Micron now has a 11TB SSD

(micron.com)

113 points | by DiabloD3 2349 days ago

8 comments

  • cbg0 2348 days ago
    3.35 GB/sec sequential reads and 2.4 GB/sec writes. You can see their product brief for the 9200 NVMe series here: https://enterprisestorage.micron.com/~/media/documents/produ...

    This 11TB one is actually aimed for read-intensive workloads, might want to look at the 9200 MAX series for something with more endurance, ideal I guess for a caching solution that's quite cheap compared to RAM, and which won't require an expensive server for such a high capacity.

    • gigatexal 2348 days ago
      Those writes are pretty good. And you can game endurance by overprovisioning.
      • tgtweak 2348 days ago
        Did they post the write endurance dwpd for this drive?
        • baruch 2348 days ago
          16.1 PB total writes guaranteed. About 0.8 DWPD from my calculation.
    • chaboud 2348 days ago
      Or just marketing as... goes to 11....
  • userbinator 2348 days ago
    ...and if you actually want to buy one,

    https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/micron-technology-...

    But it's TLC flash (more correctly known as 3-bit-per-cell), which has exponentially lower endurance and retention than 2-bit(MLC) or 1-bit(SLC) despite only multiplicatively higher capacity. This particular model has an endurance of <1500 cycles, and that's probably even after a considerable number of blocks have been remapped. The odd capacity of 11TB is another giveaway, since TLC NAND raw capacity is usually in multiples of 3.

    No mention of retention either in the datasheet, which is a bit worrying.

    • Retric 2348 days ago
      Honestly, you can write ~15,000+TB and writes are limited to 2.5GB / s. Don't forget you get as many reads as you want so that seems like a non issue for the most part.

      PS: Another way of looking at this is if you write logs that you keep for 48 hours that's 6 years assuming you fill it up every time.

      • salarycommenter 2347 days ago
        You don't actually get as many reads as you want. Reads disturb the cells and you eventually have to rewrite them based on reads as well.
    • delinka 2348 days ago
      To short-circuit a click, that's $7,700.515 each if you're willing to go in with someone to buy four at once for $30,802.06
      • spaceflunky 2348 days ago
        $0.70 a gig is really high. Even for cutting edge high density SSDs, I would expect to see around $0.50 a gig.
        • wtallis 2348 days ago
          Samsung's consumer PCIe drives are $0.47 and $0.58 for TLC and MLC respectively. $0.70 for an enterprise SSD isn't as bad as you think; flash is more expensive now that what you might have expected.
    • qaq 2348 days ago
      You could write like 4TB per day for 10 years there are a lot of workloads that would be OK with this.
      • dsr_ 2348 days ago
        The lifetime of most hardware is under 10 years. I'd be pretty happy with an unconditional 5 year warranty.

        That said, in five years a 10TB SSD should be around the price of a 1TB SSD now.

        • jotm 2348 days ago
          Will it? In the past 6 years the price per GB only halved (along with endurance by the way, but its still enough for a lifetime of a normal laptop/PC).
        • imtringued 2348 days ago
          I bought a 512GB Samsung 850 SSD years ago for 150€. The price hasn't changed and the competitors are only slightly cheaper at 140€.

          I think NAND has hit a brickwall in scaling. The only thing the manufacturers can do to decrease prices now is to add more layers and store multiple bits per cell at the cost of write cycles.

    • wtallis 2348 days ago
      > The odd capacity of 11TB is another giveaway, since TLC NAND raw capacity is usually in multiples of 3.

      Not that often. Most manufacturers have produced TLC-specific parts with power of two nominal capacities. Intel/Micron are the odd ones out with their first-gen 3D NAND being sold as either a 256Gb MLC part or a 384Gb TLC part. For their second generation 3D NAND, they're manufacturing 256Gb and 512Gb TLC parts.

  • DonHopkins 2348 days ago
    When I was shopping for a fast SSD back in April 2016, I found the Samsung 950 PRO M.2 512GB was one of the fastest available (quite a lot faster than all the others, and not much more expensive), for 310 EUR. I've used them for desktops and laptops, and they work wonderfully.

    I'm thinking of getting another, but time has passed and I haven't kept up with the market. Which big M.2 SSDs are hitting the sweet spots of price and performance these days? Any suggestions or warnings, please?

