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Intel 335 Series SSD Equipped With 20-nm NAND
crookedvulture writes "The next generation of NAND has arrived. Intel's latest 335 Series SSD sports 20-nm flash chips that are 29% smaller than the previous, 25-nm generation. The NAND features a new planar cell structure with a floating, high-k/metal gate stack, a first for the flash industry. This cell structure purportedly helps the 20-nm NAND overcome cell-to-cell interference, allowing it to offer the same performance and reliability characteristics of the 25-nm stuff. The performance numbers back up that assertion, with the 335 Series matching other drives based on the same SandForce controller silicon. The 335 Series may end up costing less than the competition, though; Intel has set the suggested retail price at an aggressive $184 for the 240GB drive, which works out to just 77 cents per gigabyte."
Maybe we won't need so much of that rare earth stuff anymore. I still find it amazing that a hard drive with all that monkey motion going on inside is any cheaper than these SSDs.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm a bit surprised that Intel seems to have abandoned doing their controllers in-house(which they did for some of their early entries in the SSD market, back when there was some...um... extremely variable quality available. *cough* JMicron *cough*). Does SandForce have some juicy patents that make it impossible for Intel to economically match/exceed them even with superior process muscle? Has building competent flash controller chips now been commodified enough that Intel doesn't want to waste their time? Did some Intel project go sour and force them to go 3rd party?
20 is 20% smaller than 25.
25nm - ( 20% * 25nm) = 20nm
Whatever your feelings are about Intel's products, this product is cheaper than a similar product 1 year or 2 years ago, it's better, it's faster, it's less power hungry, it has more capacity.
Clearly the investment into the original batch of SSDs paid off and Intel was able to use the profits it made on them to invest into better technology. That is economics (as I said, some call it 'trickle down' economics), but really all real economics is 'trickle down' economics. The more profitable a company becomes, the more it can invest into its products and the lower the prices will be eventually, because more profits brings in more competition.
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that you know more about electronics than economics, or anything having to do with the real world. I'd like to think tha tyou are an idiot savant and not just an ordinary idiot.
Just wondering: Is there a point (or is this close to it) where in using HDDs and certain RAID configurations, you can match or beat speed while maintaining better redundancy with larger capacity, cheaper drives? What is the main application these excel at? I assume power would be one, and cached content on webservers? Help me understand :-)
while they might have just got the price & performance to the same point as everyone else, they have far exceeded everyone in quality for a long time.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
It is not cheaper than Intel's offers from 1 and 2 years ago?
Actually 3 years ago I bought a couple of X-25Ms, 160GB, they were 639USD each.
This one is 240GB at 180USD.
That is not cheaper? Obviously it is 'trickle down' or normal economics, that's how it works. A company sees profits from its product, works on the product more to sell it to a wider market, more people get the product at lower prices.
I see a company giving me a better offer in a positive light, so why are you so upset? You don't like better cheaper deals?
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This is an example of what is known as 'trickle down economics' in action, which means that the more productive a company becomes (by getting profits from its current sales and re-investing the profits into the business, creating more efficiencies, new technologies) the lower it can set the prices accessing bigger and bigger markets.
Those who are poor (compared to Intel for example, because they do not have their own factories to produces these SSDs) are gaining from the rich (Intel investors) and see their lives improve (if they need and buy this product at the lower prices).
That is what all economics is, not a centrally planned economy, aiming at equal outcomes for different people and thus destroying the society by creating discrimination, which requires destruction of individual freedoms. But this is just normal economics (some call it 'trickle down') in action. A company searching for more profit investing its profits and creating new products that end up improving people's lives, and it's done with only the free market feed back loop, signalling the company that it is on the right track with its products.
Umm.. No, that's not what trickle down economics is. Instead, what you've described is simply capitalism actually working -- in a quest to find more revenue a firm is providing supply to customers at lower prices by improving efficiency via R&D.
