SSDs - State of the Product?

[Mercutio]

I think we're all waiting for a sea change in technologies that are presently considered exotic because the current marketplace isn't directed toward our interests any longer. We want 4k screens and massive SSDs and the market thinks anything that isn't a mobile technology isn't worthy of investment.

Too bad really.

 

[jtr1962]

I think we're all waiting for a sea change in technologies that are presently considered exotic because the current marketplace isn't directed toward our interests any longer. We want 4k screens and massive SSDs and the market thinks anything that isn't a mobile technology isn't worthy of investment.

Too bad really.

I think people will soon tire of trying to surf the internet on a 7" screen. I personally don't see how that every caught on in the first place. Besides that, there are plenty of CAD users who would appreciate 4K, or even 8K screens. And not all of them want big ass 30+" displays either. In many work settings the person is stuck in a cubicle sitting 18" or 20" from their screen. That's close enough to easily see pixels unless they're smaller than about 0.1mm.

The massive SSDs will come as people want to store more home videos on their mobile devices. It's only a matter of time before something better than flash memory in terms of cost/density/lifetime comes along. When that happens, look for huge SSDs which eventually reach price parity with mechanical disks.

 

[ddrueding]

All my users that I've been talking to about 4k screens today wanted 45-50" screens 2-3 feet away. The idea was not to see the whole thing at once, but to actually treat it as a desktop, with windows open all over the place.

 

[jtr1962]

Nobody has their keyboard right in front of the display any more? I wouldn't even physically have the space to have a display 3 feet away. Well, I'll just have to wait and hope 4K trickles down to smaller sizes. Too bad 4:3 is dead for all intents and purposes. A 4000x3000 display about 21" or 22" would really be what I'd love.

 

[LunarMist]

Wrong thread?

 

[ddrueding]

There was a bit of a derailment, but I think we're good now. I could move the posts, but I don't think it matters.

 

[LunarMist]

Apparently the situation is worse than we thought.

 

[ddrueding]

"Worse" meaning a slower adoption rate?

 

[LunarMist]

"Worse" meaning a slower adoption rate?

Yes. I was hoping for larger volume and lower prices sooner rather than later.

 

[jtr1962]

I'm not sure any prediction that far in advance is going to be accurate. 5 years in this industry is an eternity. It could be we have some breakthrough or some new form of NV RAM and prices per GB of SSDs fall much more rapidly. IMO, we're at the point where SSDs are inexpensive enough for every system to use one for a boot drive, with conventional HDD being used for bulk storage. Down the road, there may even be two types of SSDs-one which has extremely low access times and can serve as a boot drive, another with longer access times and perhaps a smaller number of write cycles which can serve as bulk storage. I've little doubt once we perfect stacking chips in the same physical package, we may be seeing SSDs in the tens or hundreds of terabytes.

 

[Bozo]

It is also a matter of trust. I just don't trust the SSDs enough to use them in a manutacturing plant.

 

[ddrueding]

It is also a matter of trust. I just don't trust the SSDs enough to use them in a manutacturing plant.

That is interesting. Long ago I replaced all my industrial computers' drives with SSDs. These machines are in dirty, nasty environments without climate control and I keep airflow through the case as low as possible to minimize dust/dirt/cement powder buildup. Some of the machines don't have any specific intake or exhaust fans at all, just one circulating air in the chassis and some vents for convection to push the hottest air out of the chassis. This wouldn't be possible with the heat of even a 5400RPM drive.

 

[Bozo]

In our situation we gather data from a process, massage it with propriatary software ( also read-write ) , then send it to the next process. Usually there is only a couple days of data on each machine. This cycle, collect-massage-send- & delete goes on 24/7.
We would only need a 60GB drive to do all this. But using a drive this small would mean using the same area of the drive over and over. I could install a larger drive, but the constant write-read-delete cycle makes me nervious. I'll let someone else test it first.
I have used SSDs in some applications. I installed an SSD in a Zotac Nano. It is now in an office, sitting behind a monitor. If it fails here, it's an inconvienance. If it fails in the plant, it's lost production.

 

[ddrueding]

For that environment I would be all over a RAM drive for the data and a small SSD to occasionally sync to.

 

[Newtun]

PNY 120GB SSD Deal - $88

From Arstechnica, http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/thursday-dealmaster-has-a-120gb-ssd-for-88.

Deal through Dell (but does involve a $20 rebate). From Dell, "The 120 GB Prevail SATA III Solid State Drive from PNY® Technologies combines security and performance, reliability and low power consumption to make the ideal storage drive."

I'm so tempted, but I haven't seen PNY mentioned often in SSD reviews, so reliability might be questionable.

 

[Mercutio]

I bought several Samsung 840s earlier in the week from Amazon for $89. I believe that was an everyday price.

 

[LunarMist]

Where can I get the 960GB drive? They don't seem to be in stock.

What is the story on this drive? They were out for a week or so in April, and nothing since. :cursin:

 

[Stereodude]

What is the story on this drive? They were out for a week or so in April, and nothing since. :cursin:

They're waiting for you to buy something else. Then they'll flood the channel with them.

