SSDs - State of the Product?

LunarMist

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At what kind of temperatures should I expect to see an M.2 SSD to throttle?

Just installed my first and, despite the fact that my BIOS doesn't seem to know anything about drive, it's working fine with Windows.

Does it hurt when your finger is on the SSD?
 

sechs

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I feel like 2TB is starting to become a regular drive size; 4TB is still exotic.

In a product cycle or two, 4TB should gain that status and drop in price.
 

LunarMist

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I feel like 2TB is starting to become a regular drive size; 4TB is still exotic.

In a product cycle or two, 4TB should gain that status and drop in price.

Yeah, that's it. I will replace the 2TB Samsung 850 Pro in a laptop with a Crucial MX300 2.05 TB drive.
 

LunarMist

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Or you could replace it with a 256GB drive and stop keeping so much crap on your laptop.

Not really. The whole point of the little 3lb. laptop is to download the RAW files from memory cards to three targets simultaneously and do a bit of viewing and processing.
The laptop currently contains a 2TB 850 Pro and a 2TB HDD. I actually have two of the same laptops at different locations and carry the drives between the domestic locations prior to the international flights.
The third copy is a combination of 1TB SSDs or 2TB drives. If required by the protocols, copies 4+ are made from the internal SSD.
 

sechs

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Not really. The whole point of the little 3lb. laptop is to download the RAW files from memory cards to three targets simultaneously and do a bit of viewing and processing.
The laptop currently contains a 2TB 850 Pro and a 2TB HDD. I actually have two of the same laptops at different locations and carry the drives between the domestic locations prior to the international flights.
The third copy is a combination of 1TB SSDs or 2TB drives. If required by the protocols, copies 4+ are made from the internal SSD.
Yes, really.
 

LunarMist

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Yes, really.

My laptops are now 4 years old, so in a few more years they will be done. I don't plan to ever buy a laptop again after that.
CFexpress will change the storage landscape around 2018 and we will see what the options are then.
 

LunarMist

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I put about 7TB on the 2050GB Crucial MX300 so far and it is fine.
 

LunarMist

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I put about 7TB on the 2050GB Crucial MX300 so far and it is fine.

I added about another 3TB and the drive did well. That computer is mothballed until May. I will pull the Crucial SSD in June for use on another project in December.
 

Buck

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I think we're still on a major learning curve. The raw materials for any kind of semiconductor are ridiculously inexpensive. The real cost is in the process. I have to think as we get better at it, yields will go up and the cost will come way down. The yields for 3D NAND are probably a closely guarded secret, but it wouldn't surprise me if they're under 10% given the process complexity described here. That implies we could reduce cost by up to a factor of ten just by increasing yield.

We've all seen articles about the next big thing which will replace NAND. So far, none of these have panned out. I'd love to see something better myself but so far no luck. Xpoint looks promising on the speed, durability, and capacity front but it's looking more like a premium solution for enterprise applications than mainstream bulk storage. MRAM was the next big thing a few years back but it hasn't scaled up so well. I'm sure eventually something will come along, hopefully before I'm on Social Security.

NAND is it. Let's live with it.
 

Newtun

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...We've all seen articles about the next big thing which will replace NAND. So far, none of these have panned out. I'd love to see something better myself but so far no luck. Xpoint looks promising on the speed, durability, and capacity front but it's looking more like a premium solution for enterprise applications than mainstream bulk storage. MRAM was the next big thing a few years back but it hasn't scaled up so well. I'm sure eventually something will come along, hopefully before I'm on Social Security.
NAND is it. Let's live with it.
https://arstechnica.com/information...optane-ssd-375gb-that-you-can-also-use-as-ram; "Intel announced today the first Optane-branded product using its new 3D XPoint memory: the catchily named Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X. It's a 375GB SSD on a PCIe card. Initial limited availability starts today, for $1520...".
 

Handruin

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It's nice to see this actually make it to market. I hope this drives more innovation from competitors.
 

sechs

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I'm afraid that SSDs will run into the semiconductor fab crunch.

They just don't have the capacity to put out all of this flash, RAM, and processors.
 

LunarMist

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I'm afraid that SSDs will run into the semiconductor fab crunch.

They just don't have the capacity to put out all of this flash, RAM, and processors.

Even with the Chinese robots? Are they working like the diamondo producers to create artificially high prices?
 

Handruin

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Last I've heard the large demand are from mobile and tablet using NAND chips causing strain on supply. I can't say if it's artificial or not but it's real. The project I'm working on has had me re-code certain parts and change-out hardware to take out NVMe SSDs for SAS SSDs to save on cost and also lead-time on availability in terms of months.
 

sechs

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Maybe you also missed the increase in RAM prices.

I'd say that AMD finally pushing out processors using DDR4 was the reason, but a few months ago I sold some used DDR3 sticks for more than I paid for them.
 

Handruin

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Doesn't even support NVMe :(

I feel like it might...what am I missing?

Their product PDF says:

M.2 (M key) circuits located on the Carrier board support any M.2 PCI Express M key
modules with any standard length (2230/2242/2260/2280 and 22110).
.........
Supports up to 4 M.2 PCI Express add-in modules (M key)
x4 PCI Express (Gen 3) connection to each M.2 circuit
One slot wide, half-height PCI Express board; x16 or x8 upstream PCI Express (Gen 3)
interface
Supports PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 Gbps) operation

The M Key M.2 supports either x4 PCIe or SATA.
 

sechs

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Are they for servers? Why not just use a single, high-performance PCIe card flash storage device?
Bandwidth and flexibility come to mind.

