SSDs - State of the Product?

[udaman]

I'd just like cheap, low-capacity ones that I can RAID for a Photoshop scratch disk. Panoramas hurt my computer too much .

Define 'cheap', that's a relative term, like camera lenses, <10$ Zinfandels v $20+...all 'cheap' compared to top growth Burgundy or Bordeaux, 2005 Petrus is $5k/btl, 2005 Romanee Conti is ~$10k/btl.

If you're not too cheap to get more RAM, you'd be better served by max'in RAM your MB will accommodate, less amount PS has to go to slower SSD or HD the better, RAM is still much faster than either.

OCZ 128GB MLC SSD linked in post above too expensive @479USD, considering you'll get about the same performance as RAID 0 with 2 smaller capacity SSD's? Or wait for Samsung's 256GB SSD later? this year, with supposedly 200MB/s read (forget what the Write speed is, go look in my thread on that one), as I'm sure a less expensive 128 or 64GB model will be offered with similar R/W performance.

a 128GB drive (new to OCZ) costs less than half the price of the company's normal 64GB drive. Despite the reduced cost, the drives are claimed to be ten times faster in seeking data than a rotating notebook hard drive and transfer that data more quickly as well, reading between 120 to 135 Mbps and writing at between 80 to 93 Mbps. The drives are also claimed to be as reliable as the pricier drives, running for about 1.5 million hours of continuous use while still consuming half as much power as a traditional hard disk. All the Core Series drives should be available soon, with prices of $169 for a 32GB drive, $259 for a 64GB version, and a $479 for a flagship 128GB version.

 

[Stereodude]

More "low end" competition.

 

[timwhit]

More "low end" competition.

Those are much cheaper for a very good read speed and competitive write speeds. I have said in the past that when I can get a good 32GB SSD for $300 I would buy it. If I have the money in a month or two I will definitely consider picking one of those up. I just have a feeling that prices will continue to drop very quickly and sizes will continue to grow as well. Then, I will be stuck with an inferior drive when someone releases some great new drive two months later.

That's always a problem when buying computer equipment, but SSDs appear to be much worse in that regard right now than almost any other component I can think of.

 

[udaman]

Those are much cheaper for a very good read speed and competitive write speeds. I have said in the past that when I can get a good 32GB SSD for $300 I would buy it. If I have the money in a month or two I will definitely consider picking one of those up. I just have a feeling that prices will continue to drop very quickly and sizes will continue to grow as well. Then, I will be stuck with an inferior drive when someone releases some great new drive two months later.

That's always a problem when buying computer equipment, but SSDs appear to be much worse in that regard right now than almost any other component I can think of.

You can partly "blame" Apple...iPod/Phone users for that, lol. Ridata/OCZ may very well just be (same R/W specs) using Samsung chips inside...Samsung announced volume production of 64 & 128GB MLC SSD's a week ago, plans still to offer 256GB SSD by year's end (higher performance).

I haven't read what process any of these new devices are being manufactured on, was at 50nm earlier in the year, 40nm Samsung Charge Trap tech seems still born 2years later. Fujitsu & Seagate seem to think that by the early part of the next decade, HD tech will allow them to push up to 6.5TB in 3.5in form, IIRC 1.5GB in 2.5in. Keep in mind not many consumers are going to want or need to buy performance for the large disparity as a function of cost/GB when all new 2.5in HDs come in at less than $300 initially, and quickly drop to ~$200 range, no matter the capacity. We'll have to see what the 500GB 7.2k Seagate laptop sells for 3 months after release, but I'll bet it will not be more than $300.

In a bit of fantasy in the last few days, story has been spreading like wildfires, with no link to a Japanese source/publication:

Japanese Scientists Invent Durable Flash Memory Which Can Last 100+ Years

The researchers hope to bring the technology to market within a couple years.

Yeah, yeah, just like Charge Trap, lol.

^^quoting source, a blog :

"Japanese bofffins" ...wtf, lol

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2221522/flash-chip-long-life-created

 

[Gilbo]

If you're not too cheap to get more RAM, you'd be better served by max'in RAM your MB will accommodate, less amount PS has to go to slower SSD or HD the better, RAM is still much faster than either.

Ya, unfortunately I'm maxed at 8GB.

OCZ 128GB MLC SSD linked in post above too expensive @479USD, considering you'll get about the same performance as RAID 0 with 2 smaller capacity SSD's? Or wait for Samsung's 256GB SSD later? this year, with supposedly 200MB/s read (forget what the Write speed is, go look in my thread on that one), as I'm sure a less expensive 128 or 64GB model will be offered with similar R/W performance.

Basically I want to buy a few, very low-capacity drives, with top-performing flash and RAID them.

 

[ddrueding]

Basically I want to buy a few, very low-capacity drives, with top-performing flash and RAID them.

Make sure the RAID card can handle it. I suspect that my card is the bottleneck, and the onboard RAID didn't do any better.

