Samsung Mass Produces 128GB SSD

Lucas123 writes "Samsung Electronics said today it is now mass-producing solid-state drives with a 128GB capacity, and it will begin production of a 256GB product later this year, ahead of its scheduled 2009 release. Samsung's 128GB and 64GB SSDs are available in 1.8-in. and 2.5-in. Currently, solid state disk costs about $3.45 per gigabyte and spinning disk costs about $0.38 per gig."

Comments

Still no deal

[Daimanta]

And still it is about 10 times more expensive than a hdd. If this doesn't get any cheaper, it won't get any popularity. If a new tech wants to replace an old tech it needs a significant and intrinsic advantage otherwise it will be adopted at a snails pace.

Re:Still no deal

[grasshoppa]

SSD does have significant perceived benefits;

1) Faster reads
2) Lower power
3) Quieter
4) Cooler

That samsung is producing these at all indicates that there is a demand for them. I think in 5 years, a majority of HDs sold will be SSD.

Re:Still no deal

[John Whitley]

How on earth do zero seek time and no moving parts not qualify under "significant and intrinsic advantage"? Zero seek time alone represents a sea change for mass storage -- access many orders of magnitude slower than the rest of the system has been a major assumption encoded in much software (and hardware) architecture for decades. We'll be feeling the repercussions of the end of rotating media for decades more. Yes, the price needs to come down for SSD's to annihilate traditional hard drives... but SSD's will steadily eat up HDD territory in the mean time.

Re:Still no deal

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Faster reads

Not necessarily. Sustained read speeds are still faster on (most) spinning disks (vs. most SSDs). They do have orders of magnitude better access time resulting in better random read performance, but that wasn't what you said.

2) Lower power

Not necessarily. A 200GB HDD uses about the same power as a 32GB SSD. While these numbers do not scale linearly with size, you can expect SSDs to consume more power as sizes go up (e.g. due to more complex wear leveling algorithms). These performance numbers of course will increase as the technology matures, but for now it is still only a perceived benefit.

I do agree with your expectation about SSDs in the future, but you don't need half-truths to reach that conclusion :)

However, I don't expect the spinning disk do the dodo just yet; seeing as they're still cheaper per unit of storage, I expect that 2-disk setups will become the norm: SSD for the OS, and HDD for data - which is what I've been doing in my own systems for the last 2 years (using CF->IDE converters)

Does anyone know about the retention rate for these SSDs? I can let an HDD gather dust for ten years, and then still hope to retrieve the data succesfully. Can I expect the same from SSDs?

Re:Still no deal

[moosesocks]

I would take that Toms Hardware article with a huge grain of salt.

Their tests simulated a usage pattern that is pretty rare in practice, especially for a portable device. Although certain applications do indeed require long, sustained transfers, most data transfers are spontaneous and sporadic (which is where flash memory shines, thanks to the nearly-zero seek times).

To make a shameful car analogy, a long sustained transfer is like driving on the highway. You get pretty good mileage, even with an "inefficient" petrol engine.

Unfortunately, we don't always drive on the highway, and a typical usage pattern involves lots of stopping and going. Due to the rotational inertia of the platters, HDDs and Optical disks are inherently inefficient in this regard, as the disk either has to be kept 'idling' or spun up from rest whenever access is required. These effects can be reduced via caching or by reducing the rotational velocity to match streaming/continuous data (eg. a video DVD), but flash memory seems to have a pretty clear advantage here.

This snippet from the article destroys virtually all of their credibility;

Could Tomâ(TM)s Hardware be Wrong?

No, our results are definitely correct.

Although I believe their data, any scientist needs to keep an open mind for any inaccuracies or potential flaws in their methodologies that may be present. Computer hardware reviews are no exception to this.

I'm also wary of leaving any media to sit for 10 years. Longevity isn't a terribly strong point these days....

Wrong direction

[LordVader717]

We don't need higher capacity. What the market wants is for their 32GB drives to come down in price under the 100$ mark. I'd love to replace the hard drive in my notebook to a flash drive, but if it means splashing out hundreds of dollars for one, when there isn't really that much of a glaring advantage compared to a 30$ hard drive, I have to get back down to earth.

Re:I just want a cheapie

[Carnildo]

I would have already used a CF to IDE adapter but they seem to be expensive and mostly incompatible.

You're looking in the wrong places, then. The CF interface is pin- and signal-compatible with the IDE interface, so any adapter is simply a CF socket, an IDE header, and a set of wires connecting the two. Cheap adapters are flimsy, but not incompatible.

Choose the right tool

[symbolset]

I mean, what's 128GB in a world of HD movies?

Stop using your media center to store your media. That's what media servers and networks are for. Media centers are supposed to be slim low power units that need no fan but have killer presentation hardware (amps, surround sound, killer video resolution) and just enough CPU and storage to operate and present the media. Games are not "media." For those there are answers too - Google "eee Crysis youtube" for details. There's no need to have that monster kilowatt game machine (you gluttonous twits) running its shrieking fans in the space where you enjoy your content.

Early adopters pay premium prices, that's all this is. They charge the premium prices because they can get them. The more they sell, the more the price comes down. By the time a 128GB SSD is $20 you'll never believe they weren't useful, but be right here saying how nobody will need that $900 1TB model.

The Savior of an Inept SQL Author

[llZENll]

With IOps an order of magnitude higher than standard disks, SSDs are primed to take the DB and file server markets by storm. Especially since performance usually trumps cost there. When it costs you $500/hour to optimize your DB or millions for downtime, spending $3 per gigabyte is a no brainer.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-memoright,1926-11.html