Will PCIe Flash Become Common In Laptops, Desktops?

Lucas123 writes "With Apple announcing that it is now using PCIe flash in its MacBook Air and it has plans to offer it in its Mac Pro later this year, some are speculating that the high-speed peripheral interface may become the standard for higher-end consumer laptops and workplace systems. 'It's coming,' said Joseph Unsworth, research vice president for NAND Flash & SSD at Gartner. The Mac Pro with PCIe flash is expected to exceed 1GB/sec throughput, twice the speed of SATA III SSDs. Apple claims the new MacBook Mini got a 45% performance boost from its PCIe flash. AnandTech has the Air clocked in at 800MB/s. Next year, Intel and Plextor are expected to begin shipping PCIe cards based on the new NGFF specification. Plextor's NGFF SSD measures just 22mm by 44mm in size and connects to a computer's motherboard through a PCIe 2.0 x2 interface. Those cards are smaller than today's half-height expansion cards and offer 770MB/s read and 550MB/s write speeds."

Comments

Yes

[Intrepid imaginaut]

In ten years we'll be using equipment that makes the current best look like pocket calculators, just like we're buying gear today for a few hundred that would have been worth tens of thousands ten years ago, if we could even manufacture it. Goddamn I love living in the future.

Re:Yes

[AlphaWolf_HK]

The real desktop/laptop performance measurement is iops at low queue depth. Large sustained rates are meaningless for all but servers. (I mean really, how often are you going to copy files big enough for these speeds to matter, and what are you going to copy it to that can keep up? Certainly not cloud storage or a USB drive.)

This is sounding to me like MHz myth 2.0

Re:Yes

[MightyMartian]

I'll have you know I copy big files back and forth all day long, you insensitive clod!

Re:Yes

[real-modo]

Haha, but lots of Mac Pro users do exactly this. They edit video.

So, 0.1% or 0.2% of all computer users out there will find increased bandwidth very useful.

Re:Yes

[Solandri]

Even high IOPS is starting to become meaningless. Here's an Anandtech comparison of top SSDs from two years ago of typical tasks which stressed IOPS. He played it straight for this one page and showed benchmarks in units that matter to people's perception of speed - seconds to complete a task. The result is utterly uninteresting. The HDD is substantially slower. The SSDs are for all practical purposes identical.

But boring graphs are bad for review sites. If the reviews are boring, people won't read them, and the sites lose out on ad revenue. So they invert the metric to make smaller differences appear bigger. Instead of the practical sec/MB, they use the more ephemeral MB/sec. That makes the graphs more interesting and gets people coming back to the sites before buying, instead of just buying some random cheap SSD without really caring about the max speed.

"But sec/MB and MB/sec are the same number! Why should inverting it make a difference?" Because when you invert a metric, the big numbers become small numbers, and the small numbers become big numbers. e.g. Say you have a HDD which can read 100 MB/s, a cheap SSD which can read 200 MB/s, and an expensive SSD which can read 500 MB/s. So in 1 second, the HDD reads 100 MB, the cSSD 200 MB, and eSSD 500 MB. Expressed in MB/s you gain 100 MB/s switching from HDD->cSSD, and a whopping 300 MB/s switching from cSSD->eSSD. Switching from cSSD->eSSD gives you 3x the benefit of switching from HDD->cSSD! So the extra money for the expensive SSD is definitely worth it! Right?

Hold on. Invert to s/MB and say you need to read 1 GB. The HDD takes 10 sec, the cSSD 4 sec, and the eSSD 2 sec. Switching from HDD->cSSD saves you 6 seconds. Switching from cSSD->eSSD only saves you 2 sec. So in terms of time you spend waiting, the HDD->cSSD switch saves you 3x as much time as the cSSD->eSSD switch. The vast majority of your time saved can actually be obtained from the switch to the cheaper SSD. The next step switching to the expensive SSD only gives you a marginal improvement. (Even if you insist on using relative measures of time, the cheap SSD still wins. 10 sec to 4 sec is a 60% reduction in time. 4 sec to 2 sec is only a 50% reduction in time. Or if you want to be a purist, of the 8 sec saved going from 10 sec to 2 sec, the cheap SSD gets you 75% of that speedup, the expensive SSD gives only the remaining 25%)

Unless you're regularly doing tasks where you find yourself twiddling your thumbs for several seconds or minutes waiting for the SSD to finish reading/writing several GB of data, the difference between 600 MB/s and 1.25 GB/s is imperceptible despite being a 2x speedup. Twice as fast as the blink of an eye is still as fast as a blink of an eye to our perception.

