What we need right now isn't faster SSD, it is cheaper SSD. Those M.2 variant are still expensive. We need to see below $100 for 512GB SSD, hopefully this year.
We can have it all. Are you thinking just about capacity? Because QLC NAND drives are around the corner. SLC, MLC, TLC and QLC each have their pros and cons. Each product has a use case. And this (basically SLC NAND) would work well as a performance drive (OS or cache) with bulk storage (QLC NAND, or whatever HDDs, if that's your thing).
Personally, I wouldn't touch QLC is they paid me. TLC is bad enough for write endurance. QLC is going to be horrible. I don't anticipate QLC gaining all that much traction in the SATA or NVMe storage space. Perhaps it will be good for USB drives.
I have yet to see any evidence of TLC drives aside from the 840/840 EVO having any endurance problems.
In the case of the 840/840 EVO we know it originates from it's quite unique combination of ultra-small lithography and TLC... and something that IMFT hasn't exhibited on their similarly small litho and TLC NAND.
I'm all for faster M.2 NVMe drives doing their own thing while SATA remains the budget option, it makes sense from an enthusiast POV... But the consumer/laptop market is gonna impact the price of the former anyway.
Since I'm a desktop user tho, I'm still fine with a smallish M.2 drive for the OS/apps (really, anything over 500GB is just overkill and even 256GB is fine), if I want faster storage for photo work I'll just keep adding 1-2TB SATA drives.
I paid $300-ish for 2x 1TB EVOs almost three years ago now (well, 2.5). Would be nice to be able to buy a 2TB MX500 for <$400 sometime this year! Tho I guess that's even more optimistic than 512GB/$100. This demand spike has really derailed progress.
Anandtech looked into it a few days ago. They confirmed that real-world performance was closer to around 3%. The 30% number basically only shows up in syscall benchmark situations. The rest of the time, your CPU just ends up showing slightly higher CPU usage (oh no... CPU usage went from 5% to 7%) with practically no performance degradation.
What I do not want is a 5 year warranty on these things
Before the 860 Pro was released, we were getting the 850 Pro (256GB) for around $120 @ Newegg
Today, all you can get is a refurbished 850 Pro without a decent warranty for $145 A new 850 Pro can still be bought in the Newegg marketplace for $175
A new 860 Pro is $140 but only has a 5 year warranty
The specs on the 860 Pro do not suggest a noticeable speed difference over the 850 Pro yet they are claiming much improved reliability?
Really?
If it is more reliable, then why was the warranty dropped from 10 years to 5?
I would think that higher reliability would get us a better warranty since the speed difference is all but non-existent and irrelevant
When we can now get power supplies with a 12 year warranty, I would like to think I could guarantee my data for the same period of time
Back up those reliability claims with a warranty to match Samsung!
I want faster. I'd probably consider a 240GB if the price was right, for the OS drive. I'd install everything else on a larger, somewhat slower secondary M.2 drive.
It's basically NAND (MLC or TLC) that's treated like SLC because of the inherent performance, latency and endurance benefit. SLC is 1 bit per cell. MLC is 2 bits per cell, TLC is 3 bits per cell and QLC is 4 bits per cell (it's a hierarchy from $$$ to $, etc). SLC was always extremely expensive in comparison. So it gets closer to Optane but a bit cheaper. Optane using phase change tech rather than traditional NAND to get it's inherent benefits, so costs more.
I have not seen those slides but if they have really mentioned that I suppose "real SLC" is a hell of a lot sexier (from both a marketing perspective and in general) than "pseudo-SLC". More likely you do not recall correctly and it was rather "the first gen of Z-NAND will be treated as SLC, while the second one will be treated as MLC". That neatly avoids both the "pseudo-" and the (fake) "real" part ;)
I'm simply taking Drive Writes Per Day assuming it means FULL drive writes, multiply by days of service expected, multiply by capacity in TB. 15,000 TBW just makes no sense to me. A 960 EVO has 400 TBW warranty...
This is an enterprise drive. Its 30 DWPD rating is on the high side even for enterprise SSDs. (The warranty period is probably 5 years.) Consumer drives are usually rated for 0.1-0.3 DWPD, sometimes up to 0.5 DWPD.
This doesn't mean that the enterprise drive will actually survive two orders of magnitude more writes than a consumer SSD. But the warranty will stay valid for 100 times more write volume than the consumer drive's warranty.
If you read the small print in consumer SSD warranties, there is often a remark that warranty is limited to PC applications. If it's put inside a server and used in server application, there is actually no warranty at all.
Yeah, but those warranty clauses tend to be on a much shakier legal basis than limits based on objective measurements—the lines between consumer, workstation and server workloads are a lot more debatable than the question of whether a SMART indicator has passed a certain threshold. That's why vendors need to further protect themselves by drastically understating endurance ratings on consumer drives.
They are producing the wrong drives for the scarce io lanes.
We are wasting 4 lane 4GB/s links, on mainstream devices which rarely do many 2GB/s reads, and NEVER do 2GB/s writes.
We halve the number of drives we could have if 2 lanes were used, yet benefit little.
