Probably going to be a few more years before 3.5" HDD capacity equivalent SSDs trickle down to consumer affordable price points. While I did recently see a breathless article claiming that SSDs would overtake HDDs in price/GB by the end of 2016; I strongly suspect that the author was only looking at trends in smaller 2.5" laptop HDDs and ignoring that 1TB 5400 RPM models are only rounding error more expensive than 250/500 GB HDDs; never mind the prices on large HDDs uses in NASes and SANs.
Still takes $660+ (during a sale) and two drives to get 2TB worth of SSD space, vs $75 for a 2TB WD green. Yeah, it's gonna be a while before there's any parity, even relative parity.
If you look at it from a mobile/upgrade option angle it's gonna be even worse, most OEM seem to charge $100+ to go from like a 128GB to a 256GB...
Not that I'm complaining, just got my first 1TB 850 EVO, probably get a second one before year's end if they get any cheaper, along with a 256GB SM951... That ought to work for a while.
Uhh whut? Above you can see ~2TB SSD drives, listed at $1100/$1260. Agreed there's no parity, but if I need a little space I want an SSD and lots of space than SSD + HDD, whether it's internal or external. Just for storing TBs of video/photo/audio any USB/FW/eSata disk would do the job.
I guess the price doesn't need to match the HDD at TB Range, once the lower end of HDD and SSD collide ( which is now or soon ), most will switch to SSD. We have over 150 office computer and none, not a single one of them uses more then a 100GB. The average is around 50 - 60GB. And for home uses I guess the average jumps to 150GB - 200GB with Games.
So Once the 256GB drops below $100 retail price i guess we will see a massive shift in OEM and Retail. There is no longer any reason to use HDD apart from Photos / Video and Backup.
At my workplace the trend is now the same as your describe. Most users didn't have anywhere near 100GB of disk usage so all new PC builds come with a 120GB Kingston SSD as opposed to a mechanical 500GB HDD.
The change is performance is excellent. The Kingston SSD is no top dog in terms of benchmarks but dances circles around the HDD.
Knowing how many desktops that get refreshed every year, means that we're purchasing a lot less HDDs. This trend has been enabled by the exact fact that these sub 200GB SSDs are around the same price in volume as a mechanical disk drive. So the premium performance is worth it vs. the cost savings of a smaller HDD.
Memory is low complexity and low power. Processors are harder to do stacked. Once you get the fabrication process down you say "oh shit, this thing is going to melt if I turn it on". Heat, as always, is the issue.
You talking about the Queued TRIM thing in linux or the DATA loss thing Algolia reported? cuz Algolia posted a new update. Turns out The issue was the Linux Kernal, not the SSDs. Update from Friday, July 17th, "Samsung had a concrete conclusion that the issue is not related to Samsung SSD or Algolia software but is related to the Linux kernel."
Milk the capacity they think will be the most popular? It's what we were thinking about getting for our servers.
Those random write numbers are very disappointing. Will increasing overprovisioning by 160GB really bring writes from 30k to 50k (845DC Pro if I remember correctly). As disappointing is Samsung releasing the SATA versions first and not the SAS lines they had at CES.
Write speeds and write io are low to keep read and write latency below QOS 1ms< 99.9% of the time (in servers generally consistent latency is more important then speed, if a rack of drives suddenly start doing 50-100ms io/s that can cause Stuff to slow down fast)
I agree that the price of the SM863 seems excellent. The extra warranty alone is worth the tiny price increase over the PM863, but you get faster speeds AND far better endurance?! All except for the 960GB SM863 vs PM863, that 63% increase is a blatant rip compared to the near price parity across the rest of the drive capacities...
Those, and other SSD drivers are clearly bottlenecked by the SATA limits.
Many consumers do not have other choice than using SATA, so the manufacturers should write new drivers to use multiple SATA connectors to the same drive, to tap the wasted performance.
There are newer, faster interfaces, but the lack of compelling advances in CPU power makes upgrading too expensive. An upgrade requires a new motherboard, CPU and memory, and the price asked is too much just to get marginal rise in CPU performance and some peripheral connectivity.