How many production x16 (let alone x8) SSD add-in cards are there? And how many of those are something other than smaller SSDs in a RAID 0?
 

LunarMist

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sechs

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I agree that things aren't nearly as bad as the author suggests.

We may not get major gains performance, but we should get decreasing price per gigabyte. I'd be okkay with that.
 

jtr1962

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They're looking solely at STRs, which is the one metric which largely doesn't matter for most users. The key metrics are total cost, cost per GB, and to a lesser extent access time. All other things being equal, most users will choose the lowest cost per GB. However, they're willing to pay a few multiples of that for much lower access times, especially if the total cost with a capacity they can live with is still under $100.

The bottom line here is SSD manufacturers seem to be focusing primarily on decreasing the cost per GB. That's hardly going to get users to flock back to spinning disks. In fact, I'd say nowadays unless your storage needs are an outlier there's not much reason to go with spinning disks. That's only going to be more true in the future as SSDs come down in price per GB, even if their performance remains flat. The way I see it we'll end up with two possible scenarios. One, the focus will be solely on decreasing SSD cost per GB. This will mean much larger, cheaper SSDs but STRs will remain flat and access times may even increase. However, access times will still be an order of magnitude or two better than HDDs. So long as cost per GB is similar to HDDs, or not much more, nobody will want HDDs, except maybe in enterprise bulk storage where every penny counts. The other scenario would be less of a focus on decreasing cost per GB to the extent of all else. SSDs might continue to cost a few multiples per GB of what HDDs do, but they will offer access times three orders of magnitude (or more) less. And even with the latter scenario, cost per GB will still decrease, just not as aggressively. This will mean larger capacity SSDs at the sweet $100 or lower price point. Again, I'm not seeing people currently using SSDs flocking back to HDDs. There probably wouldn't be as many new SSD adopters in this scenario, but lots of people with 1TB or lower storage needs will flock to SSDs as their sole storage solution. Those with larger storage needs might have an SSD for the boot disk but HDDs for bulk storage.

The fact is other than STRs, HDDs are NOT getting any faster, nor can they get much faster. Their sole selling point is low price per GB. In the unlikely scenario SSD performance got so bad that SSDs matched HDDs in terms of access times and STRs, that still doesn't mean a mass return to HDDs. Rather, it would mean SSD manufacturers pulled out all the stops lowering cost per GB, with the end result that SSDs cost the same or less per GB than HDDs. End result, HDDs still lose. The fact is HDDs are a near obsolete technology. HDD manufacturers have already used most everything in their bag of tricks. The few things left, most of which solely increase capacity, don't even lower cost per GB by much.
 

LunarMist

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They're looking solely at STRs, which is the one metric which largely doesn't matter for most users. The key metrics are total cost, cost per GB, and to a lesser extent access time. All other things being equal, most users will choose the lowest cost per GB. However, they're willing to pay a few multiples of that for much lower access times, especially if the total cost with a capacity they can live with is still under $100.

The bottom line here is SSD manufacturers seem to be focusing primarily on decreasing the cost per GB. That's hardly going to get users to flock back to spinning disks. In fact, I'd say nowadays unless your storage needs are an outlier there's not much reason to go with spinning disks. That's only going to be more true in the future as SSDs come down in price per GB, even if their performance remains flat. The way I see it we'll end up with two possible scenarios. One, the focus will be solely on decreasing SSD cost per GB. This will mean much larger, cheaper SSDs but STRs will remain flat and access times may even increase. However, access times will still be an order of magnitude or two better than HDDs. So long as cost per GB is similar to HDDs, or not much more, nobody will want HDDs, except maybe in enterprise bulk storage where every penny counts. The other scenario would be less of a focus on decreasing cost per GB to the extent of all else. SSDs might continue to cost a few multiples per GB of what HDDs do, but they will offer access times three orders of magnitude (or more) less. And even with the latter scenario, cost per GB will still decrease, just not as aggressively. This will mean larger capacity SSDs at the sweet $100 or lower price point. Again, I'm not seeing people currently using SSDs flocking back to HDDs. There probably wouldn't be as many new SSD adopters in this scenario, but lots of people with 1TB or lower storage needs will flock to SSDs as their sole storage solution. Those with larger storage needs might have an SSD for the boot disk but HDDs for bulk storage.

The fact is other than STRs, HDDs are NOT getting any faster, nor can they get much faster. Their sole selling point is low price per GB. In the unlikely scenario SSD performance got so bad that SSDs matched HDDs in terms of access times and STRs, that still doesn't mean a mass return to HDDs. Rather, it would mean SSD manufacturers pulled out all the stops lowering cost per GB, with the end result that SSDs cost the same or less per GB than HDDs. End result, HDDs still lose. The fact is HDDs are a near obsolete technology. HDD manufacturers have already used most everything in their bag of tricks. The few things left, most of which solely increase capacity, don't even lower cost per GB by much.

Every year it is the same, but eventually you will be correct that HDDs are dead. :)
Of course Joe Blow consumer just wants a fast internet and to store everything on the clods, so he doesn't need any local HDDs.
All that data needs to reside somewhere and SSDs are still too expensive per PB for bulk storage.
 

jtr1962

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