What is involved to move all of these NGFF cards over to using PCIe? Drivers? New silicon? $$? It seems that with the ridiculous performance of the SSD's in the new Macbook Air's, everyone should be moving that way as fast as possible.
You just need a native NAND Controller. OR You could put a PCIe to SATA bridge, and 1-2 SATA based NAND controllers in raid, but that would obviously be less desirable. I am not sure how the MBA SSD works, since it is proprietary and exactly 2 lanes, it could be using a 2 lane PCIe SATA RAID controller and two sata nand controllers (sandforce, toshiba, whatever)
NOTE: That is PURELY a guess about the MBA and I may be wrong. I, myself, have not read any articles that dig into that particular SSD in depth, however there may well indeed be some out there.
Patiently waiting for the 380GB drives to be priced at $250 MSRP. The performance of these drives is truly game changing but unless a person can afford the 250GB drive I have no choice but to recommend a hybrid solution or just straight mechanical disk. If you need storage and your budget dictates it's either/or then there's really no choice.
Sadly until prices come down significantly more these will remain premium parts.
That would be interesting - with even the "low-end" SSD performance so high compared to traditional drives, to gear a release to NAS type usage. Low price/GB and long term usage as the priorities.
People can afford however much they want to afford. It's just a matter of how long they want to wait or how many other "things" they want to hold off on.
For example in my opinion an 256GB SSD is totally worth the money and 256GB is the right size for Windows+most apps. But I don't think having 2TB of those drives is necessary to get that kind of performance on every single file I access.
I've tried to convince some friends (who always complain about computers and how they are a pain to work with) that their next laptop should have an SSD with a nice screen and good fit-n-finish. Something like a $1,500 Samsung ATIV or Series 9.
Instead they buy some $500 thing with a traditional low res screen, bulky plastic body, and a large but slow HDD. However, it's not for lack of money, because a couple months later they turned around and bought a new (to them) motor cycle, purely for fun, for over twice the price of a high end laptop for.
A relative recently bought a BMW convertible near top of the range and was happy to pay extra for nicer wheels, upgraded radio/cd etc, all of these extras cost far more than a decent PC.
Yet when replacing his PC he wanted to skimp on memory and bought a PC with just 2GB RAM and a middle to low spec CPU.
He probably uses both the car and the PC for similar amounts of time each day and whilst he doesn't complain he does mumble about wishing it was a bit faster.
I really, really wish manufacturers would get off this SandForce-crazy kick they are on. Intel has even sold out on all but its top enterprise drives. Kudos to Samsung for manufacturing their own controller with a different approach to help keep things competitive.
Quite innovative. supporting native AES-256 is a major thing to me. And also Intel SSD pro 1500 is featured in M.2 version upto 360GB which is really cool. off late, sandforce reliability has been un-questionable to me & Intel's association is the best possible thing you can ask for. I wish to have hands on this ASAP :)
Also, on the M.2 product specification (found on the same page), the 2242 only gets 18k IOPS for 4K random read (vs. 41k IOPS for 180GB+ versions of the 2280).
What is odd is that the 120GB 2242 is slower than the 80GB 2280 according to those numbers. I assume this means it uses fewer, higher density modules to fit on the smaller card?
I stopped reading when i saw SandForce SF-2281 and SATA 6Gbps......
I want PCI-Express 3.0 based 2x SSD. or even 4x. As seen in the other test the current Seq Speed is limited by SATA. And even a 2x PCI-E 2.0 is saturated. Only a 4x PCI-E 3.0 could we see some headroom not limited by the interface.
NGFF or M.2 PCIe SSDs are in development today so you are going to see these kind of drives sometimes mid next year. the current generation of PCIe SSDs (e.g. the kind you have today in the MacBook Air) are AHCI based meaning that the AHCI controller is inside the SSD and connects to the host PCIe bus (where in SATA the AHCI controller outside the SSD as part of the host).
