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Hardware Samsung 64GB SATA II SSD In Mass Production
Purav Sanghani - February 15, 2008 12:56 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 54 comment(s) - last by Joz.. on Mar 15 at 12:34 AM

Samsung 2.5" SATA II Solid State Drive sample  (Source: Samsung)
Samsung refreshes 64GB SSD with faster SATA II interface

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are the new hype in high-speed storage solutions and with each new launch comes improvements over the last. Currently, storage space is what many manufacturers are focusing on due to the demand by consumers.

There are still a few details that certain manufacturers are bringing up to speed. Many of the key players in the SSD game are still implementing a PATA interface on their solid-state products which is holding these devices back from performing at the highest levels. This is the reason for Samsung Electronics' most recent launch announcement.

Samsung announced in a press release that its 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch 64GB SSD with a SATA II interface is now in the mass production stage. The new SATA II version of the drive was announced in Q4 2007 and is said to remove the bottlenecks of the PATA interface used in the previous version of the drive.

According to the director of Samsung Semiconductor's flash marketing department, “While there will always be a market for HDDs, we see growing demand for our new SSDs, especially now that they are available with the SATA II interface.”

Due to the inclusion of the SATA II interface on the new refresh, transfer rates on the new 64GB SATA II SSD will increase 60 percent from SATA I versions of the same drive. Instead of the 65 MB/sec read and 45 MB/sec write speeds of the previous PATA SSD drive, the SATA II flavor will produce a maximum write speed of 120 MB/sec read and 100 MB/sec write speeds.

Additionally, because the drive is based on solid-state memory technology, the 64GB SATA II SSD will be able to withstand 1500Gs of shock within a 1/2 ms span, roughly 3 times the amount of shock a traditional hard disk drive would be able to withstand in 2 ms.

Pricing information on the 1.8-inch 64GB SSD is not officially available since these drives are currently an OEM-only option, however, it seems that PC makers such as Dell and Alienware are providing solid-state drives as a $1,000+ option in certain high-end notebook systems.

Recently, Samsung also announced a 128GB SSD using multi-level cell NAND flash which is scheduled for a mid-2008 launch with costs speculated to be around the $2,000 mark. With prices this high, only the super-enthusiasts will opt for these products.

That said, drives such as BitMICROs 832GB SSD that is scheduled for a H2 2008 launch will be completely out of reach for anyone but the mildly wealthy under current price schedules.

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..dang them big spaces.
By Joz on 2/15/2008 1:12:53 PM , Rating: 4
I would rather see some smaller 8-16GB drives under $80 that I can just use for booting my OS(s) and games. (though, I could care less about booting the games, and more about quicker OS boots. 23 seconds for XP is still too damn long for me.




RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By Polynikes on 2/15/2008 1:23:54 PM , Rating: 2
I wouldn't mind faster loading in games at all.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By Alpha4 on 2/15/2008 5:22:47 PM , Rating: 3
Its always nice to spawn before everyone else in Battlefield 2 and whore the Aircraft ;)


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By headbox on 2/16/2008 2:06:10 AM , Rating: 5
I can see how having a SSD would be an advantage for online games, but to complain about XP boot times is pretty lame- how many times are you shutting off your computer in a day?


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By mindless1 on 2/17/2008 11:19:48 PM , Rating: 2
Notebooks? Depends on the day.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By Joz on 2/23/2008 1:00:52 AM , Rating: 2
Well, im jumping around from lectures and discussions all day long from ~9-10 to 2-4.

so the faster I can boot, the more battery I have, and the more time I have jackrabbit the assignment due in an hour.