Re:Yes

[EdZ]

There's a metric you're missing: responsiveness. One of the big gains of moving to SSDs is not tasks completing faster, but of UI elements responding sooner.

I do have a question about this .....

[King_TJ]

From the photos Apple has on their site of the Mac Pro with its cover open, it looks to me like the flash storage used is a "mini PCIe" form-factor. I've already purchased and used an identical looking 480GB flash drive to fit in an HP "Ultrabook" type of portable called the "Spectre XT Pro".

(HP claims the notebook can't be purchased with a drive larger than 256GB, even in a custom build order on their web site, but a technical manual I found clearly showed it took the mini PCIe type of flash drive, so I bought a 480GB from CDW to try it and it worked just fine.)

I've seen a few comments yesterday and today though claiming some of these mini PCIe form-factor SSDs are not *really* following the standards for the PCIe connector? So in effect, they perform with a lot less throughput, the same as any existing SSD drive, except just using that type of physical connector.

Anyone know if there's much truth to such claims .... meaning what Apple is offering here really will be more advanced than current SSD technology, or is this a case where companies like HP have really been using the same stuff for at least the last 1-2 years in select ultraportables?

Re:Will it be a repeat?

[grim4593]

USB 1.1 wasn't bad compared to floppy disk capacity and read/write speeds.

Current generation Flash lasts about as long

[raymorris]

I don't yet own any flash drives either. I have about 40 magnetic drives. One reason I didn't buy flash drives was write endurance.
I recently found out that the newer Flash drives have the same or better life expectancy as magnetics, though. They have enough write cycles for like 40 years of hard use now, so that's basically a solved problem. Also, when they fail they normally become read-only, so you can copy everything over to a replacement drive. 18 months ago I wouldn't have purchased flash drives, but now that they have improved I will. To reinforce what I read, I have watched Flash drives perform reliably in busy database and web servers. Not that the eight or so flash drives in those servers are statistically significant, but it's nice when your own anecdotal experience is consistent with the studies.

Yes, of course one particular drive might last a long time or a short time. I've had magnetic disks that lasted a long time and magnetic disks that died quickly. On average, an SSD will last just as long as a spinning platter .

Re:Current generation Flash lasts about as long

[jon3k]

Who has that warranty?

Not Seagate (3 year)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820248015

Not Crucial (3 year)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148443

Not OCZ (5 year)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227791

Not Intel (5 year)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167154

Re:Ummm, I kinda doubt it

[Pulzar]

Also, you have some serious problems if you cant wait 30 seconds for anything. Seriously, people suffering from ADHD tend to have more patience than that. However as someone who sells high priced items that provide minimal gain, I like suckers like you.

Ok, you had good points until here.

Any (good) programmer, artist, writer, or anyone else who creates on a computer for a living will tell you that they hate unresponsive applications. Open a new file and wait 5 seconds before you can see it? It's distracting, and it breaks your train of thought.

It's not ADHD, it's the fact that we're used to, from the "real world", to have instant response to actions -- pull out a piece of paper and you can read it immediately. Put a brush to the paper, and the colour shows up instantly. The brain expects the computers, which are trying to model this real world interaction, to work the same way.

But SONY is already doing it!

[ikaruga]

Why Apple is taking credit for this new trend? Sony new Vaio Pro line has optional 20Gbps PCIe 256/512GB flash storage. I pre ordered one(first vaio in 9 years) simply because of that. Credit where it's due.

Re:But SONY is already doing it!

[king neckbeard]

Ah, but when it comes to credit and Apple, you don't have to do things first, you just have to be the first to masturbate into a a massive crowd about doing it. Apple are masters at dropping tech at the crossover between early adopter and early majority. It's got a very good ratio in R&D investments to PR payoffs.

Re:Will it be a repeat?

[Reeses]

Apple was visionary because they got USB to work as promised/designed.