    • jpalomaki 2348 days ago
      Samsung (currently 960 Pro) is still the king a believe. The only drawback I have found is that Samsung does not support the specifications required for Bitlocker to offload the encryption to the drive.
    • tgtweak 2348 days ago
      Samsung 960 Evo is great. If you can spring for the pro you will get better reliability, though both are quite reliable for non-enterprise use.

      I have a 512GB 950pro and it's a beast. You might be better getting a larger, less expensive ssd for "overflow" and keeping the 950pro for OS and applications - it's still a very good performing drive.

    • loeg 2348 days ago
      Samsung 960 EVO or PRO in the M.2 form factor. If you're willing to spring for a big PCIe drive, I think Intel has some good options. Maybe even Optane, although it's very expensive.
      • vbezhenar 2348 days ago
        I've heard rumors that Intel will release consumer Optane SSD with adequate capacity very soon.
        • loeg 2348 days ago
          At a different price point than their 375 GB PCIe model? The endurance per GB capacity seems pretty bad, so scaling down doesn't seem like it will work especially well.
          • vbezhenar 2348 days ago
            32GB Optane is $80. 280GB Optane would be something like $700. Their released model is for server, server-grade hardware is usually of higher price.
    • DonHopkins 2348 days ago
      Not challenging the downvote, but just curious why, please (since it was unaccompanied by a comment explaining why)?

      Thanks to the informative replies, I googled around and found some articles comparing of the 950 and 960. Apparently it's significantly faster, and doesn't throttle from overheating as soon.

      Now this may be off-topic, but this one article really struck me as bizarrely sexist, an archetypical example of how the computer industry and press are casually hostile towards women.

      What the fuck is up with this site Custom PC Guide and their "tradition" in "every article about Samsung SSD"? Is this stuff coming from Samsung, too? Did part of what I paid for my 950 Pro go to paying for that beach photo session, or to Custom PC Guide through some advertising or affiliates program or free hardware samples somehow?

      https://www.custompcguide.net/review-and-comparison-samsung-...

      >But first and most importantly, let’s address the tradition that started two years ago [2014][2015] and appeared strong in every article about Samsung SSD on here ever since then. It’s been one of the reasons why you guys keep reading, it’s certainly no different this year now: hot girl photo.

      >Let us bring forth the cute kpop band Girls’ Generation who landed a gig to represent Samsung and the brand recently. They are promoting Samsung laser printer in this photo but I don’t think that’ll matter to most gentlemen. Also at this point, it’s safe to say that the performance of Samsung SSDs increases in parallel to the beauty level of their female reps.

      Once you get past the girlie picture, search for "piss":

      >They piss on and kill each other to show dominance or they get on fire. Nah, just literally kidding. But heat will be an issue here at some point, especially how the packages are stacked on top of each other like this in both the 960 Pro and Evo.

      >The NVMe interface alone is still just a toddler in the PC hardware world. Who knows if some day in the future it’s learning to walk and just falls flat on its face like my son when I accidentally tripped him. Using the Force.

      >The Samsung 960 EVO is truly as fast as the Samsung 950 Pro, faster even in many benchmarks. That is insane, for a TLC-NAND solid state drive to be honest. It’s like Samsung decided to send the 850 EVO to Shaun-T’s bootcamp to work its ass off under the 90-day Insanity training then straight to Sagi’s bodybeast without taking a break; At the end of the program, now we have this super athlete, super fit and super hot female rep who also makes the 960 EVO goes faster every night.

      • cjensen 2348 days ago
        Downvote may have been that your comment concerns itself with consumer SSDs, but the topic link is to a super-high end SSD for specific server applications.

        And yeah, that's some terrible sexism and shouldn't be tolerated.

        • 21 2348 days ago
          Samsung is the one being sexist here. The article is just using Samsung's pictures, and calling them out I would say.
          • ubercow13 2348 days ago
            How's Samsung being sexist?
            • 21 2347 days ago
              Samsung is the one selling SSD with images of half naked girls. What exactly is the link between a bunch of pretty girls and an SSD?
      • abiox 2348 days ago
        > What the fuck is up with this site Custom PC Guide and their "tradition" in "every article about Samsung SSD"?

        my impression was that they were commenting on samsung's 'bizarrely sexist' (to use your expression) use of 'attractive women' to sell things like printers.

        the so-called 'booth babe' phenomenon is (was?) a recognized trend of using attractive women for marketing. generally these women were contracted through modeling, marketing or similar agencies, and typically didn't have any understanding of the products they were representing. this is frustrating both from both a 'feminist', 'consumer/purchaser', and probably a variety of other perspectives.