1 SECcond boot is too damn slow!!!


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By AlvinCool on 2/15/2008 1:34:50 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah I'm with you. I would buy a drive in that range. I have been putting my operating system on smaller fast HD's for years and then loading my programs to a second drive. It makes my system run smoother.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By FingerMeElmo87 on 2/15/2008 1:38:26 PM , Rating: 2
really? 23 seconds is still to slow? thats absurd


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By IvanAndreevich on 2/15/2008 1:48:00 PM , Rating: 2
Heck, mine is less than 15 seconds for an nlited XP boot with no garbage in the autolaunch.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By FingerMeElmo87 on 2/15/2008 2:23:38 PM , Rating: 4
Mines is a minute+ and i love it


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By StevoLincolnite on 2/15/2008 3:45:16 PM , Rating: 2
Thats why I love Standby so much, and because it's a laptop it can remain on Battery Power whilst in stand-by mode for a long time without having to worry about the battery, Plus I don't have to worry about boot times, it doesn't take long at all to come out of stand-by, plus with the fact it takes a Minuit or so to boot from a cold boot, on battery power this takes a large toll.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By ADDAvenger on 2/15/2008 6:55:53 PM , Rating: 2
You mean Hibernate right? Standby still pulls some juice, though it's not much at all. Hibernate is similar, except it powers everything off and saves your ram to disk, so it "boots" back up in under ten seconds. Standby resumes more quickly, but like I said it still pulls some power in that mode.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By StevoLincolnite on 2/16/2008 12:51:29 PM , Rating: 2
No I mean stand-by I am aware of it using juice, but on a laptop it's negligible, ePower Management reports that I can stay powered up in stand-by for over 40 days.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By leexgx on 2/15/2008 1:49:27 PM , Rating: 1
yes it is to slow why i use 2 disks in raid 0 (with vista it be 4 even thought due an Bug in Nvida raid you only see 100-120MBs top speeds but randome access should be better)

also with vista around now with its lets kill hard disk performace SSD has basicly no impact on performace when randome reads are hapening


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By leexgx on 2/15/2008 2:14:00 PM , Rating: 2
was thinking more of program loading times (or games level load times or when Superfetch on vista is doing mad randome reads when other programs are trying to access the hdd as well)


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By murphyslabrat on 2/18/2008 1:23:33 PM , Rating: 2
RAID 0 doesn't help random access, but slows it down. While the increased throughput helps cover the performance hit, it is still there.
http://www.overclockers.com/articles1063/index02.a...
there's a link, if you don't believe me.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By SlipDizzy on 2/15/2008 1:49:14 PM , Rating: 2
The load time for my games and OS is great with my Raptor drive. Although, like yourself, I would love to have a faster load time for XP. My games load up in seconds, so I could care less if they were any faster.

I can't agree with 23 seconds being too slow. God forbid you ever have to go to the DMV.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By ImSpartacus on 2/15/2008 3:15:53 PM , Rating: 2
I know, the DMV is so unefficent. I have had to wait over an hour in line. A regular day too.

So yeah, I guess 23 seconds of boot into xp isn't too bad. I think I have like a 40 second boot on my old Dell.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By smilingcrow on 2/15/2008 3:30:55 PM , Rating: 1
I don’t see why people care so much about the boot time for XP or Vista; have you ever heard of standby?


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By mallums on 2/18/2008 6:58:42 AM , Rating: 2
Too buggy on desktops. And laptops, for that matter. Sometimes, a computer never comes out of standby. Besides, one should reboot a Microsoft OS on a regular basis. Every couple of hours, in my experience.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By Joz on 2/23/2008 12:58:21 AM , Rating: 2
Standby is bugy.

I like fast boot times, it means I can get to my work faster, check email faster, and check the weather before I leave.

If my boot time was 1 second, I would still complain it was to slow.

When I press the power button, I wana see the desktop instantly. No load screen, post screen (only if a problem...) and deff nothing else then my pretty black background and the menu bar.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By Quiescent on 2/15/2008 5:13:38 PM , Rating: 2
My desktop setup is: 1.8Ghz AMD 64bit processor, 1GB of RAM, 80GB SATA harddrive (hosting the OS), 80GB IDE harddrive, about 10GB of space left on the SATA drive, 256MB 7800GT, Audigy 2 ZS, with regular ol' XP 64bit. I've had the install since about this time two years ago. It takes 10 mins to entirely start up from the minute it starts up and until everything loads on the desktop with a whopping 40 processes running.

