Samsung Release First SSD With 3D NAND

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Samsung Release First SSD With 3D NAND

Posted by timothy on Tuesday July 1, 2014 @01:26AM from the turning-up-the-volume dept.

Vigile (99919) writes "As SSD controllers continue to evolve, so does the world of flash memory. With the release of the Samsung 850 Pro SSD announced today, Samsung is the first company to introduce 3D NAND technology to the consumer. By using 30nm process technology that might seem dated in some applications, Samsung has been reliably able to stack lithography and essentially "tunnel holes" in the silicon while coating the inside with the material necessary to hold a charge. The VNAND being used with the Samsung 850 Pro is now 32 layers deep, and though it lowers the total capacity per die, it allows Samsung to lower manufacturer costs with more usable die per wafer. This results in more sustainable and reliable performance as well as a longer life span, allowing Samsung to offer a 10 year warranty on the new drives. PC Perspective has a full review with performance results and usage over time that shows Samsung's innovation is leading the pack."

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USD/GB? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 01:33 · Score: 0

Are we there yet?
1. Re:USD/GB? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 01:41 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  You might try reading the article...
  128GB - $129.99 USD ($1.02/GB)
  256GB - $199.99 USD ($0.78/GB)
  512GB - $399.99 USD ($0.78/GB)
  1TB - $699.99 USD ($0.68/GB)
2. Re:USD/GB? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 01:58 · Score: 0
  
  Been there for a while with thumbdrives.
3. Re:USD/GB? by gaelfx · 2014-07-01 02:06 · Score: 1
  
  But that's all the way at the end of the article! How are you supposed to get all the way there? I mean, I could see myself doing it if they had some sort of handy drop down menu, but come on, who has that???
4. Re:USD/GB? by LordLimecat · 2014-07-01 02:10 · Score: 1
  
  I think the 10 year warranty is the bigger deal. Sandisk is starting to offer 10 year warranties too... show me a single HDD with that sort of warranty.
5. Re:USD/GB? by master_kaos · 2014-07-01 02:11 · Score: 1
  
  And how exactly is this cheaper? This is already regular price for all other manufacturers.. But the article specifically states "Samsung to lower manufacturer costs with more usable die per wafer". I guess if it actually comes with a 10 year warranty that is worth a bit.
6. Re:USD/GB? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 02:30 · Score: 1
  
  Its a limited warranty, subject to the rated TBW. After 150TB of writes, the device is out of warranty. I burn through Samsung 840 Pro drives in about 4-6 months each running full throttle at max IOPS. Still totally worth the cost for the performance increase. I expect similar results from the 850 Pros.
7. Re:USD/GB? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 02:41 · Score: 0
  
  It's a new process and it's already competing on price. Give it a bit to mature and the capital investment to get paid off.
8. Re:USD/GB? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-07-01 03:16 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Yes, lowering manufacturer costs. That is the way for Samsung to get richer, not lowering your costs. ;-)
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
9. Re:USD/GB? by KozmoStevnNaut · 2014-07-01 03:19 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That's a pretty nasty duty cycle, wouldn't it be better to use a massive RAM disk instead, if you need that much constant I/O traffic?
  For your average consumer or even professional user, pretty much any SSD on the market will easily outlast the rest of the PC, barring any catastrophic failures. There was a test recently that concluded that you're pretty guaranteed at least 500TB of writes before failure. That's a hell of a lot of data.
  
  --
  Eat the rich.
10. Re:USD/GB? by I'm+New+Around+Here · 2014-07-01 03:44 · Score: 1
  
  One of my customers has them in the two new computers he bought. Custom built, each with mirrored SSDs for C: drive.
  One SSD failed in two months, and one in the other computer is gone after about 8 months. Not high usage either. The workhorse drives are standard spinning disk drives.
  I know, YMMV, but still, that's a high failure rate, with good name brand drives.
  
