SSD Prices in a Free Fall(networkcomputing.com)
networkcomputing.com
SSD Prices in a Free Fall
http://www.networkcomputing.com/storage/ssd-prices-in-a-freefall/a/d-id/1320958
328 comments
Seems like a prime case for using a (bar/line/etc) graph to show the trend. I'm strangely disappointed in not seeing one.
In a side-note in the article, the author mentions that Amazon Glacier runs on tape. Although I'm not sure Amazon officially explained the technology, I heard (and read on Wikipedia) that they store data on conventional HDDs, that are however kept "offline".
Has anyone here some more knowledge about that?
Has anyone here some more knowledge about that?
I can't comprehend trusting data to a (single) 30TB SSD or even 10TB SSDs given the regularly reported failure modes of "It's not a drive anymore."
Perhaps it's because I'm not doing anything where massive storage is a requirement, but having data striped in RAID6 makes me happy. I'd be happy to use SSD for the underlying medium, but I want something that's less prone to single points of failure. Backups are all well and good, but what's the interface speed of a drive like that? How long to restore a 20+TB backup?
Perhaps it's because I'm not doing anything where massive storage is a requirement, but having data striped in RAID6 makes me happy. I'd be happy to use SSD for the underlying medium, but I want something that's less prone to single points of failure. Backups are all well and good, but what's the interface speed of a drive like that? How long to restore a 20+TB backup?
I can't wait. Once I can reasonably replace everything with SSDs I will.
And then I'll never buy spinning rust again.
I dreamed of this eventuality in the 1990s. I didn't know what technology would be used. I never expected EEPROMs would evolve in this direction (now marketed as "FLASH") as they were so fickle and unreliable in those days.
This will allow lots of interesting things.
Imagine a laptop that's got its main RAM backed on a dedicated bit of high speed flash... so it instantly powers off completely and instantly powers back on completely.
Soon, we'll have the massive increase in storage capacity much like we've had a massive increase in compute capacity to the point where you no longer really think about it-- all computers are "fast".
And then I'll never buy spinning rust again.
I dreamed of this eventuality in the 1990s. I didn't know what technology would be used. I never expected EEPROMs would evolve in this direction (now marketed as "FLASH") as they were so fickle and unreliable in those days.
This will allow lots of interesting things.
Imagine a laptop that's got its main RAM backed on a dedicated bit of high speed flash... so it instantly powers off completely and instantly powers back on completely.
Soon, we'll have the massive increase in storage capacity much like we've had a massive increase in compute capacity to the point where you no longer really think about it-- all computers are "fast".
The article predicts that SSD prices will fall from 30c/GB to under 5c/GB in 18 months. This seems like a case of citation needed.
HP is working on a memrister based SSD with density of Flash and the speed of transistors http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/536786/machine....
Could someone explain the 3d storage innovation to me?
Wouldn't stacking flash cells like that be susceptible to interference? (Heat/magnetic or electrical noise?)
Wouldn't stacking flash cells like that be susceptible to interference? (Heat/magnetic or electrical noise?)
So does this mean Apple will finally stop shipping a 16GB iPhone as entry level?
They are talking as if 3D NAND is free. The maximum of 64 layers is not yet production ready AFAIK. Even the 32 is too expensive, we are talking about 8 or 16 layers coming soon , which when you include two nodes step back you are talking about 2x to 4x improvement. 3D NAND isn't free to manufacture either. When you add up the cost, 3D NAND will be no more then a continuation of SSD falling prices according to its current tends in the coming years.
P.S - It just means it will prolongs the life of NAND and SSD will continue to get faster, higher capacity and cheaper before hitting its limits.
P.S - It just means it will prolongs the life of NAND and SSD will continue to get faster, higher capacity and cheaper before hitting its limits.
I find great irony in statements like these when the motivation of every party is considered. The idea is that prices are "in a free fall," i.e., they haven't fallen completely yet. But this will encourage people to buy SSDs and drive them in the very free fall of which the article speaks!
Experienced the same principle in my life a few weeks ago - I moved to a place described as "gentrifying." Realized a week into staying there that I was one of those people who was actually contributing to its gentrification! By no means was it gentrified, though.
Experienced the same principle in my life a few weeks ago - I moved to a place described as "gentrifying." Realized a week into staying there that I was one of those people who was actually contributing to its gentrification! By no means was it gentrified, though.
They are just getting rid of stock before NVMe M.2 SSD's go mainstream with 10x performance and lower production costs compared to AHCI SATA3 SSD's.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/03/24/where_ssd_market_h...