My Eee is a 4G Surf with 1GB of RAM, overclocked to 1Ghz when needed (Definitely not on startup, though), 64mb crappy intel onboard videocard, 4GB SSD with only 50mb of space left, nLited XP Pro with SP3 streamlined. It takes only 15-30 secs to start up. What really changes this factor is if you use the network startup screen (boring screen, not so much bright blue that kills your eyesight at night) or not. If you use that instead, the startup time decreases.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By Quiescent on 2/15/2008 5:20:54 PM , Rating: 2
I must add to this. And the only reason that my Eee is loading quicker is because of the exclusion of Seek time, no need to defrag, and even with the 25mb/s speed for the small capacity, that shouldn't matter. SATA is pretty fast. But Windows doesn't like it that I only have 10GB of space left on my SATA drive. And thus when defragging, I still have a lot of fragmentation. And because of that, it is starting up slower.

With SSDs, you eliminate seek time and defragging all together, creating the sense that you are actually loading things faster all across the board, no matter how "fragmented" your SSD is.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By Clauzii on 2/15/2008 10:51:58 PM , Rating: 2
TEN minutes??? That's almost impossible :o


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By Quiescent on 2/16/2008 9:31:24 AM , Rating: 2
Yeah, like 5 mins to startup to the login screen, and another 3-5 to load everything when I log on.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By JonnyDough on 2/16/2008 12:04:41 PM , Rating: 1
You're running your Eee with an nLited XP Pro, and your 64bit XP runs what is basically a 32bit emulator. 40 processes means you've got extra programs running, not to mention your hard drive sounds like it's getting full. Furthermore, your Eee doesn't have to load as many hardware drivers. There are several reasons that your desktop is taking a long time to load, including you may have viruses or a defragmented registry, nothing a fresh install might not fix. Still, I've my doubts that it is really requiring 10 minutes. I would believe it takes 3 minutes though - which is still way too long IMO.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By GaryJohnson on 2/16/2008 12:20:43 PM , Rating: 3
Sounds like he may be running Norton Anti-Go-Fast.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By Joz on 3/15/2008 12:34:52 AM , Rating: 2
holy crap.. 10 minutes?

I aint seen that bad since i saw a bloated up Celeron D (2.4 or 2.6) machine with like ... no ram try to start up.

10 minutes... 40 proceses? ever heared of turning some of them off?


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By FITCamaro on 2/15/2008 4:12:23 PM , Rating: 2
I don't know whats wrong with your PC but from the Windows screen loading screen to desktop on my PC (not counting the few seconds to type my password) its about 15 seconds under MCE2005. Thats on my server.

On my desktop its a tad longer because there's a lot of background services to start from stuff like Visual Studio and bunch of other stuff.


RE: ..dang them big spaces.
By Griswold on 2/16/2008 2:13:47 PM , Rating: 2
I think you and your PC got other problems if boot times matter that much to you - maybe you should find out why you have to reboot so much that it matters. You know, other people turn their computer on in the morning and off when they either leave work or go to bed.

Then again, if you're one of those overclocking benchmark monkeys that need to get into BIOS 200 times a day, then you got a good point.


8GB SD cards are cheap, so...?
By IvanAndreevich on 2/15/2008 1:50:52 PM , Rating: 2
For $30 bucks you can pick up an 8GB SDHC card. So how about a 32GB SSD for $150ish? Shouldn't be too unreasonable. I'd get one for the lappy, it doesn't have to be super fast.




RE: 8GB SD cards are cheap, so...?
By Gholam on 2/15/2008 2:50:06 PM , Rating: 4
Those cards use MLC flash memory. It's cheaper, but slower, and doesn't last nearly as long as SLC. MLC is good enough to store photos for your digital camera, but not for running a computer OS off of.