  --
  If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
11. Re:USD/GB? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 03:51 · Score: 1
  
  Parent poster here, I use the 840 Pros I mentioned above on my laptop, I already have extensive caching going on with about 12GB of my 32GB of RAM, but its still saturates the SATA bus due to the mostly random nature of the I/Os. Its basically a giant 300GB b+tree with 2MB leaf nodes and about a 40% insertion 40% lookup and 20% deletion ratio.
  The performance is worth the cost a drive every now and again. The drives last way longer than their rated 72TB, in practice they typically manage about 600TB of writes before they fail. This is with TRIM commands being sent, without TRIM, they fail much sooner, but I haven't measured no-TRIM since the OCZ days before I moved from Vertex drives to Samsung ones.
12. Re:USD/GB? by bill_mcgonigle · 2014-07-01 03:58 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, lowering manufacturer costs. That is the way for Samsung to get richer, not lowering your costs. ;-)
  If these are as reliable as the warranty implies, they'll dramatically lower my costs. The cost of the item is almost negligible at these prices.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
13. Re:USD/GB? by Lumpy · 2014-07-01 03:58 · Score: 1
  
  Cheaper for Them to increase profit margins.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
14. Re:USD/GB? by Bengie · 2014-07-01 04:36 · Score: 1
  
  On average, SSDs have 1/4 the failure rate of mechanical drives in "normal" desktop situations. You say "not high usage", but did you have a swap file on the SSDs? What brand? OCZ had some 50%+ failure rates for some models, and averaged over 4x the industry average.
  
  Even Samsung has had a few sketchy models.
  
  Mirrored SSDs that die from "wear", will fail near the same time.
15. Re: USD/GB? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 04:47 · Score: 0
  
  In 5 years these will be horribly outclassed and in need of replacing anyway. I can't see myself using the same SSD for 10 years even if it doesn't fail.
16. Re:USD/GB? by fnj · 2014-07-01 08:31 · Score: 2
  
  Yes, the price of the 850 is obscene. The 840 wasn't very overwhelming either. The Crucial M500 is where it's at.
17. Re:USD/GB? by Christian+Smith · 2014-07-01 10:09 · Score: 1
  
  Parent poster here, I use the 840 Pros I mentioned above on my laptop, I already have extensive caching going on with about 12GB of my 32GB of RAM, but its still saturates the SATA bus due to the mostly random nature of the I/Os. Its basically a giant 300GB b+tree with 2MB leaf nodes and about a 40% insertion 40% lookup and 20% deletion ratio.
  Wouldn't something like this or another enterprise drive be a better match for you?
18. Re:USD/GB? by viperidaenz · 2014-07-01 11:29 · Score: 1
  
  That's pretty impressive. An 800GB drive is rated at 8TB/day. 14PB over 5 years.
  With parent posters writes of 600TB in 4 months, 5TB per day, these drives will outlast their 5 year life span.
19. Re:USD/GB? by Tough+Love · 2014-07-01 16:20 · Score: 1
  
  And how exactly is this cheaper?
  Easy... it's only 14 times more expensive than spinning disk instead of 15.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
More advertising! by jenningsthecat · 2014-07-01 01:37 · Score: 1, Offtopic

Man, this has to be the most blatant Slashvertisement I've ever read. The summary even sounds as though it was written by a professional ad copy writer. Gimme a break, Dicedot!

--
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
1. Re:More advertising! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 01:52 · Score: 0
  
  Oh sorry, I figured 3D chips were new or something
2. Re:More advertising! by jones_supa · 2014-07-01 01:56 · Score: 1
  
  Come on, man.
3. Re:More advertising! by Daniel+Hoffmann · 2014-07-01 02:00 · Score: 1
  
  Samsung has the same brand recognition as apple among slashdot crowd and this does seem interesting stuff in a more technical way than your average apple article.
  If it were the launch of Iphone 7 or 8 (or whatever number it is now) you would not call it slashvertisement.
4. Re:More advertising! by ArcadeMan · 2014-07-01 02:21 · Score: 2
  
  3D chips aren't new at all.
  
  --
  Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
5. Re:More advertising! by Gothmolly · 2014-07-01 03:05 · Score: 1
  
  Some would. I don't own an iphone, I don't care about iphones, they're just smartphones, like any other. If it had some radical new technology like built in satellite or a teleporter, I'd care, but if Apple craps out another shiny brushed aluminum thing and Slashdot wanks all over it, it's a slashvertisement.
  