      • PaulLCPG 2347 days ago
        Don, glad you made great effort reaching out to me. My assistant over at Local Success.org forwarded your message to my inbox and boy, it reminds me how much time we spent on discussing about this one particular article that always attracted millions of views back in the day. My time at CPG blog is limited now since I handed over the role to another member of the team but here's what happened.

        The original articles were put together by a couple of editors and one of them inserted an image of a Samsung female rep standing at their SSD booth with no intetion other than it was used to illustrate the big marketing event that Samsung invested in to promote the new SSD series. As you know, Samsung is from Korea and if you have ever gone to any of the PC cons in Korea, Vietnam or South Asia in general you will find many of these models present for the participated brands. It's the norm there, similar to how a car show or a UFC/wreslting event in the U.S is. The difference is it is not viewed as sexism in our culture. These models are usually well-known singer and actor who got a side gig and do it for the fans, they don't wear bikinis or act indecency even it's a beach photo session like you saw. They represent an atractive, clean image for the brand which is a total opposite of what we often see here, where models sometimes don't even know the company they represent and just be there posing for the job with rated R outfit. At first when I read your messsage I thought it was another fedora troll comment since you're in the U.S and are more open minded than the East; but I think you are genuinely upset and I see your point. But don't stress on the difference view of another culture when it's not the same as your perspective.

        When we saw the high view counts on that the Samsung SSD reviews, we scratched our head wondering why it's always more popular than https://www.custompcguide.net/the-differences-between-sandis... or https://www.custompcguide.net/the-best-and-fastest-mainstrea.... Though we know Samsung SSD is more sought after but if anything google analytic shows that the search volumes for other brands are just as equal. Only the Samsung SSD reviews are being shared more. It slowly dawns on us when many of the local customers casually mentioned how they found the article online and joked how they fall in love with the female rep in the photo before ending up buying a Samsung SSD and recommend another friend to check it out. Since then, we decided to just put a random image of samsung girl into an article to subliminally make fun of how many young readers these days seem to remember photo more than the actual information the article provides. We expected someday someone will discuss about it again but on the other end of spectrum and you did. Another day in the future, someone will probably send me a message about https://www.custompcguide.net/5-best-budget-ssds-crucial-mx3... making fun of Donald Trump too, maybe?

        On another note, please don't be too serious about the small jokes in the review, they make the information stands out and people remember the whats and whys of the product better. I probably give a note to the current editors to work their translation better since a handful of posts are first written and published in another language.

  • ChuckMcM 2348 days ago
    Large read only datasets. Map tiles, logs, security camera video etc. The retention question is unanswered.
    • loeg 2348 days ago
      Security camera video is typically write only, not read only.
      • jlebrech 2348 days ago
        Write once, read many times.
        • Spivak 2348 days ago
          Write constantly. Maybe read at some point.
  • peterburkimsher 2348 days ago
    Any word on the cost? I can't see the price obviously on the specs page.
  • matt2000 2348 days ago
    Will SSDs become cheaper per megabyte than magnetic platters at some point?
    • Elessar 2348 days ago
      Magnetic platters keep advancing as well. I loved this article that Ars did covering WD's latest advancements in MAMR: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11925/western-digital-stuns-s...

      That said, most of the projections there are from WD, so there's automatically a grain of salt needed. Still, they predict to keep the gap for cost per GB fairly large out to 2028 (!).

    • wmf 2348 days ago
      • astrodust 2348 days ago
        In the end it won't matter. 5 1/4" storage devices were always cheaper than their 3 1/2' counterparts, but a combination of factors, like how 7.2K, 10K and 15K RPM speeds were possible on a smaller platter, and seek times were faster due to shorter head travel, made the cost savings largely irrelevant.

        The Quantum Bigfoot drive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bigfoot) was huge, storing way more than an equivalent 3 1/2" drive with the ridiculous amount of platter area, and cheap. The downside was it was relatively slow and noisy as all hell.

        HDD technology won't go away overnight, but one day you'll wake up and chuckle about how things used to be. We had spinning rust in our computers! Hilarious!

    • loeg 2348 days ago
      Yes, potentially quite soon if HDDs don't advance pretty quickly. As of earlier this year the guess I was hearing was 2018-2019. It seems like Western Digital had another breakthrough, so maybe that edge is pushed back another couple years.
  • jgamman 2348 days ago
    someone remind me how big the sci-hub archive is - when do i get _my_ copy of the literature? ;-)