RE: 8GB SD cards are cheap, so...?
By Cobra Commander on 2/15/2008 3:12:33 PM , Rating: 2
And don't MLC Flash have finite read/write ops? If they still do that's hardly reasonable tech for critical data storage.


RE: 8GB SD cards are cheap, so...?
By Gholam on 2/15/2008 3:31:20 PM , Rating: 2
All flash has finite write ops, it's just that SLC lasts considerably longer than MLC.


RE: 8GB SD cards are cheap, so...?
By Joz on 2/16/2008 2:51:59 AM , Rating: 2
For $30 you can pick up an 8GB Flash Drive (green color) from micro center.

best deal on planet earth imo.


RE: 8GB SD cards are cheap, so...?
By Griswold on 2/16/2008 2:17:49 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, if you dont care about speed and durability.


RE: 8GB SD cards are cheap, so...?
By Joz on 2/17/2008 12:02:23 AM , Rating: 2
Its not slow, its almost as fast as a voyager, and a little bit faster then my dad's IronKey.

Paranoid people...

the only speed in a computer that matters is FPS, and boot time!


By mindless1 on 2/17/2008 11:37:19 PM , Rating: 2
1) As others already mentioned that's for MLC based cards.

2) SD interface is a big bottleneck, you'd want a Compact Flash card instead in DMA66 mode or better, CF3 or 4 spec.

3) Instead of one 32GB card for $150 (or whatever the going rate at the time of purchase), get two 16GB cards and RAID0 them.


Holy crap
By Polynikes on 2/15/2008 1:25:54 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
1500Gs of shock

I guess I don't know much about shock force strength, but 1500Gs of shock sounds like it would flatten a car or completely shatter that drive.




RE: Holy crap
By Quiescent on 2/15/2008 1:27:21 PM , Rating: 2
Basically, your SSD would last longer than any other component in your laptop. Which is awesome.


RE: Holy crap
By GashHay on 2/15/2008 6:43:43 PM , Rating: 2
I'd like to see someone try and recover their SSD from a vehicle thats been hit by 1500G's of shock....


RE: Holy crap
By wordsworm on 2/15/2008 8:22:27 PM , Rating: 4
"I'm sorry ma'am, your husband has died in an airplane crash. Everything and everyone was destroyed. However, your husbands ssd drive seems to be OK."

or

Someone gets shot in the back... but the SSD drive in the laptop in the backpack got hit... it's saved his life! What a miracle. And it's still working!


RE: Holy crap
By HakonPCA on 2/17/2008 12:56:33 PM , Rating: 2
"Only bad news Ma'am is that your husbands computer was full of sick types of porn, and it wasn't destroyed when a normal laptop's hard drive would have been wiped out." LOL


RE: Holy crap
By somedude1234 on 2/16/2008 1:35:13 AM , Rating: 4
You'd be surprised how high of an amplitude of shock you can get by tapping a coin (or an accelerometer) against a hard surface, 1500 G's isn't anything at all in that case because the duration is so short.

What really matters when you're talking about shock testing is the total energy involved (area under the curve), that's why the data sheets always quote the amplitude as well as the duration.

A 1500 G, 0.5 mS, half-Sine shock pulse is a completely different animal than a 500 G, 2 mS pulse.

To compare against a car crashing into, say, a brick wall, you'd need to know the duration of the impact, which should be significantly longer than 0.5 ~ 2 mS.


RE: Holy crap
By JonnyDough on 2/16/2008 12:08:50 PM , Rating: 1
I don't know that much about physics, and frankly I don't care unless my SSD is involved, or I'm falling and trying to calculate my odds of survival; but I recall reading something about when you jump you land with a downward force 10X your weight or something. So a 200lb person could exude 2,000lbs of downward force or something, which seems like a lot if you're jumping on someone else. Makes you wonder why there aren't more deaths in the NFL.