  --
  I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
6. Re:More advertising! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 03:05 · Score: 0
  
  But this is an upcoming 3D chip era.
  3D chips have been rarely used, or have been left to experimental tests.
  This, along with 3D RAM that is being experimented with just now is going to improve a lot.
  I think uh, AMD was it, or Nvidia, are going to be putting some of this in to one of their future GPUs next year or something.
  I can only remember some pictures of it, and it looked neat as hell.
  Now all we need is 3D processors and we are golden.
  We just need to deal with cooling in that regard. And that involves killing off x86 once and for all. Not really, they will just try bastardizing it even more and making things more expensive instead of admitting how much of a failure the architecture is because they have too much invested in it. It is sort of like companies refusing to accept their products poison and kill, such as tobacco, or those companies that try force knowingly bad HFCS in to food and drink because it is cheaper. Fructose imbalance is horrifically bad for the body. (wrt other sugars. )
  In all honesty though, 3D CPUs aren't even needed.
  Literally nothing of worth uses even a decent i5. Not even games.
  It will be a while before the CPU processing crunch comes back again. Probably at least 10-15 years.
  i7-tier will hold us out for at least 5-7 of those years.
7. Re:More advertising! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 03:56 · Score: 0
  
  HDD fan... 8 o ]
8. Re:More advertising! by Tough+Love · 2014-07-01 16:22 · Score: 1
  
  Man, this has to be the most blatant Slashvertisement I've ever read.
  Disagree. 3D semiconductor tech landing in mass market products is still big news.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Honest question by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 01:40 · Score: 0

Why is there no 3D CPU? or have I been blissfully under a rock for years?
1. Re:Honest question by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 01:45 · Score: 0
  
  heat dissipation
2. Re:Honest question by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 01:54 · Score: 0
  
  Intel's been using 3D transistors in their CPUs for about 3 years now.
3. Re:Honest question by jones_supa · 2014-07-01 01:59 · Score: 2
  
  Yep. Here's the Slashdot article about them starting manufacturing.
4. Re:Honest question by ArcadeMan · 2014-07-01 02:22 · Score: 1
  
  It's because 3D CPUs are kind of dangerous.
  
  --
  Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
5. Re:Honest question by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 02:45 · Score: 0
  
  3D transistors are a single transistor in a 3D space. 3D chips are many transistors in a 3D space.
Prices, from TFA: $0.68-$1.02/GB by by+(1706743) · 2014-07-01 01:41 · Score: 2, Informative

128GB - $129.99 USD ($1.02/GB)
256GB - $199.99 USD ($0.78/GB)
512GB - $399.99 USD ($0.78/GB)
1TB - $699.99 USD ($0.68/GB)

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/S...
1. Re:Prices, from TFA: $0.68-$1.02/GB by LordLimecat · 2014-07-01 02:12 · Score: 1
  
  We've had SSDs with ~0.50/GB for a few years now (since at least 2012).
  Whats getting better is that that price range is now available for capacities above 240GB, and that they come with a decent warranty.
2. Re:Prices, from TFA: $0.68-$1.02/GB by jandrese · 2014-07-01 02:15 · Score: 1
  
  I bought an 840 Evo 1TB for $450 on sale a couple of weeks ago. Granted, this is a TLC drive and will probably fail early, but it broke the $0.50 price barrier and has been excellent thus far.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
3. Re:Prices, from TFA: $0.68-$1.02/GB by AmiMoJo · 2014-07-01 04:49 · Score: 1
  
  Note that the warranty is only rated for 40GB of writes per day. Not sure what happens if you exceed that. Sometimes I do more than that through my internet connection, let alone to the drive.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
4. Re:Prices, from TFA: $0.68-$1.02/GB by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 07:27 · Score: 0
  
  Cost is higher than most, and performance isn't much better.
  Release Date: 07/21/2014
  Performance
  Max Sequential Read Up to 550 MBps
  Max Sequential Write Up to 520 MBps
  4KB Random Read Up to 100,000 IOPS
  4KB Random Write Up to 90,000 IOPS
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147361&cm_re=samsung_850_pro-_-20-147-361-_-Product
Platter wins? by synapse7 · 2014-07-01 01:43 · Score: 1

In the linked results a mechanical drive with platters smokes them all?
1. Re:Platter wins? by synapse7 · 2014-07-01 01:45 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah never mind, I see the results are graphing time..
2. Re:Platter wins? by itzly · 2014-07-01 01:47 · Score: 1
  
  Lower is better. It's confusing, though. Instead of having "lower is better" graphs, why not just invert the variable of interest ?
3. Re:Platter wins? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 02:02 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, make the graph bigger as it approaches zero. 2x larger means 1/2 the time! Brilliant! Then we'll have to switch to a log scale to handle some of the outliers. Sounds much less confusing.. /sarc
4. Re:Platter wins? by Archangel+Michael · 2014-07-01 02:07 · Score: 1
  
  No. In most of the graphs, all the SSDs are faster. Shorter being faster.
  
