About the controller price, i there any source quoting the typical price distribution of the different parts for a typical consumer SSD? (I get that memory price will almost be a linear function of the capacity, but having the price distribution for a given memory capacity would already be a nice hint)
You might be giving too much importance to the cost of the controller. It's a pretty small controller even if on 28nm and if it ends up in high capacity drives priced at 1$ per GB then the cost of the controller is less relevant and the consumer one will fail. Folks will go with higher speeds from others and what this offers is not enough to justify the cost of an upgrade. If it ends up in drives at 50 cents per GB then sure it makes sense but only if others can't match the price and have better perf
I just don't understand the delay to market for high capacity SSDs. I have essentially no interest in any of the SSD news that's been coming out for a while now. The read and write performance is starting to get there as we gravitate away from the limitations of SATA (it's long past time for that too) but small capacities and still way too high prices makes it a joke for me to even consider an upgrade. The problem I always face is the combining of slow, high capacities HDD's with really low capacity, high speed SSD's. Any data transfers between the two make any performance advantage of having an SSD pointless. Is the industry simply milking current technology for everything they can or are they delaying deliberately with plans to just make the jump to up-and-coming technologies like NRAM in the next year and a half? It would make some sense to not invest much more in SSD production if they were fairly certain that something that was going to blow SSDs out of the water were half-way here.
Still waiting for a decent 2 tb ssd for some 1 drive systems.
When will I get my 2tb sdd for 600 usd . Put it in my few pc's and not be bothered with space concerns. Right now 2012 apple mac minis allow me a 1tb ssd + 2tb hdd in a fusion drive setup . Would prefer to move on from this.
No mention of the truly horrible unreliability of the first generation controller (especially in the Vertex 2 with 64-bit NAND) or the endless problems with TRIM of the second generation. In fact, this very site said, eventually, that TRIM just can't work properly because of Sandforce's compression scheme.
So, does this new controller avoid being horribly unreliable (with a bonus "panic mode" that putting the computer to sleep randomly would lead to drive bricking) and/or incompatible with TRIM?
With these specs, Seagate are going to be eaten alive in the marketplace. People look at AS-SSD figures and then make up their mind.
Samsung/Intel already have controllers performing better than this in released and available products.
Making the consumer drives 4 channel only, limiting them to 1TB and now requiring DRAM as well, I can't see this as being a competitive solution for 2016/2017.
It is sad, because the sandforce 2 controller really was quite good once they ironed out the bugs. It could have done with an iterative improvement rather than a redesign. Take a SF-2200 series controller, Improve in-compressible write speeds a bit, increase maximum drive size to 2TB, a bit more internal tuning, and it would still be a highly competitive controller today.
Ironing out the bags didn't exactly happen in a timely manner... Even Intel's version with their much ballyhooed validation ended up with critical bugs.
Nobody has clean hands in the SSD business though, so it would be unfair to the sandforce engineers if we didn't also level these sorts of criticism against Samsung, Indilinx, Intel and Crucial as well!
No, it's fair to single out Sandforce. Once LSI acquired them, they swiftly lost market share to other companies. They will never regain their previous dominance. I also agree, they are months away from releasing a product that has already been passed by in the marketplace by a few competitors. Welcome to life in the small lane Sandforce. Get used to it.
Sandforce like AMD lost all the power. they almost dominated SSD about 6-7 years ago. The SF2200/SF2500 was perfect but only with SLC, with MLC it was medicore but good enough. I have OCZ Deneva 2 R SLC, it is a performance king. SF3500 is a step back. in general SSD market is quite stable since 2012, no new technology, no new performance records. I only see prices drop but it is because as lot of new controllers (slower than older one) and flash memory became cheaper slower and less endurance. even 5-6 yer old SLC outperform every new MLC, TLC 3D Nand (except some Hitachi Toshiba enterprise) . I only see one bright star - SAMSUNG. this is the only company showing continous and fast improvement in quality and performance. Intel is developing much slower but Intel started from higher level than Samsung. Micron is doing a lot of work and new controllers but still cant beat themselves from before 5 years - P320h. even Micron is producing cheaper and slower SSD than few years ago. the same with M500DC older but much better than M510DC.
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nightbringer57 - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
About the controller price, i there any source quoting the typical price distribution of the different parts for a typical consumer SSD? (I get that memory price will almost be a linear function of the capacity, but having the price distribution for a given memory capacity would already be a nice hint)Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
Here's one breakdown I've seen: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2722185-nand-wars-...nightbringer57 - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
Very interesting, thanks !jjj - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
You might be giving too much importance to the cost of the controller.It's a pretty small controller even if on 28nm and if it ends up in high capacity drives priced at 1$ per GB then the cost of the controller is less relevant and the consumer one will fail. Folks will go with higher speeds from others and what this offers is not enough to justify the cost of an upgrade.
If it ends up in drives at 50 cents per GB then sure it makes sense but only if others can't match the price and have better perf
Senti - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
Would be great controller for mid-2014 but already outdated in 2016 when everyone moves to PCIe3 x4 for performance and x1 for cost and area savings.Also, being made by Seagate expect failure rate in tens of percent on unlucky models.
