Samsung to launch 256gb SSD (and mass use at WCG US finals)

[antiacid]

I picked up this news this morning and I thought I'd share since it actually provides a datasheet to discuss the drive. Unfortunately, no pricing is available yet but one can expect prices to appear in the next month.

The Register has the article

The drive uses 2-bit multi-level cell technology to produce its 256GB capacity and this is twinned with a Samsung-developed controller using an ARM processor core. The SSD reads data at 220MB/sec and writes it at 200MB/sec and does so across a 3Gbit/s SATA interface.

It comes in a 2.5-inch form factor, with 64GB and 128GB versions in 1.8-inch form factor packaging.

and the link to the datasheet

Performances sounds nice, let's see if the prices will be as nice

[largon]

Surprised to see Samsung grabbin' the ARM instead of using an inhouse controller.

[JaD]

Uh?
They licensed an ARM processor design to be part of their self produced controller, just like they always did.
ARM produces almost nothing, it just designs logic for others to integrate.

[EniGmA1987]

I thought MLC drives were 4 bit cells and SLC was 2 bit?

[PaVi90]

I thought MLC drives were 4 bit cells and SLC was 2 bit?

Why? SLC => 0 or 1, so one bit needed; MLC => 00, 01, 10, 11 so two bits needed

[EniGmA1987]

oh ya that makes sense. I was thinking that SLC would need 2 bits cause 1 is on and 1 is off

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

Looks on par with intels new ssd.

I'd like to know cost too. My raptor is starting to show its age.

[labs23]

I like it when another company is stepping up for the SSD market. Interested to know the price also as well.

Its about time for Samsung to let more buyers know that they have their own line of SSD drives too.

[Telperion]

Looks on par with intels new ssd.

Not quite. Samsung drives have been posting high sequential numbers for a while now but they get perform poorly in comparison to Indilinx and Intel in small reads/writes and random access performance.

[dinos22]

I like it when another company is stepping up for the SSD market. Interested to know the price also as well.

Its about time for Samsung to let more buyers know that they have their own line of SSD drives too.

they were in the market before intel

i remember doing a factory tour in US with Patriot guys testing some SSDs on benches with Samsung gear (just rebranded) heh

[Rommsey]

Any update on pricing yet?

[situman]

so this is a new gen drive?

[SoulsCollective]

Not sure how they can think they're justified marketing a drive at "gamers" based on large sequential read and write scores. Random small writes and reads and latency is where it counts for gaming and desktop use.

[Buckeye]

A lot of this and that about bandwidth and random writes. Unless you are doing something like major video or animation work most of those numbers don't mean a whole lot.

Drives for a desktop/gaming setup do not need all those fancy spec's.

The one number that none ever talk about and is the most important is access time. It is what gives your system that zippy feel. It is what makes the huge differance in performance over HDD's.

Access time is what rules them all.

Bandwidth... only really matters if you do nothing but large file work. I can copy a DVD ISO on my Raid very fast, but in the larger picture I rarely use all that bandwidth because 99% of the work a computer does is very small files. And again its access time that makes it so those small files get thrown around so fast.

Random writes are an important number to look at. But if you compare reads to writes the slight slow down random writes gives in some cases is more than made up for the fact that reads are happening so much faster.

If you are looking for a benching setup then get the SLC versions of SSD's for performace. But the days of PCMark05 and high scores with SSD Raids are over with the new system on HWBOT and limited XP Startup numbers. What is ruling those benches now is ACRADs and other drives like that.

I have been using my setup for over a year now and have not seen one time where random writes even came close to slowing me down. But I am getting killed by newer Intel drives... why... the bandwidth the Intel drives puts out are about equal to 2x of my MTRON PRO's. So the same amount of bandwidth can be done with 4-5 Intel SSD's vs 7-8 of my MTRON PRO's.

But that doesnt matter for normal or even extreme use as you almost never use it. If its that important to you that you have to wait 3 seconds to load your favorite game vs 1-2 seconds with a high end Raid then by all means spend the money.

On the flip side of all this and not that great of news is that over the course of a year or more I have had 3 of my MTRON PRO's out of a total of 9 go out with one just happening a few days ago. But the good news is MTRON PRO's have a 5 year warranty for replacement. But a 30% failure rate in a little over a year is not that great imo. But I run a 7x SSD Raid 0 with the other 2 as spares or used on the bench.

[aka1nas]

The access times are irrelevant as long as the SSD works properly (i.e. no intermittent latency screwups like the J-Micron-based drives exhibit). It's already so much faster in that regard than a conventional hard drive that you just aren't going notice the difference between, say, 70ns vs 100ns.

Random Reads and Writes could still use some improvement, though the better current models of SSD are still better than the majority of conventional hard drives already.