Trickle-down economics (effectively -- but not exactly -- a pejorative term for supply-side economics) is the idea that a dollar given to those at the top of the socio-economic food chain will be redistributed down through the economy benefiting rather than being horded. It is used contrast against the "classic" or Keynesian view which is that the same dollar given to someone at the bottom will immediately be spent and will therefore work it's way across and up the socio-economic ladder benefiting all. A simple thought exercise which should make you question the validity of that idea:
Give $10 to a bum on the street (or Rush Limbaugh): ...
You -> Bum (Rush) -> Crack dealer -> Liquor store -> Liquor Distributor + Gun shop -> Liquor Distiller + UPS + Gun factory -> Farmer + Gas Station + Steel Factory ->
Give $10 to Bill Gates:
You -> Bill Gates -> Nothing
That $10 did not impact Bill's participation in the economy one bit. Bill will buy what he was going to buy before he got the $10. Hell, he could have simply used it to light up a palette of Androids and iPhones to heat his chalet.
Of course, this is grossly oversimplifying the debate, but it highlights why the majority of real economists are not supply-siders. Do yourself a favor and research this on your own before you buy into whatever nonsense you've been hearing (including mine, I suppose) and please try to stop spreading it yourself.
Last I heard, failure rate was directly tied to process size. Does any of this fix that?
Also: Sandforce controller? Way to go, Intel - Sandforce is a bucket of fail:
https://www.google.com/search?q=sandforce+freeze
and:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SandForce#Issues
and more...
Please help metamoderate.
"Capitalism simply working" has been turned into pejorative 'trickle-down' economics in the West. Probably you should take your own advice and do research on this topic, start with wiki, why not.
Awesome, so now we're down to what, nine erasures before it's cooked?
And without Intel, they have been going down in price steadily. Intel does more to form barriers (patents for things obvious to those skilled in the art, allowed because they are magic to those not skilled in the art), and anti-competitive practices, and only after years of losing share to the "poor" do they try to re assert their dominance to kill the poor and take their spoils.
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As long as the hardware can provably outlast a spinning HDD, I'd be more than happy.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Are there any examples of these obvious Intel patents?
That's because capitalism doesn't work. No place has tried it. And it leads to runs on tulips.
Learn to love Alaska
My experience with Sandforce based Intel SSD's was rubbish. Bought a SSD 330 120GB, constant freezing. Sent it back, got a replacement - still freezing. The seller gave me a free 'upgrade' to a SSD 520 120GB as an apology for the trouble. Guess what? Still freezing all the time. Got a refund, went and bought a Samsung SSD 830 128GB (based on Samsung's own controller), and is as solid as a rock - might not be as speedy, but it was £20 less and actually *works*.
If I remember correctly, Intel is using their own firmware on the SandForce controller. So an Intel SSD will still be different then those from their competitors.
I know you said your example was grossly simplified, but it's also simplified to the point of misrepresentation. Rich people don't just let their money sit there. If they did, they'd become less rich through inflation. The hypothetical Bill Gates sequence runs more like this:
You -> Bill Gates -> Investment Manager -> Expanding Business -> Employee -> Supermarket + Landlord + Gas Station -> Farmer + Logistics Company + Oil Company -> ...
Now, whether that actually benefits low socio-economic groups is another question, but the rich don't generally just sit on their cash.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Give Bill G an extra $10 and sure he'll probably invest it but that will not significantly flow back into the economy
What do you think investing is, if not flowing back into the economy? "Significantly" is a meaningless qualification, unless you'd care to define it further.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Now that is a troll.
As opposed to all the other times, when /. moderators mode something as a troll, they clearly do not understand the concept of what a troll is, which is clear now, since this one is not moderated accordingly.
Why is it a troll? Because it is contrary to the most obvious fact that there were and there are and there will be plenty of people who use their own savings (capital and private property) to start a business by arranging scarce resources (by managing capital, land an labor) in order to achieve profit by providing customers with some product or service that they would pay for voluntarily.
It is obvious that the above poster understands and knows this simple fact, yet he chooses to post a comment that is contrary to the facts, that is what a legitimate troll comment looks like.