Johny12 - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
The comment about seagate failure rates in double digits got me wondering. I found this recent article that seems to say otherwise. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/our-6tb-hard-drive-...Magichands8 - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
I just don't understand the delay to market for high capacity SSDs. I have essentially no interest in any of the SSD news that's been coming out for a while now. The read and write performance is starting to get there as we gravitate away from the limitations of SATA (it's long past time for that too) but small capacities and still way too high prices makes it a joke for me to even consider an upgrade. The problem I always face is the combining of slow, high capacities HDD's with really low capacity, high speed SSD's. Any data transfers between the two make any performance advantage of having an SSD pointless. Is the industry simply milking current technology for everything they can or are they delaying deliberately with plans to just make the jump to up-and-coming technologies like NRAM in the next year and a half? It would make some sense to not invest much more in SSD production if they were fairly certain that something that was going to blow SSDs out of the water were half-way here.mkozakewich - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
My first SSD was a crappy Agility (2?) in 2011, and even that budget drive cost about $120 for 60 GB. I think it was on sale, too.So... quartering the cost in four years exceeds Moore's Law. Expect $250/TB in maybe two more.
philipma1957 - Saturday, June 13, 2015 - link
Still waiting for a decent 2 tb ssd for some 1 drive systems.When will I get my 2tb sdd for 600 usd . Put it in my few pc's and not be bothered with space concerns. Right now 2012 apple mac minis allow me a 1tb ssd + 2tb hdd in a fusion drive setup . Would prefer to move on from this.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
No mention of the truly horrible unreliability of the first generation controller (especially in the Vertex 2 with 64-bit NAND) or the endless problems with TRIM of the second generation. In fact, this very site said, eventually, that TRIM just can't work properly because of Sandforce's compression scheme.So, does this new controller avoid being horribly unreliable (with a bonus "panic mode" that putting the computer to sleep randomly would lead to drive bricking) and/or incompatible with TRIM?
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
Only time will tell. It's not like anyone is going to admit that their product has issues months before it's going to ship.Oxford Guy - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
Is the compression/deduplication stuff the same as the previous generation? If so, TRIM still won't work correctly.kyuu - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
Have a Sandforce drive still going strong. They certainly had their issues, but then so has just about everyone in the SSD space.Oxford Guy - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
I'm happy for you. I've had five brick and gave up on using them.canthearu - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
With these specs, Seagate are going to be eaten alive in the marketplace. People look at AS-SSD figures and then make up their mind.Samsung/Intel already have controllers performing better than this in released and available products.
Making the consumer drives 4 channel only, limiting them to 1TB and now requiring DRAM as well, I can't see this as being a competitive solution for 2016/2017.
It is sad, because the sandforce 2 controller really was quite good once they ironed out the bugs. It could have done with an iterative improvement rather than a redesign. Take a SF-2200 series controller, Improve in-compressible write speeds a bit, increase maximum drive size to 2TB, a bit more internal tuning, and it would still be a highly competitive controller today.
Impulses - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
Ironing out the bags didn't exactly happen in a timely manner... Even Intel's version with their much ballyhooed validation ended up with critical bugs.canthearu - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
Nobody has clean hands in the SSD business though, so it would be unfair to the sandforce engineers if we didn't also level these sorts of criticism against Samsung, Indilinx, Intel and Crucial as well!odoyle-rulez - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
No, it's fair to single out Sandforce. Once LSI acquired them, they swiftly lost market share to other companies. They will never regain their previous dominance. I also agree, they are months away from releasing a product that has already been passed by in the marketplace by a few competitors. Welcome to life in the small lane Sandforce. Get used to it.danwat1234 - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
I wonder if it'll be a OCZ SSD that the Sandforce 3500 controller will be in first... Any month now, nearly September 2015!danwat1234 - Monday, January 11, 2016 - link
It's 2016. ... and still no Sandforce 3000 series SSDs... I am not surprised.dzezik - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
Sandforce like AMD lost all the power. they almost dominated SSD about 6-7 years ago.The SF2200/SF2500 was perfect but only with SLC, with MLC it was medicore but good enough. I have OCZ Deneva 2 R SLC, it is a performance king.
SF3500 is a step back. in general SSD market is quite stable since 2012, no new technology, no new performance records. I only see prices drop but it is because as lot of new controllers (slower than older one) and flash memory became cheaper slower and less endurance. even 5-6 yer old SLC outperform every new MLC, TLC 3D Nand (except some Hitachi Toshiba enterprise) . I only see one bright star - SAMSUNG. this is the only company showing continous and fast improvement in quality and performance. Intel is developing much slower but Intel started from higher level than Samsung. Micron is doing a lot of work and new controllers but still cant beat themselves from before 5 years - P320h. even Micron is producing cheaper and slower SSD than few years ago. the same with M500DC older but much better than M510DC.
vladx - Monday, December 19, 2016 - link
SLC drives will always outperform both MLC and TLC when not limited by the controller since it involves less complex logic.