  --
  Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
5. Re:Platter wins? by Virtucon · 2014-07-01 02:11 · Score: 2
  
  The only case where being short wins.
  
  --
  Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
6. Re:Platter wins? by itzly · 2014-07-01 02:47 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, just call it "speed" instead of "time", and then larger will be better. No need to use a log scale: if the different in time between worst and best is a factor of 10, you will have also have a factor of 10 after the variable is inverted.
7. Re:Platter wins? by Bengie · 2014-07-01 04:39 · Score: 1
  
  When your time reaches 0, your "speed" reaches infinity. That'll be fun to graph.
8. Re:Platter wins? by itzly · 2014-07-01 05:05 · Score: 1
  
  You honestly think that the time to write a file to a SSD will ever reach 0 ?
9. Re:Platter wins? by ultranova · 2014-07-01 08:39 · Score: 1
  
  When your time reaches 0, your "speed" reaches infinity. That'll be fun to graph.
  
  Physical impossibilities usually are.
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
10. Re:Platter wins? by viperidaenz · 2014-07-01 11:47 · Score: 1
  
  When 0 is defined as "less than 1 unit of measurement", it depends on how big the unit of measurement is.
  Non-high performance timers are usually only ~16ms per tick.
Do you have any actual evidence? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 01:45 · Score: -1

Do you have any actual evidence or proof that Samsung has in some way, directly or indirectly, paid for this content to appear here?
While it is possible that they may have done so, of course, we can't reasonably make such a claim without evidence showing this to be the case.
If you do have such evidence, then please provide it immediately. And, no, mere speculation or your personal feelings are not considered evidence.
If you do not have such evidence, then you should apologize immediately. Apologize to Samsung, apologize to Timothy and the submitter, and apologize to the entire Slashdot community, please.
1. Re: Do you have any actual evidence? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 02:21 · Score: 1
  
  Oh get over yourself. The submission reads *like* a paid ad, which is editorially questionable, regardless of whether it actually is.
2. Re:Do you have any actual evidence? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 02:33 · Score: 1
  
  What, you can't detect the fishy whiff from "shows Samsung's innovation is leading the pack"? Real humans don't talk like this.
  On the other hand, I don't think I'd blame Samsung. The submitter links to pcper.com *a lot*. If I was to bet on who was paying for links on Slashdot, it wouldn't be Samsung.
3. Re:Do you have any actual evidence? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 06:36 · Score: 0
  
  I DO have evidence. I will not show it to you and I will not apologize because DORK!
Platter wins? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 01:50 · Score: 0

If you consider the test duration as a positive measure of performance, it does.
10 yr warranty hah by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 01:55 · Score: -1

10 yr warranty on something that will be obsolete in much less time, bought only by those who keep current with tech?
1. Re:10 yr warranty hah by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 02:05 · Score: 0
  
  Imagine I'm not keeping current with tech, but I'm in the market for an SSD. Not everybody buys a new computer each time a new Windows comes out.
2. Re:10 yr warranty hah by jandrese · 2014-07-01 02:17 · Score: 1
  
  1TB of storage is 1TB of storage. I have several spinning rust platters that are older than that just because they keep doing their job and don't give me any trouble. Plus hard drives really stalled out there for a couple of years after the Typhoon hit and SSDs exploded onto the scene.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
3. Re:10 yr warranty hah by KozmoStevnNaut · 2014-07-01 03:24 · Score: 1
  
  More or less every SSD on the market currently will saturate even a 6Gbit/s SATA connection, you don't have to buy the latest and greatest to achieve maximum possible transfer speed. If you put this SSD in a new PC today, the SSD will pretty much be the last component to be obsolete, save maybe the physical case itself. This situation is going to persist for some time, so I can easily see one of these drives being used for 10 years across various upgraded PCs. It'll keep up with faster CPUs and RAM, no problem.
  Anyone can appreciate the speed boost (and silence!) an SSD brings, not just enthusiasts.
  