Back then, it was about 50/50 whether you could hot-plug a USB device into a Windows machine and have it not crash. Famously demonstrated by Bill Gates at a trade show. There's video. Look it up.

The Mac was also the first computer to allow you to plug in the maximum number of USB devices (128) without crashing. It took Windows a while to get there too.

New MP isn't great for big jobs

[fyngyrz]

The new Mac Pro isn't that great -- and I've been waiting for it. Really had my hopes up.

Flash drives seem to be characterized by very high failure rates. Changing the drive? Unclear this is a user operation. All real drives -- the ones you use for your data -- would have to be external bricks. Whereas standard HD's for the current design go in and out trivially. It's wonderful. Four of 'em.

External drives? External graphics? (3 display max it would seem unless you have external boxes.... yech) Nah.

Best thing right now seems to be the last generation of the big box. 12 cores, 12 more semi-competent hyperthreads, holds four drives, can push six monitors, RAM is (user!) upgradable...

And they finally fixed OSX so it handles multiple monitors correctly, fixed the broken menu paradigm, fixed how full screen apps work... perfect.

The mac pro.... unless there are some real differences between what they say they're making and what they actually make, I think it's the big box for me. My older 8-core can live in the ham shack doing SDR and digi-mode duty. :)

This way I know I can do the big jobs, and without littering my workspace, which I am quite particular about, with bricks and cables. I *really* don't understand what they were thinking.

Re:New MP isn't great for big jobs

[kthreadd]

According to some people att WWDC replacing a "drive" is merely a matter of taking the cover off and popping it out of the PCIe slot. Plugging the new one in and closing the cover. The units they have on display features two such slots. Seams pretty OK to me.

RAM is definitly user upgradeable. Four slots for DDR3 1866 MHz ECC. Works like any other RAM slot.

It should be possible to replace the GPUs as well. The only question seams to be that it's unclear how many GPUs will be availble that fits within the form factor.

Re:New MP isn't great for big jobs

[fyngyrz]

Uhmmm... 3 x 4k monitors. I guess it can drive more than that using "normal" monitors.

You guess? Where does it actually say this? If it can actually drive six or more monitors at reasonable resolutions (4k is silly, frankly, unless you have a 40 foot wide display) without external graphics bricks, that's definitely of interest. It doesn't solve the external drive brick problem, though.

and you can daisy chain those

What are you talking about "daisy chain" -- I'm talking about DVI, VGA, etc. They don't daisy chain. Are you talking about monitors that are "thunderbolt" or whatever? Don't own any, don't think it makes any sense to own any, already have a forest of perfectly good monitors anyway.

Why waste space with internal drives and connectors that are slower than the external ones?

So your desk doesn't turn into a garbage dump? So you don't knock the drive off onto the floor? So the cat doesn't yank the plug out during a write? So Bubba doesn't walk off with my drives? So the drive noise is muted by the case? So the drives get power and cooling inside, instead of from some noisy-ass switcher brick? So there aren't more power strips on the desk than pics of the family? So I can pick it up and move it without a scad of external stuff trailing along behind it? And this is a machine that apparently is going to need all six of those fancy new plugs with DVI or VGA adapters to drive monitors, if in fact it can do that -- so the only option left is firewire drives, which present all the same problems.

The bandwidth in thunderbolt 2 should be enough for some serious raid configurations, right?

Where? In your desk drawer? Glued to the ceiling? In the refrigerator? Seriously, this "put it all external" nonsense just isn't going to fly. USB is bad enough. Not going to exacerbate the brick problem. If the machine can't operate as a single unit, it's not for me, that's all. You want one, cheers, enjoy. I'm sure someone will want one. I'm also pretty sure they'll hate the thing once they face the reality of all that desk cruft, but I admit, it's only an opinion. :)

External disk makers are going to be very happy

With you, perhaps. All they're getting out of me is laughter. It's a dumb design. It's form over function. Something Apple has a real problem with, although sometimes, as with the Mac Mini, they come along and fix it later.

Re:Ride the Thunder

[drinkypoo]

No, no you couldn't, and you certainly couldn't do both of these things at once. Thunderbolt 2 is still inadequate for connecting a GPU, it will not keep up with modern graphics cards. Not surprised to see you of all people get this wrong.