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This is ridiculous! Intel previously had a flash memory division, which made their famous StrataFlash, which they later spun off into a separate company called Numonyx (which was a merger of their and STM's flash memory division) which even later got acquired by Micron. In other words, Intel exited the flash market b'cos they were dragging down their margins.
In that context, I'm just not getting why Intel is making any flash - be it NAND flash or NOR flash. First of all, memory fabs are somewhat different from logic fabs, where the equipment is more geared towards highly array-efficient chips. Then doing their latest processes, w/ the latest wafer sizes - in this case, the 18" wafers - means that they would be using the latest and most advanced equipment, implying that their costs here would be real high. I understand that they'd want to drive volume and are therefore planning to put a fab or more out like this just to crank out an unlimited #NAND chips, which can then go into drives. Doing enough of that would help them accelarate the depreciation of equipment and the fab, but it's not like they would then be able to use them to make say, the next Atom.
On the controllers, since there are a number of companies that make ATA controllers, it would just be a matter of Intel fabbing it for them and buying what it needed for the agreed-upon margins. Incidentally, I know Intel has world class fabs and all that, but do they do their own assembly & test as well?
Which is why I'm not getting their strategy here. The only thing that seems to make sense - that after the ww shortage in hard drives due to the Thailand floods, they've decided not to leave the supply of an essential part of computers to the likes of WD or Seagate. Otherwise, there are a lot of PC parts that Intel does not touch b'cos it just doesn't make sense to do it. SSDs are not much different.
Serious users should insist on SSD with a battery or super capacitor. If not, then you might lose data in internal caches in an unclean shutdown.
Unlike the Intel 320 series, I can't find anywhere whether the 335 series has backup power, so I strongly assume that it doesn't.
True indeed.
So, tax the people at the top and give this to the people at the bottom or give them jobs which will benefit society (building new roads, picking up litter etc.) and the rest should be encouraged to use their savings to promote new business.
The people at the top get hammered with extra tax but stimulating the economy should increase should trickle-up to their high value business ventures.
This economics thing is a breeze!
The problem with giving money to Bill Gates is that the people immediately downstream of him take large cuts of the cash for basically moving paper around. At least if you give it to the bum more of that cash ends up in a larger number of people's pockets, instead of just being creamed off by a few and spent on big luxury items that only generate employment for small numbers of people.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You've fallen for the fallacy that when rich people have money, they invest it, and all investment leads to more economic activity. Unfortunately, it's not true. Real investment that creates wealth only happens when there's enough demand for the wealth created.
When there is not enough demand for the wealth, the cost of that wealth is reduced until there is demand for it.
A bank is not going to just sit on a pile of money, they will re-loan that money even if they only get a small return on it because a small return is better than no return. That would be called 'lowering interest rates'.
(not counting the roughly 10% that the feds require banks to keep on-hand)
Rich people don't just let their money sit there.
Yes they do.
The New York Times estimates that there is between 20 to 30 trillion dollars stashed in the Cayman Islands.
Apple's 80 billion dollar warchest isn't doing anything. Bill and Melinda Gates are using a bit of their money, but most of it is sitting around hedging against fear of want, same as the money of most super-wealthy. They don't feel safe unless they have a big pile of money/gold/property/ locked up somewhere.
"Trickle Down" is a lie. And it is clearly a lie. The economy isn't as screwed up as it is for no reason, and it's certainly not because of the behavior of people with nothing.
Is this a breakthrough? No. 29% is nice, but it's not like they found a whole new revolutionary way of doing it.
Is there some controversy, like someone claimed in the past that they could never get more than 10% better and Intel broke through the barrier? No (or if it is, Slashdot doesn't seem to have heard of it).
Does having them get this much better make them useful for applications they weren't useful before, or make them affordable to a whole new range of customers? Not really.
Is it at least a nice round number like "SSDs are now 100 times faster than when they were invented"? No.
