Next MacBook Air to Adopt Faster, More Power Efficient SSD?

MacRumors · Jul 4, 2011

Mac Otakara claims that Apple will be adopting a new Toggle DDR 2.0 type of NAND Flash Memory for the basis of the new MacBook Air's SSD drive. The Japanese website cites an "Asian electronics component person" as the source of the information. (via AppleInsider)

Current SSD device Blade X-gale supporting SATA 2.6 will be abolished and new 19nm flash memory will be packaged into smaller chip and will be soldered on base circuit directly.

The move would be a rapid departure by Apple from the current SSD stick format that was just introduced in last year's MacBook Air. Instead of a replaceable part, the new Flash chips would be soldered directly onto the MacBook Air's motherboard.

The new format supports speeds of 400Mb/s and in conjunction with a new ONFI 3.0 standard will allow future controllers to run faster or similar performance to today's SSDs with "half the number of channels, providing both a cost and space savings".

Samsung also touted another major feature of this new technology last year, claiming that a low-power mode could extend a notebook's battery life for an hour or more.

The resulting power throttling capability enables the drive's high-performance levels without any increase in power consumption over a 40nm-class 16Gb NAND-based 256GB SSD. The controller also analyzes frequency of use and preferences of the user to automatically activate a low-power mode that can extend a notebook's battery life for an hour or more.

Given the market positioning of the MacBook Air, the potential battery improvements and cost savings may be driving Apple's adoption of this technology more than the performance advantages.

Article Link: Next MacBook Air to Adopt Faster, More Power Efficient SSD?

timoroso · Jul 4, 2011

Let's hope not

I was planning to limit myself to the smallest capacity SSD and possibly upgrade later. This move would take away that possibility.

zedsdead · Jul 4, 2011

This could make me want to upgrade from my current model...interesting.

Hellhammer · Jul 4, 2011

It's 400Mbits/s, not bytes. The actual speed depends on the controller too.

EDIT: Hmm, Samsung's site is wrong then. ONFI's site claims 400MB/s which is what I remember as well (133Mb/s wouldn't be enough for even today's SSDs)

res1233 · Jul 4, 2011

Hellhammer said:
It's 400Mbits/s, not bytes. The actual speed depends on the controller too.

EDIT: Hmm, Samsung's site is wrong then. ONFI's site claims 400MB/s which is what I remember as well (133Mb/s wouldn't be enough for even today's SSDs)

No. There are SSDs which are capable of over 600 Megabytes per second for read speed, and 700 for write, so this is well within range for an affordable SSD.

blackburn · Jul 4, 2011

SSD soldered onto the motherboard hmm.
You trash your ssd with writes and that means that you also trashed your motherboard. Nice. Soldered ram maybe, soldered ssd nop.

arn · Jul 4, 2011

Hellhammer said:
It's 400Mbits/s, not bytes. The actual speed depends on the controller too.

EDIT: Hmm, Samsung's site is wrong then. ONFI's site claims 400MB/s which is what I remember as well (133Mb/s wouldn't be enough for even today's SSDs)

No, I think you're right. It's confusing when dealing with these NAND parts that get put together in various ways.

I corrected the article.

arn

the vj · Jul 4, 2011

Whats actually the use/market for the MB Air?

I mean, is more expensive and less capable than the samller Mac Book.

johneaston · Jul 4, 2011

Come on!! Apple, my money is all yours. Just release the damn things!

Do smaller chips mean more memory could be put into the MBAs?

KnightWRX · Jul 4, 2011

MacRumors said:
will be soldered on base circuit directly.

Ah, another good reason to stick to the 2010 model. Intel 3000 HD and now this.

the vj said:
Whats actually the use/market for the MB Air?

I mean, is more expensive and less capable than the samller Mac Book.

People who value portability (Size and weight) above a marginal increase in specs that doesn't matter ? My MBA has the same GPU as the Macbook, runs all my software and is much easier on the back.

res1233 · Jul 4, 2011

blackburn said:
SSD soldered onto the motherboard hmm.
You trash your ssd with writes and that means that you also trashed your motherboard. Nice. Soldered ram maybe, soldered ssd nop.

I think it's a safe bet that 99% of people who buy MBAs are not the type who would overburden their SSD with writes, especially once you consider wear leveling. My mom has had her MBA for about 5 months now, and I doubt she's used every sector on the thing even once yet. Many people are like that. Only us geeks are the types who might have written to every sector by now, for the most part.

blackburn · Jul 4, 2011

res1233 said:
I think it's a safe bet that 99% of people who use buy MBAs are not the type who would overburden their SSD with writes, especially once you consider wear leveling. My mom has had her MBA for about 5 months now, and I doubt she's used every sector on the thing even once yet. Many people are like that. Only us geeks are the types who might have written to every sector by now, for the most part.

Yeah your right. Since most of the users of the mba will be either light users, and the mba is not that of a speed demon. If they could increase battery life it would be great and more useful to the 99% of the users.