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/03/24/where_ssd_market_h...
This article makes a previously unasserted claim that Glacier uses tape. Is this accurate? What is the source?
Flash has had a drop in price because it gained mainstream utility, and therefore serious volume production. It's entirely unclear whether this will continue.
The physics of flash cells is not all that promising: there's certainly no Moore's gravy-train. 3D is a decent tweak, but it's not like 4D is coming next. As flash cells shrink, they become flakier (which might not hurt drive-writes-per-day, but is that the right metric?)
The physics of flash cells is not all that promising: there's certainly no Moore's gravy-train. 3D is a decent tweak, but it's not like 4D is coming next. As flash cells shrink, they become flakier (which might not hurt drive-writes-per-day, but is that the right metric?)
What I am really interested is when SSDs will be cheap enough to be in common OEM systems.
Is keeping a SSD powered on enough to prevent bit rot?
I find it surprising that most people aren't recognizing that SSDs don't even need to come close to price parity to completely replace hard drives. Random access alone makes them so much more valuable, and a good SSD is now worth more than extra memory in terms of increasing the performance of a computer system.
Having had a failure rate above what I was used to with hdds I'd prefer to see an increase in quality rather than a fall in price. It gets annoying having to replace my os ssd every 18 months or so. My most recent phone's memory also died after 30 months.
I wonder how reliability is doing; Unlike HDDs SSDs have a very unpredictable failure pattern, including sudden death rather than slow degradation.
If you want to ensure data is safe you need to run a raid 1 or online backup service.
If you want to ensure data is safe you need to run a raid 1 or online backup service.
SSD technology still has a reliability hurdle, you can nuke one in a month if you write to it constantly. Spinning media has much longer read/write durability. Until there is parity its still a bit of an arms race for capacity.
Hybrid drives are pretty awful so I don't think they'll stick around. I could see Hierarchical Storage Management make a comeback and an entry to the consumer space, but thats been esoteric at best.
Hybrid drives are pretty awful so I don't think they'll stick around. I could see Hierarchical Storage Management make a comeback and an entry to the consumer space, but thats been esoteric at best.
These estimates seem a bit exaggerated at this point. SSD is still lagging in terms of capacity, and in my household we only have a handful of devices using SSD. While it's become more widely-adopted for sure, HDD's are not "doomed" until SSD capacity goes up and prices plummet. Still too expensive for an SSD.
Total cost of ownership is another issue:
> Also, with much lower power use, there is a TCO saving to be added to the equation. Power savings work out at around $8/drive-year, so add another $40 to the 5-year TCO balance and the hard-drive doesn't look so good.
And I wonder if Mr. O'Reilly has included the cost of power for cooling.
> Also, with much lower power use, there is a TCO saving to be added to the equation. Power savings work out at around $8/drive-year, so add another $40 to the 5-year TCO balance and the hard-drive doesn't look so good.
And I wonder if Mr. O'Reilly has included the cost of power for cooling.
Consumer SDDs are now inexpensive enough for desktop RAID. On Amazon, decent consumer 240GB-1TB SDDs are available at $0.32-$0.40 per GB. And in my experience, SSDs are so fast that even RAID6 arrays rebuild very quickly after replacing a member. I use Linux software RAID.
Also the noise of the HDDs is killing me.
I have quite a silent rig (fiddling with music/audio in my spare time) and the most noisy thing was the HDD where my audio samples were. So I've moved everything to SSD and I'm looking for another 512GB to add.
I bought my 180GB SSDs for < 50 cents per GB like 3 years ago and it's barely better than that right now. Storage in general has more to do with availability and demand than technology, there's plenty of times when they've gone up in price.
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Fab manufacturing capacity doesn't magically increase because of 3D chips.
I surprised they didn't include any graphs. I'm very curious to see the trends visually.
Prices per GB are still very far off. It's hard to believe they will achieve parity that soon. Here's hoping though.
Prices per GB are still very far off. It's hard to believe they will achieve parity that soon. Here's hoping though.
Is the hdd demise indeed expected so quickly?
Cheapest 1 TB HDD on Amazon: $40
Expecting a 10x drop in prices in 1 year is ludicrous. Even if the prices follow a pseudo Moore's law and fall by half every 18 months, you're looking at at least 5 years before they reach parity. And in the meantimg HDDs would have gotten cheaper; so expect even more time for parity.
In other words: ain't happenin' in 2016.