  --
  Eat the rich.
4. Re:10 yr warranty hah by bill_mcgonigle · 2014-07-01 03:57 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  10 yr warranty on something that will be obsolete in much less time, bought only by those who keep current with tech?
  10 years means it's either not a piece of shit that will fail within a couple years or Samsung is going to bankrupt their storage division doing it. a) is more likely.
  SSD failures are a pain in the ass, especially when you have to drive a couple hundred miles to replace them. And even if the machines are close, it costs human time and on-call pages to deal with them. Unreliable gear is a nightmare.
  The only SSD's I've had working for years and years have been Intel SLC units. I'm hoarding a box of dozens of failed Kingstons, Mushkins, Crucials, etc. on the mistaken belief that I'll ever send them in to claim the warranties (the truth is I won't trust their replacements so why bother unless I'm going to triple-RAID mirror the things).
  For somebody like me who does not want to worry about the SSD's failing before they get replaced, this is exactly what I'm in the market for. A buck a gig? Sold.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
5. Re:10 yr warranty hah by Smauler · 2014-07-01 07:46 · Score: 1
  
  Anyone can appreciate the speed boost (and silence!) an SSD brings, not just enthusiasts.
  If the noisiest thing in your computer is your hard drive, something is wrong. Case, CPU and GPU fans are way noisier than a modern HD.
6. Re:10 yr warranty hah by KozmoStevnNaut · 2014-07-01 08:40 · Score: 1
  
  Tell that to the hard drive I switched for an SSD. I measured a drop from 33dB to 30dB measured right beside the PC during drive read/write. And that was with the harddrive mounted on rubber dampers. Most modern computers use large variable-speed fans that make very little noise.
  It's true that modern hard drives are very quiet. Right up until they start seeking.
  
  --
  Eat the rich.
7. Re:10 yr warranty hah by viperidaenz · 2014-07-01 11:49 · Score: 1
  
  Who says you need fans in a PC?
8. Re:10 yr warranty hah by deroby · 2014-07-01 21:48 · Score: 1
  
  Hear, hear. I have a passively cooled DN2800MT in the living room for my kids to play with. It's sufficiently powerful for most online games (think candy-crush) or GCompris or oldish (so called educational) games they find at the library (**). The only moving parts in there are the DVD and HDD. As expected, the DVD-player is 'loud' but although the hard-disk is a modern and fairly silent one; you absolutely notice it whenever the OS puts it to sleep!
  (**: Most of these cd-roms come with minimum requirements along the lines of 'Pentium 166 with 4Mb of ram'. Not that I mind, but when you come to think of it, it seems that this whole industry peaked around 10 years ago and then simply vanished ?!)
  
  --
  If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
9. Re:10 yr warranty hah by Barnoid · 2014-07-02 02:03 · Score: 1
  
  The warranty covers 10 years or 150TBW whichever comes first. This should be fine for private use (150TB written over 10 yrs = 40GBW/day) but YMMV.
  http://www.samsung.com/global/...
10. Re:10 yr warranty hah by tlhIngan · 2014-07-02 04:18 · Score: 1
  
  More or less every SSD on the market currently will saturate even a 6Gbit/s SATA connection, you don't have to buy the latest and greatest to achieve maximum possible transfer speed. If you put this SSD in a new PC today, the SSD will pretty much be the last component to be obsolete, save maybe the physical case itself. This situation is going to persist for some time, so I can easily see one of these drives being used for 10 years across various upgraded PCs. It'll keep up with faster CPUs and RAM, no problem.
  We've hit the 540MB/sec barrier a long time ago - I think last year when SATA3 was getting popular, actually.
  it's why companies like Apple are moving to PCIe - the SATA bottleneck was very obvious it was going to be hit basically upon release of the SATA3 standard.
  PCIe SSDs are easily getting 700MB/sec and higher. On a bad day. High end ones like Wozniak's Fusion I/O were hitting gigabytes/second reads and writes years ago.
11. Re:10 yr warranty hah by Smauler · 2014-07-07 10:19 · Score: 1
  