 

[Mercutio]

If you're doing RAID5 with those SSDs, your card is absolutely the bottleneck. The 300MHz CPUs they stick on RAID controllers can only do so much, especially compared to the unused cores of the main CPU in your rig.

 

[ddrueding]

Nope all the SSDs I have are in RAID-0 configurations. The 750s are in RAID-5.

 

[Bozo]

Nope all the SSDs I have are in RAID-0 configurations. The 750s are in RAID-5.

Wouldn't SSD's in RAID 0 make the RAID card an even bigger bottleneck?

Bozo :joker:

 

[ddrueding]

Wouldn't SSD's in RAID 0 make the RAID card an even bigger bottleneck?

Bozo :joker:

One at a time the RAID card can handle it fine. Having two in RAID-0 nearly doubled performance, but adding the third only increased another 15% or so, so I think I then hit the bottleneck. I'm fairly certain I'm getting the most speed I can, I just don't think the drives are the weak link.

 

[Stereodude]

You folks are a bunch of lightweights with your RAID arrays. Check out this guy.

 

[ddrueding]

You folks are a bunch of lightweights with your RAID arrays. Check out this guy.

Yup, I concede. But I bet his is much louder. My Movies looks great, like something I was trying to write a while ago...

 

[Mercutio]

I've got 30TB in drives right now in some combination of RAID0 and RAID5 arrays (actually, RAID0 arrays that are rsync'd to RAID5), but I don't have any single array larger than 4TB so it doesn't really look that impressive.

Also, a lot of it is in crappy little 500GB drives.

 

[ddrueding]

If you mapped them all to the same machine, it would look pretty impressive.

 

[Bozo]

One at a time the RAID card can handle it fine. Having two in RAID-0 nearly doubled performance, but adding the third only increased another 15% or so, so I think I then hit the bottleneck. I'm fairly certain I'm getting the most speed I can, I just don't think the drives are the weak link.

I recently set up a box with two 3Ware RAID cards in it. When I entered the setup program during boot up, both cards showed up in the same setup page. I was wondering if two or more RAID cards could be set up as a single RAID 0 drive. That would eliminate the bottleneck.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Stereodude]

OCZ Core Series SSD Vs VelociRaptor, Sneak Peek!

 

[ddrueding]

Yup, I suspect that one of those will be phasing out my Raptor RAID-0 for games...maybe two in RAID-0 for all the OS/Apps/page...no wonder I don't have any money...

 

[Handruin]

Newegg lists the OCZ drive with the rebate, but out of stock until the 28th. I'll re-eval come Q4 when I plan to change a few things around with Nehalem. I figure I'll use it as a boot drive since most of the big media I keep stays on spindles. Right now I'm only using 15GB on my boot with all my apps installed.

 

[LunarMist]

Write performance looks to be mediocre. Any idea if the write access times are slow as with other mid-range SSDs? That seems to be a weakness which may not be important for the particular market. I'm more interested in write performance than read performance.

 

[timwhit]

Newegg lists the OCZ drive with the rebate, but out of stock until the 28th. I'll re-eval come Q4 when I plan to change a few things around with Nehalem. I figure I'll use it as a boot drive since most of the big media I keep stays on spindles. Right now I'm only using 15GB on my boot with all my apps installed.

That's an amazing price. I will be very interested to see how you like it after you get one. Unless Dave gets one first.

 

[ddrueding]

That's an amazing price. I will be very interested to see how you like it after you get one. Unless Dave gets one first.

Not me. I'm struggling a little at the moment, and won't be in a buying position for another couple months. Besides, I already have 3 SSDs, what are y'all waiting for?

 

[Mercutio]

I'd think about it, but honestly the only application for which I might need an SSD is to decrease level load times in City of Heroes, and that's probably not worth $600 to me.

 

[Handruin]

I was thinking I could use it to process pictures and when finished transfer them to slower storage...

 

[timwhit]

I just sold, then bought a new condo. I think that's reason enough for me to wait a couple months. If I hadn't done that, then I would probably be ordering this as soon as it was in stock.

Plus, I want to buy some type of HDTV and then build a HTPC first. My computer is pretty far away from the living room in the new place and I want to be able to push video/audio/etc to it. I might consider using a small SSD in the HTPC if it fits my budget. The HTPC probably won't require very much storage since all the my media files will be stored on a computer in the server room (3rd bedroom).

 

[Mercutio]

Circuit City has a 1080p 50" Samsung DLP set for $1000 this week. My 720p 60" Samsung DLP was $4000 five years ago.

 

[Gilbo]

Make sure the RAID card can handle it. I suspect that my card is the bottleneck, and the onboard RAID didn't do any better.

I'll just be using software RAID. The main CPU can push a couple GB/s . The Linux algorithm is designed to easily fit in an L1 cache; I doubt the Windows algorithm is as carefully tuned, but I'm sure it will be adequate.

 

[Fushigi]

120K IOPS, 700MBps read; 600 write. PCIe interface. 80-320GB available. Big bucks; I read $2400 for 80GB (the entry model).