I do avoid writes on my shiny ssd, but I do trash hdds with lots of use, specially laptop hdds. Bought 2 hdds one for me and one for my sister, mine lasted like 6 months, my sisters hdd still works (2 years and counting).

puma25uk · Jul 4, 2011

The sceptical in me says this is nothing to do with speed, but rather with limiting 3rd party SSD upgrades.
Custom hard-drive firmware on iMacs, now soldered SSD... Apple machines are fast becoming severely locked down, and turning computers into disposable units.

I love Apple but am getting royally pissed off with this artificial locking down, especially if I can't even reuse components like a screen.
If I can't afford a bigger spec machine right now, I can't upgrade in the future. Instead, I need to buy a new one

Unless I go MacPro which, let's be honest, hasn't received a lot of Apple's attention in the recent past...

djrod · Jul 4, 2011

the vj said:
Whats actually the use/market for the MB Air?

I mean, is more expensive and less capable than the samller Mac Book.

You should try one

localoid · Jul 4, 2011

MacRumors said:
Instead of a replaceable part, the new Flash chips would be soldered directly onto the MacBook Air's motherboard.

This will undoubtedly usher in an exciting new paradigm in planned obsolescence during the forthcoming post routine maintenance era!

LegendKillerUK · Jul 4, 2011

KnightWRX said:
Intel 3000 HD and now this.

I'll just continue playing TF2 smoothly while you roll your eyes.

Hellhammer · Jul 4, 2011

res1233 said:
No. There are SSDs which are capable of over 600 Megabytes per second for read speed, and 700 for write, so this is well within range for an affordable SSD.

And that is exactly the issue. If it was bits, then we would barely be touching speeds of 150MB/s (most SSDs have eight NANDs and 16 dies. If each NAND provided up to 133Mb/s, that would be 1064Mb/s = 133MB/s).

EDIT: Looks like this Toggle DDR and ONFI aren't related at all, thus the confusion.

ugahairydawgs · Jul 4, 2011

Do we really want to move laptops to a point where they are completely unexpandable?

KiraDouji · Jul 4, 2011

res1233 said:
I think it's a safe bet that 99% of people who buy MBAs are not the type who would overburden their SSD with writes, especially once you consider wear leveling. My mom has had her MBA for about 5 months now, and I doubt she's used every sector on the thing even once yet. Many people are like that. Only us geeks are the types who might have written to every sector by now, for the most part.

Frankly, 'us geeks' would likely be more inclined to give ourselves some room with this sort of thing and not buy something that's low spec for what we're doing lol. I know with my laptops I've come to put increasingly less and less the more I've used my iMac as my main computer.

:apple:

Eidorian · Jul 4, 2011

localoid said:
This will undoubtedly usher in an exciting new paradigm in planned obsolescence during the forthcoming post routine maintenance era!

Why would anyone want to upgrade their computer?

LegendKillerUK said:
I'll just continue playing TF2 smoothly while you roll your eyes.

Never play another game. At least you have plenty of people to play with.

peskaa · Jul 4, 2011

I think they just need to hurry up and release the 2011 models already!

That said, sticking the SSD onto the logic board is an interesting move. Personally, I'd accept it to get the battery gains, but then I can imagine some people being in uproar about the fact they can't upgrade in the future - however when you buy the MBA you can't touch the RAM, so the SSD is just a similar component.

For portability, speed and battery life I'd happily sacrifice being able to rip a laptop apart. If we're honest, how many MBA owners really change the SSD etc? 1%? Less than that?

jamesryanbell · Jul 4, 2011

LegendKillerUK said:
I'll just continue playing TF2 smoothly while you roll your eyes.

Everyone else will be playing on something larger than a MB Air. The Air ideally should be a SECONDARY machine.

SuprUsrStan · Jul 4, 2011

puma25uk said:
I love Apple but am getting royally pissed off with this artificial locking down, especially if I can't even reuse components like a screen.
If I can't afford a bigger spec machine right now, I can't upgrade in the future. Instead, I need to buy a new one
Unless I go MacPro which, let's be honest, hasn't received a lot of Apple's attention in the recent past...

Here's something to consider. Macbooks have an insanely high resell value. Rather than complaining about computers being locked down and unable to upgrade, buy a macbook and use it for 2-3 years and then SELL it rather than upgrading. Then buy a newer generation system. You'll be getting a much faster system anyway.

Case and point. I had a 2000 dollar macbook pro from 2009 and I just sold that thing for 1300 on ebay. 3 years and a loss of only 700 dollars is almost a steal. Put in a couple hundred dollars and I'm picking up a baseline 2011 macbook pro 15.

How's that for upgrade?

res1233 · Jul 4, 2011

KiraDouji said:
Frankly, 'us geeks' would likely be more inclined to give ourselves some room with this sort of thing and not buy something that's low spec for what we're doing lol. I know with my laptops I've come to put increasingly less and less the more I've used my iMac as my main computer.

True. Geeks love specs, which the MBA doesn't have much of. Some of us do appreciate the lightness though.

definitive · Jul 4, 2011

hm.. now i'm unsure if i want to get the next air, or wait for the ivy bridge mbp. i was hoping for some room to upgrade the storage through someone like owc, but if what the article states is true, then it might be impossible to do. also reading yesterday's thread in the air section about the poor screen performance compared to the mbp was a bit discouraging too.

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