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When is the next major ssd revision coming along guys?

A

applesupergeek

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 20, 2009
879
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I 've only been following rudimentary staff on ssds, so I 'd like to know if users here are aware of when the next major (or even minor for that matter) leap in terms of controllers and ssd capacities is coming along. Is intel still expected to be the best in class manufacturer? As far as I know even traditional hd manufacturers like wd and seagate are going into the game, and then there's ocz and micron. And samsung of course.

Would be nice to hear from someone in the know about all this. And projected prices is another issue as well.
 
applesupergeek said:
I 've only been following rudimentary staff on ssds, so I 'd like to know if users here are aware of when the next major (or even minor for that matter) leap in terms of controllers and ssd capacities is coming along. Is intel still expected to be the best in class manufacturer? As far as I know even traditional hd manufacturers like wd and seagate are going into the game, and then there's ocz and micron. And samsung of course.

Would be nice to hear from someone in the know about all this. And projected prices is another issue as well.
Click to expand...

Read Anandtech.com for those information.

This is the most recent SSD State of the Union article from Anand,
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3747

The 25nm ONFI 3.0 Intel SSD in Q4 is going to be very interesting.
 
Definitely wait for SandForce. It looks like a really promising technology. It is detailed in the latest anandtech storage article.
 
Hey thanks guys, I got some reading to do evidently.

Can you just give me the lowdown on some key issues, for example who are the biggest players at the moment. Has the market matured enough to have any, or you might expect some minor manufacturer to come up with something great say? I am well versed in the hd market, but somehow the ssd one eludes me as I keep hearing different names of players there.

From anandtec:
No we're not going back to the stuttering crap that shipped for months before Intel released their X25-M last year, but we are going back in the way we have to look at SSD performance.
In my X25-M review the focus was on why the mainstream drives at the time stuttered and why the X25-M didn't. Performance degradation over time didn't matter because all of the SSDs on the market were slow out of the box; and as I later showed, the pre-Intel MLC SSDs didn’t perform worse over time, they sucked all of the time.
Click to expand...

These are some weighty words...has it been that bad? And seeing as the TRIM command makes such a heck of a difference (later on in the same article), I wonder when apple will implement it OS X wide...
 
...

Clete2 said:
Definitely wait for SandForce. It looks like a really promising technology. It is detailed in the latest anandtech storage article.
Click to expand...


be careful there, I got a OWC mercury extreme on Saturday and it died yesterday (4 days). My computer froze, I needed to reboot it and when I did the apple logo wouldn't even come up, just a white screen and eventually a folder with a question mark flashing. Even the reviewer posted a follow-up saying his drive didn't even make it two weeks.
 
Clete2 said:
Definitely wait for SandForce. It looks like a really promising technology. It is detailed in the latest anandtech storage article.
Click to expand...

Sandforce is here in the OCZ Vertex LE, though it's a limited run of 5,000 drives only. The 200gb one is at Newegg right now, and the 100gb version will be on Amazon shortly. I would pick one up, except I don't want to be stuck holding a $900 drive with no new MBP to stick it in.

The rest of the next generation drives should start coming out next month, culminating with Intel's entry in q4.
 
I'm looking for a 250GB drive... from Anand and other it looks like either an OCZ Vertex or a Micron/Whatever C300 for brute speed. Just hope they play will with i5/i7/OSX

Intel don't go big enough, and many of the others are lame. Thank Jobs for Anand though; the first person to finally clear the mist from what can be a roulette-style purchase at times.
 
Next big thing?
Intel's 25nm ssd's. Not only will we see bigger drives, 320gb and hopefully 640gb - but they will priced below $500 - due to density improvements, 8gb per cell, and also huge price drops because of the cost effective 25nm process. Also, most likely, faster drives. :p
 
Big Boss Man said:
You should read the anandtech articles. Micron and Intel have a joint venture for SSDs. Their next major revision is in Q4 of this year. It looks like it is worth waiting for...

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3731
Click to expand...

I ve spend the better part of the hour reading them. :). I now know more than I 'd actually care to, lol. Sure this looks like THE next major revision.

What I don't understand is why there is so much rebranding going on by different sellers that's muddying their waters...

Anyway, my view so far is that ssd is not yet a mature tec in many respects. You can avoid most pitfalls by going with an expensive intel drive or an OCZ one (with that new controller from that small controller design brand I can't recall their name) but still you will be getting a product that might be super fast, but it leaves a lot of room for improvement in terms of their durability, sustained performance and safety. Even the rumored higher reliability rate than hds (not in terms of bumping these things, but in terms of when/if they go dead all of a sudden) is still questionable. OS X not having implemented TRIM yet is also a dark patch (not that windows implementation is faultless, by far, it's a hit or miss thing).

Btw, can someone explain how the 3.5" form factor doesn't get much love from the industry. I would think it would only be natural for an all in one say like the imac to have a capable, fast and large ssd. And from what I 've read the 3.5" form factor is a very hush hush issue in the industry. My guess would be that they still don't have good enough controllers to cater for the larger size, and they don't want to embarrass themselves pitted against 3.5" hds.
 
...

2.5" fits most applications and you can buy a cheap 3.5" adapter. That allows them to easily mass produce one size. The only advantage to 3.5 would be they could fit more flas but it would be too expensive to make sense. A 2.5" ssd kills 3.5 or 2.5" hdd in performance
 
applesupergeek said:
Btw, can someone explain how the 3.5" form factor doesn't get much love from the industry. I would think it would only be natural for an all in one say like the imac to have a capable, fast and large ssd. And from what I 've read the 3.5" form factor is a very hush hush issue in the industry. My guess would be that they still don't have good enough controllers to cater for the larger size, and they don't want to embarrass themselves pitted against 3.5" hds.
Click to expand...

It's just that flash memory doesn't really occupy that much space (compared to a 3.5" Hard Drive which obviously contains a few large platters). By producing a single 2.5" drive they can keep costs down and since it uses the same SATA connectors as any other hard drive it just requires a simple adapter to install it in a 3.5" bay if required. I have an Intel SSD in my iMac and it only needed a £5 bracket to install it securely.
 
NATO said:
It's just that flash memory doesn't really occupy that much space (compared to a 3.5" Hard Drive which obviously contains a few large platters). By producing a single 2.5" drive they can keep costs down and since it uses the same SATA connectors as any other hard drive it just requires a simple adapter to install it in a 3.5" bay if required. I have an Intel SSD in my iMac and it only needed a £5 bracket to install it securely.
Click to expand...

Makes sense, I was eyeing an icy dock for my imac too to go with an ssd.
 
Certainly the base manufacturing advantages pointed out previously are valid. There are other technical advantages to the 2.5" form factor.

  1. Worst case seek times improved.
  2. Rotational latency reduced.
  3. Spindle motor is smaller
  4. Power consumption can be lower

Cheers,
 
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