This is either an ad, or a fan who's so rabid that he basically makes his own ads. What next, if they went up to 35%, 40%, and 45% would we see three more articles? Would shrinking to 18mm produce yet another article, and going down to 72 cents yet another? I mean, 40% is at least as newsworthy as 29% (which is to say, not at all), right?
Actually your example is incorrect, here is how it really goes:
1. Savings are generated by underconsumption.
2. Savings are used to invest and start (or expand) a business.
3. Expansion of business through investment leads to more productivity (SSDs for example, after all this is the story about SSDs and I can relate to it rather than to Bill Gates, I don't buy MS stuff).
4. Expensive SSDs hit the market.
5. Early adopters and businesses buy (maybe, or they do not, then the business loses the investment).
6. If there are sales, the company takes the money as both, a return and as a proof of a valid business mode. The money is invested into more tech and management and sales, more efficiencies are found, prices can be taken down to access wider markets.
7. Cheaper SSDs eventually hit the market (like in this story).
That's the REAL path of the trickle down, the other path is actually a side effect of the first path.
Here it is:
1. Money is invested, business generates revenue and profits.
2. People are hired, salaries are paid.
3. Gov't racket also gets its cut.
--
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EXACTLY. Deserves upmodding.
The average Joe can't afford to stash his money. He needs it to pay the bills.
Well, if your conclusion is that the productive people need to be taxed more to give unproductive people more money to spend, then clearly "this economic thing" is not a breeze.
By definition, only the rich can be "productive" so taxing the rich and giving it to the poor makes for more people that can be "productive" increasing the overall productivity.
Note, that I am not advocating for any income taxes at all, AFAIC there is no more destructive tax than income tax.
So you think a "wealth tax" would be more fair and less destructive?
Learn to love Alaska
You can't take money from a company that produces wealth (yes, products are wealth) and then use that money to pay for various campaign contributions, road building and WTF governments do, that is not productive use of resources, otherwise the free market would be doing it.
So if a private company builds a prison, and charges the government $10,000,000 a year to run it, that's "wealth", but if the government does it and runs it for $5,000,000 per year, that's waste and draining wealth? I just don't get how a road is "wealth" if paid for with private funds (my driveway, a store parking lot) and not "wealth" if built by the government (the road from my drive to the store).
Learn to love Alaska
Drug war. These two words should make you stop this line of thinking, because that's something that you cannot defend, it's indefensible.
Yes, the War on Drugs, declared by the big-government party, the Republicans, is a horrible thing. I've never said anything that could be construed as supportive of it. I think you are trying to change the subject because you realize I caught you in an inconsistency when the government and private industry can own the same thing, and you declare the one you like "wealth" and the other "wealth-less theft" or whatever.
I understand that you do not. Here [slashdot.org], I talked about it long ago.
Nevermind. You don't answer questions. You are a chat bot. You take questions and comments, and generate an unrelated pre-set reply. Your argument is apparently "roads aren't wealth because they are built by taxes, and taxes are theft." You said:
products are wealth
But apparently, once someone steals a chair, it's no longer "wealth" Odd that something which happens years after manufacture would materially change the definition of the item itself. It is also not unnoticed that you don't ever define it in terms of ownership. Capitalism is where capital (the economic definition of capital) is held privately. Socialism is where the government owns the capital. Fascism is where the government owns the capital. In the US, "ownership" is defined by "controlling interest" And from that definition, the corporations own the government, thus, the government controls the capital. So, is the US socialist or fascist? And, isn't that the natural end of all democracies? The rich spend trillions convincing the poor that
1) They have it good (please don't revolt)
2)They have power (they get to vote in every election, even if the only two choices are selected by the elite)
3) What's good for the rich is good for the poor (trickle-down voodoo economics).
The reason being that the capitalists are more interested in their piece of the pie than a working system. I do believe a Free Market economy would be better than any tried before, but it's impossible. Perhaps the problem is that I'm too realistic and so select practical choices based impractical and unrealistic ideology, rather than slavishly cling to ideology that's been proven wrong in the real world millions of times.
Learn to love Alaska