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19 Comments
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nutgirdle - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
What is involved to move all of these NGFF cards over to using PCIe? Drivers? New silicon? $$? It seems that with the ridiculous performance of the SSD's in the new Macbook Air's, everyone should be moving that way as fast as possible.extide - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
You just need a native NAND Controller. OR You could put a PCIe to SATA bridge, and 1-2 SATA based NAND controllers in raid, but that would obviously be less desirable. I am not sure how the MBA SSD works, since it is proprietary and exactly 2 lanes, it could be using a 2 lane PCIe SATA RAID controller and two sata nand controllers (sandforce, toshiba, whatever)NOTE: That is PURELY a guess about the MBA and I may be wrong. I, myself, have not read any articles that dig into that particular SSD in depth, however there may well indeed be some out there.
extide - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
EDIT: You just need a native *PCIe* NAND Controller.boogerlad - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
The Macbook Air uses a samsung pci-e controller.Teardroop - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
yep, wait for sandisk u110 or something similarHrel - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
Patiently waiting for the 380GB drives to be priced at $250 MSRP. The performance of these drives is truly game changing but unless a person can afford the 250GB drive I have no choice but to recommend a hybrid solution or just straight mechanical disk. If you need storage and your budget dictates it's either/or then there's really no choice.Sadly until prices come down significantly more these will remain premium parts.
WhitneyLand - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
Dude come on :). It used be everyone was waiting for $1/GB. Now we are waiting for something else?I think there is just a continual list of these transition points where SSDs keep becoming newly relevant to people in their particular scenarios.
Maybe the last of these is, cheaper than 4TB magnetic storage so all new home NAS builds will be SSD only. :)
bdmarsh - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
That would be interesting - with even the "low-end" SSD performance so high compared to traditional drives, to gear a release to NAS type usage. Low price/GB and long term usage as the priorities.pixelstuff - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link
People can afford however much they want to afford. It's just a matter of how long they want to wait or how many other "things" they want to hold off on.For example in my opinion an 256GB SSD is totally worth the money and 256GB is the right size for Windows+most apps. But I don't think having 2TB of those drives is necessary to get that kind of performance on every single file I access.
I've tried to convince some friends (who always complain about computers and how they are a pain to work with) that their next laptop should have an SSD with a nice screen and good fit-n-finish. Something like a $1,500 Samsung ATIV or Series 9.
Instead they buy some $500 thing with a traditional low res screen, bulky plastic body, and a large but slow HDD. However, it's not for lack of money, because a couple months later they turned around and bought a new (to them) motor cycle, purely for fun, for over twice the price of a high end laptop for.
speculatrix - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
+1A relative recently bought a BMW convertible near top of the range and was happy to pay extra for nicer wheels, upgraded radio/cd etc, all of these extras cost far more than a decent PC.
Yet when replacing his PC he wanted to skimp on memory and bought a PC with just 2GB RAM and a middle to low spec CPU.
He probably uses both the car and the PC for similar amounts of time each day and whilst he doesn't complain he does mumble about wishing it was a bit faster.
Pessimism - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
I really, really wish manufacturers would get off this SandForce-crazy kick they are on. Intel has even sold out on all but its top enterprise drives. Kudos to Samsung for manufacturing their own controller with a different approach to help keep things competitive.Johny12 - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
Quite innovative. supporting native AES-256 is a major thing to me. And also Intel SSD pro 1500 is featured in M.2 version upto 360GB which is really cool. off late, sandforce reliability has been un-questionable to me & Intel's association is the best possible thing you can ask for. I wish to have hands on this ASAP :)danjw - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
So Sandforce worked out the AES 256 issue in these controllers? You list the 530 as supporting AES 256, but I thought those had the controller issue.Zalcorus - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
The M.2 2242 will be available in 120 GB only, not 80 GB.http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state...
Good news for the laptops with only 42mm slots (e.g. IdeaPad y410p/y510p)
Zalcorus - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
Also, on the M.2 product specification (found on the same page), the 2242 only gets 18k IOPS for 4K random read (vs. 41k IOPS for 180GB+ versions of the 2280).kkwst2 - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
What is odd is that the 120GB 2242 is slower than the 80GB 2280 according to those numbers. I assume this means it uses fewer, higher density modules to fit on the smaller card?iwod - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
I stopped reading when i saw SandForce SF-2281 and SATA 6Gbps......I want PCI-Express 3.0 based 2x SSD. or even 4x. As seen in the other test the current Seq Speed is limited by SATA. And even a 2x PCI-E 2.0 is saturated. Only a 4x PCI-E 3.0 could we see some headroom not limited by the interface.
orencom - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
NGFF or M.2 PCIe SSDs are in development today so you are going to see these kind of drives sometimes mid next year.the current generation of PCIe SSDs (e.g. the kind you have today in the MacBook Air) are AHCI based meaning that the AHCI controller is inside the SSD and connects to the host PCIe bus (where in SATA the AHCI controller outside the SSD as part of the host).
pmeinl - Friday, January 17, 2014 - link
Does anybody know where one can buy a M.2 model?