Glad
By Quiescent on 2/15/2008 1:23:48 PM , Rating: 2
I am so glad that my Eee has revolutionized the use of SSDs. I am quite happy with my Eee.

Though, to be honest, of learning about SSDs just that more, wouldn't the read/write speeds actually be a different measurement for SSDs considering the exclusion of seek time? Or is that already included in the calculation?

I am still a little upset at the pricing, but I do believe that as SSDs become more in demand, the price will have to drop. There is a demand for CHEAP SSDs, not just for having an SSD. I would even enjoy higher capacity SSDs in my desktop, if they were to be priced similar to harddrives.




RE: Glad
By just4U on 2/15/2008 1:44:03 PM , Rating: 2
Well by the looks of it, we will be seeing alot more of them so they should come down in price as the years go by. Perhaps sometime in the next 5 years or so they might accually become mainstream! That would be nice as I have no intentions of paying over a grand for a hard drive.

STILL I suppose it's cheaper then the early 90s. I do recall paying 50 bucks a meg for ram way back when.


RE: Glad
By HrilL on 2/15/2008 9:25:58 PM , Rating: 2
heh I remember getting 2MBs for 200 bucks back in the day and and inflation has also dropped the dollar a quite a bit since then.


RE: Glad
By thornburg on 2/15/2008 1:47:24 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I am so glad that my Eee has revolutionized the use of SSDs.


EEE's are cool and all, but they did not revolutionize the use of SSD. SSD's star was already rising before Asus announced the EEE.

The EEE doesn't even use what most people are referring to when they say "SSD", as it is not (to my knowledge) a standard form factor drive, but simply normal flash-based storage. If the EEE counts as SSD, then I would have to say that Palm was the real innovator of SSD storage... and cell phones brought it to the masses.


RE: Glad
By somedude1234 on 2/16/2008 1:42:49 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
wouldn't the read/write speeds actually be a different measurement for SSDs considering the exclusion of seek time? Or is that already included in the calculation?


It's already included, the benchmarks are measuring how fast you can read and write data to the device, how the device goes about doing that isn't important.

However, seek times on traditional HDD's will have a much greater impact on random IO operations. The 100 / 120 MBps transfer speeds quoted in the article are most definitely obtained doing large block sequential transfers, where seek times are largely irrelevant anyway.

If you REALLY want to see an SSD shine vs. a standard HDD, you'll want to run some database benchmarks on it, where small random IO operations are the order of the day.


Eagerly waiting
By lobadobadingdong on 2/15/2008 1:44:59 PM , Rating: 2
on increased manufacturing yields for lower prices...

I can't wait until the prices of ssd tech finally decides to plummit.




RE: Eagerly waiting
By Phlargo on 2/15/2008 2:57:19 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, you and everyone else. We just need Apple to release tons more overpriced notebooks with SSD drives for those who can afford (or who want to) pay the premium. That way in a year or two, I'll be able to outfit my computer with a superfast SSD for 1/10th the price and twice the speed.


RE: Eagerly waiting
By sonoran on 2/15/2008 3:50:38 PM , Rating: 2
SSD prices are (in large part) driven by the cost of flash memory. And being silicon-based, flash memory prices (for the same capacity) should be cut roughly in half with each new silicon process generation. So expect prices to be cut in half about every 1.5 to 2 years.


RE: Eagerly waiting
By prickly on 2/16/2008 6:24:52 PM , Rating: 2
I'm still half tempted by the i-RAM as a cheap alternative except that 4Gb is really not much to play around with. The up-market versions of the same idea are way too expensive for the average user ... I have heard of people putting multiple i-RAMs onto motherboards without any other components installed (except power) and then connecting the SATA cables to their main system which is an interesting way of getting 12 or 16Gb going ... personally I will just have to be patient and wait for cheaper SSD i guess.


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