So, there is a market with a large user base, and the need to differentiate tons of similarly performing SSD. The solution is cheap.
That 's no real solution - afaik you ll run into the next bottleneck at around 1000 - 1200 MB/s (~2 SATA III SSDs) at the Southbridge (PCH) of modern day consumer platforms (Z68 - Z97). PCIe based NVMe is the way to go.
Do any of these developments shed any light upon Samsung's intentions (or actual delivery) of a consumer version of the SM951 M.2 with NVMe format? The last reports I heard were not very encouraging with regard to the OEM version of the SM951 NVMe. However, a SM951 NVMe PCIe M.2 utilizing V-NAND chips and possibly a variant of the "Mercury" controller could be what I've been waiting for. Anyone have any reliable information on any of that? I have an ASUS X99-E WS motherboard that is in dire need of a 512GB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe stick drive. Best regards to everyone. TheBeagle
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37 Comments
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darkfalz - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Finally, a 4 TB SSD! Oh, it's $2200...Ian Cutress - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
-> enterprisewillis936 - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
-> sataShadow7037932 - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Yeah, that was a little odd to me. But I guess bunch of the Samsung's OEM customers wanted SATA over SAS due to cost.dark4181 - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
They couldn't have thrown in NVMe support? Ugh.extide - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
SATA doesnt support NVMe...nandnandnand - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
That's cheap even before they call it an enterprise drive.Can't wait for SSDs to hit $0.20/GB though.
DanNeely - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Probably going to be a few more years before 3.5" HDD capacity equivalent SSDs trickle down to consumer affordable price points. While I did recently see a breathless article claiming that SSDs would overtake HDDs in price/GB by the end of 2016; I strongly suspect that the author was only looking at trends in smaller 2.5" laptop HDDs and ignoring that 1TB 5400 RPM models are only rounding error more expensive than 250/500 GB HDDs; never mind the prices on large HDDs uses in NASes and SANs.Impulses - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Still takes $660+ (during a sale) and two drives to get 2TB worth of SSD space, vs $75 for a 2TB WD green. Yeah, it's gonna be a while before there's any parity, even relative parity.If you look at it from a mobile/upgrade option angle it's gonna be even worse, most OEM seem to charge $100+ to go from like a 128GB to a 256GB...
Not that I'm complaining, just got my first 1TB 850 EVO, probably get a second one before year's end if they get any cheaper, along with a 256GB SM951... That ought to work for a while.
Kjella - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Uhh whut? Above you can see ~2TB SSD drives, listed at $1100/$1260. Agreed there's no parity, but if I need a little space I want an SSD and lots of space than SSD + HDD, whether it's internal or external. Just for storing TBs of video/photo/audio any USB/FW/eSata disk would do the job.eek2121 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Samsung is releasing 2 TB 850 evo drives before the end of the year.eek2121 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
the 2 tb version will be $799 or less ($799 is msrp)iwod - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
I guess the price doesn't need to match the HDD at TB Range, once the lower end of HDD and SSD collide ( which is now or soon ), most will switch to SSD.We have over 150 office computer and none, not a single one of them uses more then a 100GB. The average is around 50 - 60GB. And for home uses I guess the average jumps to 150GB - 200GB with Games.
So Once the 256GB drops below $100 retail price i guess we will see a massive shift in OEM and Retail. There is no longer any reason to use HDD apart from Photos / Video and Backup.
Demon-Xanth - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
256gb for $90ish can be had all day long already.creed3020 - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
At my workplace the trend is now the same as your describe. Most users didn't have anywhere near 100GB of disk usage so all new PC builds come with a 120GB Kingston SSD as opposed to a mechanical 500GB HDD.The change is performance is excellent. The Kingston SSD is no top dog in terms of benchmarks but dances circles around the HDD.
Knowing how many desktops that get refreshed every year, means that we're purchasing a lot less HDDs. This trend has been enabled by the exact fact that these sub 200GB SSDs are around the same price in volume as a mechanical disk drive. So the premium performance is worth it vs. the cost savings of a smaller HDD.
