It's massively frustrating that Samsung makes a great product in the XP941 (and presumably the SM951) and just chooses not to sell it to the broader market.
It is frustrating, but not unexpected. Frankly it's a niche product. It can't be installed in most current laptops, so as an aftermarket upgrade it isn't realistic. Even with a PCIe adapter card system compatibility will vary and offering support for such a product is a pain. I'm am not the least bit surprised that they are solely targeting manufacturers and system integrators. They will make more money do that than they would selling to consumers since they would also needed to cover the costs of packaging, advertising, technical support, warranties, etc...
The reason behind of providing for OEMs only is avoiding high inventory (basically low inventory with high turnover with B-2-B, while the niche retail market is uncertain)
They only said they were looking forward to TLC V-NAND, not that it was in use. But it shouldn't be difficult to do. It's just the number of discrete voltage states that are configured for use in each cell. My guess is that they won't introduce it for a little while because it performs worse than MLC and because it offers better scalability down the road. As a new technology people will be willing to pay a premium. Once that subsides, TLC swoops in to save the day with higher density and/or help lower prices.
SM951 sounds killer. 4x pcie 3.0 & nvme. I now see the benefit of the asrock extreme 6 & 9. I just hope now that asus uses pcie 3 on their maximus formula impact VII pcie combo IV.
Because m.2 is still cutting edge and only win8.1 supports nvme out of the box. It may be the future, but in the present, it is still quite rare... We are also back into a format war, with next gen storage coming in m.2 (up to 4x pcie gen3), SATAexpress (up to 2x gen3, although most are gen2) and direct pcie (up to 16x pcie gen3 although storage so far tops at 8x gen2 or 4x gen3). So, sata is still king and it will take a bit to sort through the new contenders. My prognostic is the death of SATAe as m.2 will rule anything portable and pure pcie will rule the datacenter (both already exist and are sought after).
The real bottle neck is the willingness to parallelize. Enterprise drives already saturate bandwidth for pcie x4 gen3 at large transfer sizes. Small size (iops at 4k) is the real differentiator. And honestly, it is mostly irrelevant for client computers (server drives on pcie nvme can now reach several 100k iops).
Please let the price be $1.50 (or lower) per GB! If so, I would start buying these immediately for my servers!
It seems the 845 DC Pro would be a better long-term endurance choice than the Intel DC S3500 that I'm buying now, and a cheaper price would make it a more appealing option than the Intel DC S3700.
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tspacie - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
It's massively frustrating that Samsung makes a great product in the XP941 (and presumably the SM951) and just chooses not to sell it to the broader market.Minion4Hire - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
It is frustrating, but not unexpected. Frankly it's a niche product. It can't be installed in most current laptops, so as an aftermarket upgrade it isn't realistic. Even with a PCIe adapter card system compatibility will vary and offering support for such a product is a pain. I'm am not the least bit surprised that they are solely targeting manufacturers and system integrators. They will make more money do that than they would selling to consumers since they would also needed to cover the costs of packaging, advertising, technical support, warranties, etc......but I feel your pain. I want one too.
hung2900 - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
The reason behind of providing for OEMs only is avoiding high inventory (basically low inventory with high turnover with B-2-B, while the niche retail market is uncertain)Guspaz - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
I'm really looking forward to an 850 EVO. TLC will reduce cost, while V-NAND will increase reliability due to bigger process size...Mr Perfect - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
I don't think they have TLC V-NAND. The article reads like the Evo has traditional TLC and the Pro has V-NAND.Minion4Hire - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
They only said they were looking forward to TLC V-NAND, not that it was in use. But it shouldn't be difficult to do. It's just the number of discrete voltage states that are configured for use in each cell. My guess is that they won't introduce it for a little while because it performs worse than MLC and because it offers better scalability down the road. As a new technology people will be willing to pay a premium. Once that subsides, TLC swoops in to save the day with higher density and/or help lower prices.Gigaplex - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
Pay a premium for the EVO line? It's supposed to be the value line457R4LDR34DKN07 - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
SM951 sounds killer. 4x pcie 3.0 & nvme. I now see the benefit of the asrock extreme 6 & 9. I just hope now that asus uses pcie 3 on their maximus formula impact VII pcie combo IV.457R4LDR34DKN07 - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
You didn't mention SM953. That looks like a overprovisioned version8steve8 - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
sm951 looks exciting. m.2 NVMe, why don't they market this to consumers? If it's shipping now, it'd be unquestionably the top drive.frenchy_2001 - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
Because m.2 is still cutting edge and only win8.1 supports nvme out of the box.It may be the future, but in the present, it is still quite rare...
We are also back into a format war, with next gen storage coming in m.2 (up to 4x pcie gen3), SATAexpress (up to 2x gen3, although most are gen2) and direct pcie (up to 16x pcie gen3 although storage so far tops at 8x gen2 or 4x gen3).
So, sata is still king and it will take a bit to sort through the new contenders.
My prognostic is the death of SATAe as m.2 will rule anything portable and pure pcie will rule the datacenter (both already exist and are sought after).
extide - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
m.2 and SATAe are basically the same just different connectors for different form factors. SATAe can go up to 4x PCIe 3.0 also.Smuggy - Monday, July 7, 2014 - link
So existing motherboards etc will be compatible assuming you have an m.2 and windows 8.1?boogerlad - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
Does the SM1715 use second generation V-NAND?Laststop311 - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
sm951 is going to be an utter beast with 4GB/s of available bandwidth. Finally the bottleneck will shift back to the nand.frenchy_2001 - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
The real bottle neck is the willingness to parallelize. Enterprise drives already saturate bandwidth for pcie x4 gen3 at large transfer sizes.Small size (iops at 4k) is the real differentiator. And honestly, it is mostly irrelevant for client computers (server drives on pcie nvme can now reach several 100k iops).
romrunning - Monday, July 7, 2014 - link
Please let the price be $1.50 (or lower) per GB! If so, I would start buying these immediately for my servers!It seems the 845 DC Pro would be a better long-term endurance choice than the Intel DC S3500 that I'm buying now, and a cheaper price would make it a more appealing option than the Intel DC S3700.