Samsung Mass Produces Fast 256GB SSDs 280
Lucas123 writes "Samsung said it's now mass producing a 256GB solid state disk that it says has sequential read/write rates of 220MB/sec and 200/MBsec, respectively. Samsung said it focused on narrowing the disparity of read/write rates on its SSD drive with this model by interleaving NAND flash chips using eight channels, the same way Intel boosts its X25 SSD. The drive doubles the performance of Samsung's previous 64GB and 128GB SSDs. 'The 256GB SSD launches applications 10 times faster than the fastest 7200rpm notebook HDD,' Samsung said in a statement."
Yeah but it costs how much? (Score:2, Interesting)
My left nut is an unreasonable price.
Fuzzy math (Score:5, Interesting)
So it launches applications 10 times faster [sic] (should say in 1/10 the amount of time), but the article only claims speed improvements of about 3.5 to 1. People need to seriously examine how they quote or accept statistics.
Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing at Samsung, said the new 256GB drive can store 25 high-definition movies taking up 10GB of space each in just 21 minutes, which he said is a significant advancement over a 7200rpm hard disk drive, which takes about 70 minutes.
Re:cant wait (Score:2, Interesting)
to put some of these into my servers
ditto, but im waiting for permanent data erasure to become a little more mature. i understand the wear leveling incorporated into SSD can cause current programs to stumble.
Not Yet Available? (Score:3, Interesting)
The ComputerWorld article says "and are available for resellers today". The Samsung press release [businesswire.com] says, "announced today that it has begun mass producing". I couldn't find them in any of the usual places.
The Samsung website is particularly un-useful and hard to navigate, though I suppose it's appropriate that they require you to use Flash for this one.
Re:10,000 RPM (Score:5, Interesting)
SSDs are still over 25 times as expensive for 1 TB of storage. Fixed that for you.
64 GB SSD today = $150.
80 GB hard disk = $40.
If you need only 64 GB of storage, as most handhelds, laptops, and desktops do, SSDs are only about four times more expensive today. You can expect SSDs to become cheaper than hard disks in about two years, at least for the smaller capacity drives.
Re:SSD = Single Sided Disc (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how many of today's /.'ers remember doing this. To the best of my hazy recollection, I never had a "single sided" disk fail to format both sides.
When I first heard about it, I used a second disc to mark the location and an X-acto knife to cut the slot. I recall it being several months before tools to cut the slots started showing up in computer stores.
I also recall discussions about whether spinning the disk "backwards" would dislodge dirt trapped in the liner and cause premature failure of the disk. In hindsight it sure didn't seem to.
Re:10,000 RPM (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:cant wait (Score:4, Interesting)
We spent weeks benchmarking and optimizing a database
And just think of all the people who have crappy unoptimized databases who can just buy these and leave their design as-is!
Re:How many hours will it last if used as swap? (Score:3, Interesting)
And of course every time someone levels this criticism it completely ignores the complimentary question: how many hours will a mechanical spinning-platter HD last doing all out full-speed sustained reads and writes 24/7?
At least flash drives have a predictable failure timeline, whereas HDs simply have a vague MTBF and could easily fail much sooner (or much later!) than that.
Data recovery? (Score:1, Interesting)
Watch out for sustained read... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:cant wait (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:10,000 RPM (Score:5, Interesting)
To the cousin poster - would you propose that we do monthly-rotating daily backups of our small business server to spinning hard drives? Keep in mind that they need to be easily archivable and the cost of the media is more important than cost of the hardware.
Are you doing off site? How many gigs are you backing up? You might find that a raid NAS array, possibly off site to be cheaper than you think - and fully capable of keeping all your backups. Or price a dozen or so external HDs.
So, you're agreeing with me? They're the ultimate in high volume, cheap, slow storage.
And hard drives will rule the world for a while when it comes to on-line, random access, but not requiring especially low latency.
Still, I find it interesting. Right now, on Newegg, the largest HD you can get is 1.5TB for $140. For $278 you can get a 128GB SSD. Call it $2/GB.
It wasn't that long ago that the HD was ~$300, and the SSD, $3k for a 80GB one. Matter of fact, Newegg still lists a 64GB model for $825. Back in 2004, a 250GB HD cost $250 [alts.net]. Anyways - we're looking now at SSDs being available that are 'only' 1/12 the size of the largest consumer HD available at this time, for about double the price. Go back around a year, and you're looking at 10X the price for 1/12th the capacity. We went from a 120X disadvantage to a 24X advantage. That's a massive catchup, relatively speaking.
Keeping with Newegg - you can get a 120GB 2.5" drive for ~$50. So it's 5X as expensive to get the SSD - but the SSD is shockproof in comparison, and is demonstratively faster. Go large on the HD? 500GB for $110. Around a 12X disadvantage. At this rate I'll predict that SSDs will replace hard drives in laptops around 2010-2012. Leaning towards 2010. Shortly after that it'll take the server market, at least for systems that lean towards reads. 2016 or so for standard desktops.
Re:10,000 RPM (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Random access (Score:2, Interesting)
Hello there, reporting in from Eastern Europe. Rotary-dial phones have been uncommon here for a long time too. My suggestion would be to take what you see in movies less seriously.