Wulfera - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Considering SanDisk's 4TB Optimus MAX goes for $6,000 this is a steal!xstylus - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
I don't care. Take my money!bigboxes - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
I really wish we could vote on posts here!+1
nandnandnand - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
V-NAND is the savior of NAND. Vertical may be the savior of computing in general. Long live the layers. Bring us 1024 layers.willis936 - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Memory is low complexity and low power. Processors are harder to do stacked. Once you get the fabrication process down you say "oh shit, this thing is going to melt if I turn it on". Heat, as always, is the issue.nandnandnand - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
There is one kind of CPU that uses low power... neuromorphic, like TrueNorth.melgross - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
So, will we find out what the trim situation is with these? They are also 800 series devices.sustainednotburst - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
You talking about the Queued TRIM thing in linux or the DATA loss thing Algolia reported? cuz Algolia posted a new update. Turns out The issue was the Linux Kernal, not the SSDs. Update from Friday, July 17th, "Samsung had a concrete conclusion that the issue is not related to Samsung SSD or Algolia software but is related to the Linux kernel."ArtForz - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Pricing for the 960GB SM863 both for $/GB and relative premium over PM863 seems rather... odd.frostyfiredude - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
It's totally different from the whole lineup's price progression, the price would make sense at 670$ not 870$Kjella - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
At these capacity it's almost linear, so I'm guessing either Samsung or Anandtech made a typo.johnnycanadian - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Nope, the prices shown are correct, as per Samsung:http://www.samsung.com/us/business/computing/solid...
I don't get the 960GB price jump either ...
remosito - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Milk the capacity they think will be the most popular? It's what we were thinking about getting for our servers.Those random write numbers are very disappointing. Will increasing overprovisioning by 160GB really bring writes from 30k to 50k (845DC Pro if I remember correctly). As disappointing is Samsung releasing the SATA versions first and not the SAS lines they had at CES.
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
The SAS versions are likely to remain OEM only as Samsung's SAS and PCIe drives have been in the past.leexgx - Monday, October 1, 2018 - link
Write speeds and write io are low to keep read and write latency below QOS 1ms< 99.9% of the time (in servers generally consistent latency is more important then speed, if a rack of drives suddenly start doing 50-100ms io/s that can cause Stuff to slow down fast)ArtForz - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
They corrected it, it's listed at $640 now.Wulfera - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
I agree that the price of the SM863 seems excellent. The extra warranty alone is worth the tiny price increase over the PM863, but you get faster speeds AND far better endurance?! All except for the 960GB SM863 vs PM863, that 63% increase is a blatant rip compared to the near price parity across the rest of the drive capacities...marraco - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Those, and other SSD drivers are clearly bottlenecked by the SATA limits.Many consumers do not have other choice than using SATA, so the manufacturers should write new drivers to use multiple SATA connectors to the same drive, to tap the wasted performance.
There are newer, faster interfaces, but the lack of compelling advances in CPU power makes upgrading too expensive. An upgrade requires a new motherboard, CPU and memory, and the price asked is too much just to get marginal rise in CPU performance and some peripheral connectivity.
So, there is a market with a large user base, and the need to differentiate tons of similarly performing SSD. The solution is cheap.
Folterknecht - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
That 's no real solution - afaik you ll run into the next bottleneck at around 1000 - 1200 MB/s (~2 SATA III SSDs) at the Southbridge (PCH) of modern day consumer platforms (Z68 - Z97).PCIe based NVMe is the way to go.
TheBeagle - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Do any of these developments shed any light upon Samsung's intentions (or actual delivery) of a consumer version of the SM951 M.2 with NVMe format? The last reports I heard were not very encouraging with regard to the OEM version of the SM951 NVMe. However, a SM951 NVMe PCIe M.2 utilizing V-NAND chips and possibly a variant of the "Mercury" controller could be what I've been waiting for. Anyone have any reliable information on any of that? I have an ASUS X99-E WS motherboard that is in dire need of a 512GB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe stick drive. Best regards to everyone. TheBeagleAndrewJacksonZA - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Typo: "As you will find out in our tomorrow's Micron M510DC review" --> "our tomorrow's"Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Thanks for the heads up, it's been fixed. Finnish doesn't always translate well to English...