  Passively cooled PCs are very underpowered compared to their actively cooled counterparts. If you want to use your PC for anything like gaming, compiling, or stuff like that, you're going to need active cooling.
12. Re:10 yr warranty hah by viperidaenz · 2014-07-07 10:50 · Score: 1
  
  You just need to increase the surface area.
  eg: Fanless heatsink for 95W TDP CPU's: http://www.quietpc.com/nof-ice...
  There are a few cases with integrated heat sinks capable of 95W CPU's: http://quietpc.co.uk/st-fc10
Not bad by Virtucon · 2014-07-01 02:11 · Score: 1

Forget the product but think of reverting back to 30nm. Also from the benchmarks it looks consistently faster in all but one test vs. the 840. With a lower manufacturing costs we're probably truly seeing the end of the line for rotating media in most desktop/server configurations. I'm wondering when I can get a 1TB+ with this new process now.

--
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
1. Re:Not bad by DigiShaman · 2014-07-01 02:58 · Score: 1
  
  Most importantly, the faster IO will shrink backup job runtime between daily delta changes. Winning! =)
  
  --
  Life is not for the lazy.
2. Re:Not bad by jones_supa · 2014-07-01 03:13 · Score: 1
  
  At some point we should also see a "year of SSD", where most of the new laptops will ship with an SSD.
3. Re:Not bad by Virtucon · 2014-07-01 03:59 · Score: 1
  
  OH yeah, 100K IOPS of course most drones keep a 4K cluster, what a waste. Unfortunately all I see are tech/press releases nothing in terms of "buy it now" option.
  
  --
  Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
4. Re:Not bad by Virtucon · 2014-07-01 04:02 · Score: 1
  
  Well with the 840s coming down in price over the recent months you had to wonder when the next generation would be available. I already have two 840 pros in my laptop, the previous was Hybrid drives which are pretty decent over the old 5400 RPM laptop drives that folks are still pushing these days. Still, in 4TB sizes I think rotational media will still be around for awhile. I have two Hybrid 4TB drives right now in one desktop and there about 70% faster than the old 7200RPM 3TB drives they replaced.
  
  --
  Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
5. Re: Not bad by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 05:42 · Score: 0
  
  I'm more interested in laptops coming with mSATA SSDs. Your cheap $300-400 laptop could easily come with 1 TB HDD and a 32 GB mSATA SSD for the OS. Put in your own 120-256 GB SSD for $60-100. On the higher end laptops, $600+, SSDs are pretty common. Could change if $/GB starts to drop again or Crossbar/HP deploys an RRAM tech.
6. Re:Not bad by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 06:24 · Score: 0
  
  They are for sale on NewEgg. Checked because I wanted to see the 10 year warranty.
  Not shipping till the 21st
7. Re: Not bad by deroby · 2014-07-01 22:07 · Score: 1
  
  My neighbour has a laptop like that and it's a PITA.
  I'm not sure what exactly I should blame, the hardware implementation (via the BIOS) or the OS (W8 so I'm sure half of /. will jump on it, don't bother) but it seems that the 32-ish (?) Gb of mSata is being used as some kind of cache for the BIOS that tries to buffer (read + write) towards the HDD. I've been considering putting linux on it simply to see whether this would benefit from this too (meaning it's pure BIOS, which going by the error-screens I think it is) or not (meaning the OS needs to play along somehow).
  In theory this should work great, and yes the machine is pretty fast I/O wise, but in practice it really sucks when things go south and somehow fails to properly write everything to flash and then when you boot again the entire file-system is corrupted beyond repair. This happened twice in a 2-year span already and the only solution seems to be re-imaging everything from the rescue-partition thus losing everything that was on the machine. As a result they now save everything (photos etc) on an external disk rather than on the internal disk.
  I tried to teach them how to create an image-backup with Redo-Backup but it seems the machine simply isn't capable of booting from anything different than the (cached) HDD ... I also tried to see if I could allocate the mSata as a disk to hold just the OS and some programs instead of being used as cache, but again found no such option...
  