 

[LunarMist]

They're waiting for you to buy something else. Then they'll flood the channel with them.

I'd be happy to buy an Intel or Samsung 1TB SSD, but there aren't any.

 

[LunarMist]

Still no Crucial. I really don't understand it. :bibber: Has the 960GB drive been cancelled for some bizarre reason?

 

[LunarMist]

It is finally in stock, gut they hiked the price.

 

[Stereodude]

It is finally in stock, gut they hiked the price.

What? You want to be able to have your cake and eat it to?

 

[LunarMist]

What? You want to be able to have your cake and eat it to?

No, I don't eat cake. I hope the price will decrease after several stores receive stocks.

 

[LunarMist]

:salut:And now there are two. :beer:

 

[Howell]

Two what? Is two bigger or smaller than before?

 

[Handruin]

Two what? Is two bigger or smaller than before?

The way I interpreted it is that there are now two SSD drives at the 1TB capacity.

 

[Will Rickards]

Yes the new samsung 840 evo looks tempting even though it is 19nm TLC nand.

 

[P5-133XL]

still vapor-ware. There will be a true choice when both are shipping.

 

[LunarMist]

Two what? Is two bigger or smaller than before?

Two choices in ~1 TB SSDs.

 

[Stereodude]

TLC nand.

As if MLC wasn't bad enough.

 

[Handruin]

As if MLC wasn't bad enough.

Has MLC proven to be bad?

 

[LunarMist]

The evo should be fine. The TLC 840 is sufficient for many purposes and this is a higher density version of that.

 

[LunarMist]

still vapor-ware. There will be a true choice when both are shipping.

It cannot be vaporware yet. Vaporware is a product that is not available on schedule or ever.

 

[Stereodude]

Has MLC proven to be bad?

In terms of read write cycles and data retention, it's not as good as SLC. TLC takes it a step further into la-la land.

Where reliability / durability matters, like in an car's engine controller, body computer, cluster, etc in a car it's all SLC flash. That's not a coincidence.

 

[LunarMist]

I thought that SSD read cycles were non-destructive and that only the write cycles limit the product life. :scratch:

 

[Stereodude]

I thought that SSD read cycles were non-destructive and that only the write cycles limit the product life. :scratch:

Not exactly. A flash cell is a very tricky animal. It's a very analog process. It stores charge and the charge slowly leaks out. As the charge leaks, the voltage of the cell drops and eventually you can't tell a one charge level from another. The charge always leaks. It's just a matter of how fast. The amount of wear (write cycles) on a flash cell affects how fast the charge leaks. The storage temperature also affects how fast the charge leaks. SLC flash stores one bit per cells by keeping the cell at one of 2 voltages. MLC flash stores two bits per cell by keeping the cell at one of 4 voltages. TLC stores three bits per cell by keeping the cell at one of 8 voltages. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see the problem with MLC and TLC flash. The more discrete voltage levels you're trying to store the more susceptible you are to charge leakage. A SLC cell can accommodate considerably more charge leakage than a MLC or TLC cell. Likewise a MLC cell can accommodate more charge leakage than a TLC cell. Further, as the flash process geometries shrink you're storing less and less charge because the gates in the flash are getting smaller and smaller, which again means your more affected by charge leakage.

 

[jtr1962]

Don't some SSDs deal with the leakage issue by "refreshing" charge levels when they're active? I'm guessing it works as follows: the entire drive is read maybe once daily during periods in between reads/writes. Any cells where the measured voltage is trending towards marginal levels are refreshed. My guess is this doesn't increase wear by much. Perhaps you might need to refresh only a few cells each day. My understanding is without power, cells retain charge anywhere from a few months to around 10 years. In other words, SSDs aren't an ideal media to archive data to unless they will be periodically powered up.

 

[Stereodude]

Don't some SSDs deal with the leakage issue by "refreshing" charge levels when they're active?

Not that I'm aware of. AFAIK, you can't refresh the charge level in a cell. You can only write an erased cell. So, you could copy something to RAM, erase the flash, and write it back, but that would also induce wear.

I'm guessing it works as follows: the entire drive is read maybe once daily during periods in between reads/writes. Any cells where the measured voltage is trending towards marginal levels are refreshed. My guess is this doesn't increase wear by much. Perhaps you might need to refresh only a few cells each day. My understanding is without power, cells retain charge anywhere from a few months to around 10 years. In other words, SSDs aren't an ideal media to archive data to unless they will be periodically powered up.

Very good SLC flash can have 20+ years of retention even after it's been written to thousands of times. However, I don't think the flash used in any SSD is of that caliber because it's tuned for performance, not retention and write cycles.

 

[LunarMist]

Well of course the TLC is not good for heavy use. My 500MB 840 seems to be fine so far, but it sees limited use. I would not put anything critical on it.
Given the estimated price of the 840 evo, I'd rather get another Crucial 960GB and live with the slightly smaller drive. It's good to see some competition and we can hope for reduced prices eventually.

 

[Chewy509]

Out of interest, are there any consumer orientated SLC based drives left on the market? Everything I've read up on recently, has all consumer grade stuff as either MLC or TLC.