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

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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.
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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.

20110512_2m01_1.jpg
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.
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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?
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/04/next-macbook-air-to-adopt-faster-more-power-efficient-ssd/
Last edited by a moderator:
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.
 
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)
 
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)
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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.
 
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)
Click to expand...

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
 
Whats actually the use/market for the MB Air?

I mean, is more expensive and less capable than the samller Mac Book.
 
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?
 
MacRumors said:
will be soldered on base circuit directly.
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Ah, another good reason to stick to the 2010 model. Intel 3000 HD and now this. :rolleyes:

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

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.
 
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.
Click to expand...

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

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?
 
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.

:apple:
Click to expand...

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