The only interim speed between sata & nvme devices it seems, is to use 4 lane nvme devices, but use 4x slower/older pcie gen 2 lanes (yuk).
Afaik, there is no way to bifurcate pcie 3 slots down to 2x pcie gen 3 lanes (outside (yuk latency) chipsets). Pcie 3 x2 is a modern interface that ~matches mainstream drive's capabilities/economics,
Afaik, a 4 normal lane nvme runs fine on 2 lanes. Just less bandwidth available.
This would be a sweet spot even humble makers could realistically compete in. A model category that can read & write reliably at ~2GB/s, and current lane starved intel & amd desktops can consider more drives or a raid pair, for far better speed than the best 4 lane drive.
Oooh, with that low latency it would outperform Optane because it has faster speeds but if latency is the same level of Optane or enough to compensate the difference. :D
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iwod - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
What we need right now isn't faster SSD, it is cheaper SSD. Those M.2 variant are still expensive.We need to see below $100 for 512GB SSD, hopefully this year.
deil - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
We need 512 SSD with at least 500/500 RW for 99$ :)Gasaraki88 - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
I want it for $3069369369 - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
I want it for $3.50edzieba - Wednesday, March 28, 2018 - link
If manufacturers aren't paying me to take it off their hands, it's anti-consumer!!1!bug77 - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
I wouldn't mind improved 4k random reads, but yes, a $200-ish 2TB drive would be high on my priorities list.oxidius - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
I've been able to get a Micron 1100 2TB for$360CAD ($280USD) this week.So it's not entirely impossible.
Reflex - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Yup that's a great drive, grabbed one for mass storage myself.qrpike - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
WHERE..... Links!Reflex - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LB05YOO/Current price is $360m which is $20 less than I paid for it last month.
ezridah - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
You can snag it for about $300 on eBay:https://www.ebay.com/itm/Micron-1100-2TB-SSD-SATA-...
Use promo code PREPSPRING:
https://pages.ebay.com/promo/2018/0327/7427.html
CheapSushi - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
We can have it all. Are you thinking just about capacity? Because QLC NAND drives are around the corner. SLC, MLC, TLC and QLC each have their pros and cons. Each product has a use case. And this (basically SLC NAND) would work well as a performance drive (OS or cache) with bulk storage (QLC NAND, or whatever HDDs, if that's your thing).dgingeri - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Personally, I wouldn't touch QLC is they paid me. TLC is bad enough for write endurance. QLC is going to be horrible. I don't anticipate QLC gaining all that much traction in the SATA or NVMe storage space. Perhaps it will be good for USB drives.brunis.dk - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Pretty sure someone said the exact same thing for MLC vs TLC about 2 years ago ..iter - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Yeah, the way things are going soon enough people will be content sleeping on the floor and eating old bread and tap water :)Reflex - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
It depends on the usage. I'd take large QLC SSD's for usage in NAS applications where you don't write frequently but you do read often.ZeDestructor - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
I have yet to see any evidence of TLC drives aside from the 840/840 EVO having any endurance problems.In the case of the 840/840 EVO we know it originates from it's quite unique combination of ultra-small lithography and TLC... and something that IMFT hasn't exhibited on their similarly small litho and TLC NAND.
Impulses - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
I'm all for faster M.2 NVMe drives doing their own thing while SATA remains the budget option, it makes sense from an enthusiast POV... But the consumer/laptop market is gonna impact the price of the former anyway.Since I'm a desktop user tho, I'm still fine with a smallish M.2 drive for the OS/apps (really, anything over 500GB is just overkill and even 256GB is fine), if I want faster storage for photo work I'll just keep adding 1-2TB SATA drives.
I paid $300-ish for 2x 1TB EVOs almost three years ago now (well, 2.5). Would be nice to be able to buy a 2TB MX500 for <$400 sometime this year! Tho I guess that's even more optimistic than 512GB/$100. This demand spike has really derailed progress.
Luckz - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
What's wrong with the Micron 1100?brunis.dk - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Dont forget to get a new CPU so you dont loose 30% performance on NVMe from hw bugs.UnemployedMerchant - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
That much on Intel ??? They havent fixed it yet?ZeDestructor - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Anandtech looked into it a few days ago. They confirmed that real-world performance was closer to around 3%. The 30% number basically only shows up in syscall benchmark situations. The rest of the time, your CPU just ends up showing slightly higher CPU usage (oh no... CPU usage went from 5% to 7%) with practically no performance degradation.ಬುಲ್ವಿಂಕಲ್ ಜೆ ಮೂಸ್ - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
What I do not want is a 5 year warranty on these thingsBefore the 860 Pro was released, we were getting the 850 Pro (256GB) for around $120 @ Newegg
Today, all you can get is a refurbished 850 Pro without a decent warranty for $145
A new 850 Pro can still be bought in the Newegg marketplace for $175
A new 860 Pro is $140 but only has a 5 year warranty
The specs on the 860 Pro do not suggest a noticeable speed difference over the 850 Pro yet they are claiming much improved reliability?
Really?