 

[ddrueding]

Yep, I remember hearing about them about a year ago. They are going the wrong way, IMHO. Commodity storage will get really close really soon, and then they will have nothing.

 

[P5-133XL]

While I agree that commodity storage matters for the vast majority, there will always be a price premium for super-high performance too.

 

[ddrueding]

While I agree that commodity storage matters for the vast majority, there will always be a price premium for super-high performance too.

I agree, but my point is that this technology will not be the super-high performance for long enough. The commodity storage is increasing in performance so quickly, that this will be overshadowed long before it is profitable.

OT: Sweet, this is post #111111

 

[Bozo]

Is this a PCI-E card with a bunch of memory chips on it? If so, what happens when the power goes off?

Bozo :joker:

 

[timwhit]

It's NAND flash. So, it doesn't need power to retain data. I think most of the point of the card is to bypass the SATA bus and connect directly to PCI-E.

 

[jtr1962]

I agree, but my point is that this technology will not be the super-high performance for long enough. The commodity storage is increasing in performance so quickly, that this will be overshadowed long before it is profitable.

Yep, basically once SSDs reach price parity with magnetic disks, there will not be any premium performance market. For now some users are willing to pay a premium for either an SSD or a 15K magnetic disk only because these are much faster than commodity drives. But when commodity drives are all SSDs, this market disappears. The difference between a 12 ms and an 0.1 ms access time is huge. However, I don't think there will be any market for premium SSDs (0.01 ms access time?). Even to a power user, the difference between 0.1 and 0.01 ms just wouldn't be noticeable. And I'm sure the STRs of all SSDs will easily match that of the interface, making that irrelevant also.

 

[ddrueding]

And I'm sure the STRs of all SSDs will easily match that of the interface, making that irrelevant also.

That is why this particular device taps directly into the PCI-E slot, bypassing the slower interfaces. They also aren't really selling with access time or STR in mind, but with number of IOPS available. I still don't think they will be getting anywhere that the commodity stuff won't very soon.

 

[LOST6200]

Yep, basically once SSDs reach price parity with magnetic disks, there will not be any premium performance market.

NMo f'in way. Anyone likeme works in or with teh marketiering knwns taht manfactuere/distributors shuld have tiered product lineup with premoum, mid and lower offerings as well to maximumize retyrns. The biog cheap SSDs will have sl;opwer write cyleces and cheaper controllers with less iOs, ect.. For examplar, some buyers will want 5Tb with adequetes preforemance whe4reas others will want 1TB with top perfermance. such is the luife.

 

[udaman]

Houston...we have a problem

too lazy to C&P...see my post here:

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showpost.php?p=111239&postcount=2

 

[Gilbo]

Reviews of the Intel SSD are out from Techreport and Anandtech. Anandtech might be returning to form after a couple years of shoveling advertisers' shit...

Highlights:
---Check out the terrible performance of other MLC drives with random writes. The Intel drive has 2700x shorter latency than the OCZ core drive. Jesus. Looks like controllers are very important for SSDs.
---Despite the Intel drive's great performance SLC drives seem slightly better in multitasking. Specifically, loading applications while under load... which is where I personally would like to see performance improvements. It will be interesting to see how Intel's SLC drive due out later this year performs.
---Sequential performance is excellent as are random reads (again though, watch those random writes on non-Intel MLC SSDs).


Well, it's very interesting to see what Intel has brought to the table here. These things are still out of my price range, but I'm sure by this time next year I'll likely own one. One thing is for sure though: there's no way]/i] I'm buying a non-Intel MLC drive until the other manufacturers sort out that random write performance --it's like going back a decade in terms of performance... And no-one noticed this before? Come on benchmarking (benchmarketing?) community.

 

[Chewy509]

With all the new SSD's coming out, it's a little surprising that AMD hasn't mentioned anything considering they produce a bucket load of flash memory and have good relationships with various OEMs, etc?

 

[jtr1962]

Looks like controllers are very important for SSDs.

With SSDs, controllers are the drive in a much bigger way than with magnetic disks. Most flash memory chips of a given type (MLC or SLC) performs pretty similarly, say with a factor of 2 or 3 from best to worst. The controller and the algorithms used make all the difference between drives. For example, for sequential reads even if the individual chips aren't too fast if you can read enough chips in parallel then you can get blazing transfer rates. Random access is similar in that the controller needs to connect to the desired "sector" to be read in as little time as possible.

Right now it appears the SSD maufacturers are still on a steep learning curve. My guess is within a year or so the performance of SSDs starts to converge tightly around a median while the price per GB continues to fall.

0.089ms average write latency for the Intel drive? Seems like it'll make more sense for SSDs to use microseconds rather than milliseconds. And from a marketing standpoint it'll really make magnetic disks look like dogs (i.e. 12.7 ms = 12,700 µsec).

 

[Mercutio]

Ahem.

$99 slow ass OCZ 32GB SSD

Don't all click at once.