable and fixed flash memory markets). Unfortunately for IBM -- and fortunately for the rest of us -- there were manufacturing breakthroughs that allowed for much less expensive production of flash memory to take place and much higher storage densities. Still, one of M-RAM's promises that flash memory has yet to challenge was that M-RAM would be much faster. M-RAM would make an absolute dandy SSD.


Now that I'm thinking of it, a sad casualty in the "inexpensive memory war" seems to have been polymer memory (or "plastic memory" as I like to call it). Plastic memory would have been revolutionary; absolutely dirt cheap at a price of few cents for megabytes, very rugged (as in flexible!), very adaptable to a wide range of applications, non-volatile, low power requirements, and more. Recent gains in flash memory have apparently shuttered further research into commercialising polymer memory as far as I know. There was even work going on for a while to perfect polymer microprocessors!

 

[udaman]

Want it. If anyone sees this drive for sale, sing out.

Singing, but supadave will not be interested given the price, and current preoccupation with obtaining new living arrangements, yes?

http://www.dvnation.com/ssd.html

$1800 for just 32GB, wonder how much this company is gouging for the 64GB version...if you have to ask, you can't afford it Wait for higher capacity, reliablity, performance Charge Trap Flash (CTF) tech from Samsung (next year?). http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm?newsID=6834&pagtype=samechan

Mean while, iGary should know after the Apple escapades, not to have all that much confidence in Freescale. But they are shipping MRAM (or at least annouced commerical availability)

Again, what price, what capacity, what are the performance spec's?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/memory/display/20060711035234.html

 

[ddrueding]

Erm, that's actually really close to a price I would buy at. I'm looking at the iRAM solutions; considering 2GB DIMMS are $250 a piece, and it would take 4 of them, plus the card itself to only get 8GB...that doesn't look bad at all. 16GB ($1200) would be plenty.

What is the performance compared to iRAM?

 

[sechs]

I think that this makes the iRAM look like a great idea. That's sad.

 

[Platform]

Why isn't this drive beating the crap out the mechanical disks?

Was very recently talking to someone with some solid industry cred that knows a thing or two about these newfangled SS drives...

It is possible that a prominent manufacturer might be using a little bit (as in 4 GB or so) of premium "fast" flash memory acting as cache / buffer memory, along with the remaining flash memory being slower "cheap" flash memory, resulting in a slightly affordable SS drive.

 

[LiamC]

Seagate perhaps?

 

[Platform]

Seagate supposedly has a hybrid hard drive in the works -- along with Samsung (for certain). All the remaining manufacturers will likely have hybrid magnetic platter / flash memory hard drives as well.

Actually, I was talking about SSD drives based solely on flash memory. Some of the architectural differences in flash-based SSDs could end up being drives based on:

1.) Pure premium speed NAND flash memory (expensive),

2.) A mix of premium grade NAND flash memory and slower "cheap" NAND flash memory with an intelligent storage controller using HSM (hierarchical storage management) techniques to keep performance optimal,

3.) A mix of premium grade NAND flash memory and premium grade (or slow "cheap") NOR flash memory with an intelligent storage controller using HSM (hierarchical storage management) techniques to keep performance optimal.


Once these flash-memory-based SSDs start coming out in volume, they will get dissected.

"...resulting in a slightly affordable SS drive. "

...resulting in a slightly MORE affordable SS drive. :smurf:

 

[udaman]

Seagate supposedly has a hybrid hard drive in the works -- along with Samsung (for certain). All the remaining manufacturers will likely have hybrid magnetic platter / flash memory hard drives as well.

Actually, I was talking about SSD drives based solely on flash memory. Some of the architectural differences in flash-based SSDs could end up being drives based on:

1.) Pure premium speed NAND flash memory (expensive),

2.) A mix of premium grade NAND flash memory and slower "cheap" NAND flash memory with an intelligent storage controller using HSM (hierarchical storage management) techniques to keep performance optimal,

3.) A mix of premium grade NAND flash memory and premium grade (or slow "cheap") NOR flash memory with an intelligent storage controller using HSM (hierarchical storage management) techniques to keep performance optimal.


Once these flash-memory-based SSDs start coming out in volume, they will get dissected.





...resulting in a slightly MORE affordable SS drive. :smurf:

Yes Seagate & Samsung have announced intent to ship hybrid drives in time for Vista, with Samsung more bullish on the possibility of using up to 4GB of NAND.

Neither 2 or 3 are likely (particularly 3 since NOR is basically like the CRT, at the EOL stage as tech moves on).

Premium? Not in mass production. Mass production, like with faster CF cards for ever increasing MP digicam's increase over time, decrease in price over time. Same will happen for flash based computer drives, it's just a matter of when?

Performance of the PQI 32MB (as well as the 64GB I would guess) linked to above is not anywhere near DDR2 battery backup, RAM drives. But they aren't designed as such. These are laptop speed (well as fast as the fastest current 7.2k laptop) SDD, with attributes more than just speed that make for ideal use in laptops. Samsung is quoting 58/32 RW for STR.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/03/21/samsung_32gb_nand_flash_hard_drive/

Only test I've seen, which is quite incomplete, would be for the Samsung laptop, and PCWorld's test of the 32GB Samsung stating only STR figures. (Engadget has the rumored OEM quantity price on the 32GB @$900 in Asian markets).

Ah the debate continues on longivity, check out the comments in this link, lol:

http://digg.com/tech_news/Samsung_releases_32_and_64GB_CompactFlash_cards

More rants on reliability in comments section here:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2763

Slightly better explanation of CTF here:

http://digg.com/tech_news/Samsung_releases_32_and_64GB_CompactFlash_cards

Almost forgot, Tom's Hard, did a wider range comparison btw HDD & the new 32GB Samsung:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/09/20/conventional_hard_drive_obsoletism/

Personally, I'd rather take my chances with RAID0 SSD's, if I had the choice btw that and HDD's. If SSD's are using HDD storage structures, I wonder if that they leads to file structure corruption problems we have with HDD tech, or is this a function of moving parts in the HDD? Haven't seen any discussion of that yet.

 

[Handruin]

I guess I'd question why bother with RAID0 on an SSD when the SSD is likely to saturate the bus speed anyways, no? I thought it was proven on SR (and other places) that low latency/seek is king when it comes to overall performance? RAID0 would only help you with specific tasks and those typically aren't worth 2x the failure risk. As for the failure specifics, I can't comment on those. I don't know how the information would be structured but I'd have to think it would be very similar to how it is stored on a conventional HD. If one of the two becomes corrupted you'll have 100% failure which is no different than a normal HD. It doesn't have to be a mechanical failure; something else could corrupt the data structure and ruin the entire volume.

 

[LiamC]

Super Talent (whoever they are) have announced a range od SSD disks in the EIDE mobile--1.8"--form factor (44-pin). Sizes range from 4GB to 16GB of NAND flash.

http://www.supertalent.com/press/ide.php