If it is more reliable, then why was the warranty dropped from 10 years to 5?
I would think that higher reliability would get us a better warranty since the speed difference is all but non-existent and irrelevant
When we can now get power supplies with a 12 year warranty, I would like to think I could guarantee my data for the same period of time
Back up those reliability claims with a warranty to match Samsung!
I'm tired of paying more for less
MrSpadge - Wednesday, March 28, 2018 - link
> I would like to think I could guarantee my data for the same period of timeAn attractive thought for sure, but the warrenty is not going to protect your data in the event of a drive failure.
Alexvrb - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
I want faster. I'd probably consider a 240GB if the price was right, for the OS drive. I'd install everything else on a larger, somewhat slower secondary M.2 drive.evancox10 - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
An explanation of what a "Z-SSD" is would helpjordanclock - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
From the article:"Samsung has been pitching their Z-SSD SZ985 using Z-NAND memory as a low-latency competitor to Intel's 3D XPoint-based Optane SSDs."
It's a new design for NAND for even better performance than what is currently in widespread use.
CheapSushi - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
It's basically NAND (MLC or TLC) that's treated like SLC because of the inherent performance, latency and endurance benefit. SLC is 1 bit per cell. MLC is 2 bits per cell, TLC is 3 bits per cell and QLC is 4 bits per cell (it's a hierarchy from $$$ to $, etc). SLC was always extremely expensive in comparison. So it gets closer to Optane but a bit cheaper. Optane using phase change tech rather than traditional NAND to get it's inherent benefits, so costs more.eddieobscurant - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
first gen z-nand is actually real SLC. The 2nd gen will be mlc. Samsung already have mentioned that on their slidesSantoval - Friday, March 30, 2018 - link
I have not seen those slides but if they have really mentioned that I suppose "real SLC" is a hell of a lot sexier (from both a marketing perspective and in general) than "pseudo-SLC". More likely you do not recall correctly and it was rather "the first gen of Z-NAND will be treated as SLC, while the second one will be treated as MLC". That neatly avoids both the "pseudo-" and the (fake) "real" part ;)hansmuff - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
So how do I calculate endurance in TBW, assuming a 3 year warranty?I tried the following and it doesn't quite look right:
TBW = 30 [DWPD] * 3*365 [DAYS WARRANTY] * (480 / 1024) [#TB ON DISK] = 15398.44 TBW.
I'm simply taking Drive Writes Per Day assuming it means FULL drive writes, multiply by days of service expected, multiply by capacity in TB. 15,000 TBW just makes no sense to me. A 960 EVO has 400 TBW warranty...
So how do I do this right?
Billy Tallis - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
This is an enterprise drive. Its 30 DWPD rating is on the high side even for enterprise SSDs. (The warranty period is probably 5 years.) Consumer drives are usually rated for 0.1-0.3 DWPD, sometimes up to 0.5 DWPD.This doesn't mean that the enterprise drive will actually survive two orders of magnitude more writes than a consumer SSD. But the warranty will stay valid for 100 times more write volume than the consumer drive's warranty.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
If you read the small print in consumer SSD warranties, there is often a remark that warranty is limited to PC applications. If it's put inside a server and used in server application, there is actually no warranty at all.Billy Tallis - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Yeah, but those warranty clauses tend to be on a much shakier legal basis than limits based on objective measurements—the lines between consumer, workstation and server workloads are a lot more debatable than the question of whether a SMART indicator has passed a certain threshold. That's why vendors need to further protect themselves by drastically understating endurance ratings on consumer drives.hansmuff - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
OK, I suppose it makes some sense then. I thought those would be consumer drives.Intel's Optane SSD DC P4800X datacenter drive for example boasts 41.0 PBW, or 41,000 TBW. That brings the Samsung figure back to reason.
msroadkill612 - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
Well I do wish they would ask me :(.They have nvme all wrong.
They are producing the wrong drives for the scarce io lanes.
We are wasting 4 lane 4GB/s links, on mainstream devices which rarely do many 2GB/s reads, and NEVER do 2GB/s writes.
We halve the number of drives we could have if 2 lanes were used, yet benefit little.
The only interim speed between sata & nvme devices it seems, is to use 4 lane nvme devices, but use 4x slower/older pcie gen 2 lanes (yuk).
Afaik, there is no way to bifurcate pcie 3 slots down to 2x pcie gen 3 lanes (outside (yuk latency) chipsets). Pcie 3 x2 is a modern interface that ~matches mainstream drive's capabilities/economics,
Afaik, a 4 normal lane nvme runs fine on 2 lanes. Just less bandwidth available.
This would be a sweet spot even humble makers could realistically compete in. A model category that can read & write reliably at ~2GB/s, and current lane starved intel & amd desktops can consider more drives or a raid pair, for far better speed than the best 4 lane drive.
If there is a way, i would love to hear it?
letumexordo - Wednesday, December 5, 2018 - link
Oooh, with that low latency it would outperform Optane because it has faster speeds but if latency is the same level of Optane or enough to compensate the difference. :DEh, nevermind. It just paired with 800P... lol.