  --
  If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
More advertising! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 02:34 · Score: 1

I see what you mean, though I think it might be a case of poor writing rather than a true paid advertisement.
The summary does read like a product launch advertisement from the manufacturer. The word "Samsung" is used seven times in six sentences, the last sounding more like hyperbole than fact.
"..Samsung's innovation is leading the pack!"
Do you have any actual evidence? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 02:35 · Score: 1

"..then you should apologize immediately. Apologize to Samsung, apologize to Timothy and the submitter, and apologize to the entire Slashdot community, please."
Oh brother. Relax, Francis.
moores law backwards? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 03:06 · Score: 0

Moores law is alive and kicking! Less chips in less packages = lower cost. Shrinking the feature is but 1 way to do that. Making the chips themselves is the cheap bit. Even a small feature shrink would lead to a cubed increase in surface area. Nice.
I can see starting with an older process to try it out... As you are not taking away from your existing bread and butter and re-using sunk cost hardware. Nice.
1. Re: moores law backwards? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 05:31 · Score: 0
  
  The older, larger process allows for more write endurance and reliability. These are still unsolved problems for newer SSDs, which is why price declines have stalled and bits per cell isn't increasing much past 3. The result: the spinning rust companies have a chance to deploy HAMR and stick around a while, and 3D NAND has been deployed "early". However Crossbar RRAM or HP memristors have a chance to destroy NAND and perhaps all storage in a couple of years.
that's nothing.. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 05:46 · Score: 1

curved SSDs are coming soon
Would you prefer.. by thegarbz · 2014-07-01 14:58 · Score: 1

The summary even sounds as though it was written by a professional ad copy writer. Gimme a break, Dicedot!
Would you prefer a summary written by a primary school kid like the normal quality of work we get from Slashdot?
Of note is that while the summary may read like an advertisement the article most certainly does not. There's excellent pictures of what a 3D process looks like that I haven't seen before. Furthermore as a nerd the emergence and the general application of 3D silicon is most interesting news. Yes it's read like an advertisement but there's a lot of meat in this that makes it newsworthy and interesting.
But I guess we should ban every post that talks about every product right, because even an article on yet another unpatched windows bug is nothing but an advert for Linux.
- This post bought and paid for by the Linux appreciation foundation.
I don't actually mind: Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 17:01 · Score: 0

Thought about moving to FLASH RAM SSD (from a WD Velociraptor 8mb buffered 10k rpm HDD driven off a Promise 128mb ECC RAM caching RAID controller - & relegating it to a BACKUP device only).
I've been using SSD's probably way, Way, WAY before most folks albeit in a:
A.) Gigabyte IRAM 4gb DDR-2 SATA II bus based "True" solid-state ramdisk board
&
B.) Before that (early 2000's) a CENATEK "RocketDrive" (based on PCI-133 SDRAM + PCI bus)
I apply 'em in the following tasks (to compliment my HDD setup above):
1.) Pagefile.sys placement
2.) %temp% & %tmp% location (both OS & apps)
3.) Print spooler location
4.) Browser cache location
5.) %comspec% location
6.) OS & App level logs (EventLogs + App Logs)
7.) I place my hosts file on it via redirecting it's reference by the OS in the registry (for performance AND security):
HKLM\system\CurrentControlSet\services\Tcpip\Parameters
(Specifically altering the "DataBasePath" parameter there which also acts more-or-less like a *NIX shadow password system too!)
* All of which lessen the amount of work my "main" OS & programs slower mechanical hard disk has to do, "speeding it up" by lessening its workload, fragmentation, + speeds up access/seek latency & longevity for tasks (per list above).
Before THOSE hardware-based solutions I used ramdrive softwares (writing one based off the MS DDK template + a GUI front-end & later doing work for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com improving its performance by up to 40%. Did well on applying it @ MS Tech Ed 2000-2002 as a FINALIST in the hardest category there - SQLServer Performance Enhancement).
I've waited out the "newtech" in FLASH based SSD's & I've seen 'em improve a LOT - on 3 items:
1.) Write speeds (huge gain here)
2.) Controller tech
3.) Longevity
I *think* it *may* be time I move to 'em as my "main drive" (houses OS & programs) - I like prices I saw (128gb for http://hardware.slashdot.org/c... )!
APK
P.S.=> QUESTION: Are current FLASH RAM based SSD's worth it?... apk
Man! I like that PRICE (question)... apk by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-01 17:03 · Score: 0

See this post (especially the 'p.s.' @ the end - "number 5 is ALIVE & needs input!!!" Thanks) -> http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...
APK