back to article Samsung intros super-speedy consumer SSDs, 'fastest M.2s ever'

Samsung has introduced 960 EVO and 960 PRO M.2-format consumer SSDs with an NVMe interface and a promised 2TB capacity. Sammy says these are the fastest M.2 flash drives ever. They come with up to 1TB capacity, for now, and are built with its 48-layer, 256Gbit, 21nm V-NAND technology. We expect that 64-layer V-NAND will be …

  1. MrRimmerSIR!

    Lovely for a micro server

    Assuming the write performance doesn't fall off a cliff under sustained activity, you could stuff a couple of x16 PCIe host cards full of these (should such a thing exist) and have an extraordinarily powerful database server for not much dosh. The days of racks full of spinning rust for demanding tasks are surely nigh.

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: Lovely for a micro server

      Yep. Storage was really the last thing to be the bottleneck. Above that, you're going to be network-bound.

      CPUs can go insane nowadays.

      Memory can get ridiculous without being stupidly expensive.

      Storage was either too small, too expensive or too slow. With the world moving to SSD and the things shrinking as fast as they are, you're only left with expense.

      I have an IBM BladeCenter server next to me. It runs - and is kind of overkill - a large school. Almost on its own (backups, replicas and hot-spares aside). It's barely occupied in terms of blades, has only half the processors in each that they can take, each of which has only half as many cores as are possible, with RAM that's literally lost among the remaining empty RAM slots. The networking module is only 6 x 10Gb with LACP, but you can expand to all kinds of option more expensive options by just swapping out the module. Hell, you can even slot in several individual GPUs onto each blade for some stupendous GPU performance.

      The integrated storage, however, is tiny (12Tb) for that job - only 2Tb per blade. And they don't have SSD options but if you did - in the same space as their disk storage modules, you could easily fit a Petabyte of storage into the same space using things like this, with speed and endurance comparable to the ludicrously-expensive drives in there now.

      DIsk is really the bottleneck in terms of speed and capacity nowadays. I'm sure there are datacentres that are CPU-bound or network-bound or RAM-bound but in terms of almost everyone else from the tablets and desktop through to the high-end workstations and servers, is really storage.

      SSD's need to come in M2 format throughout, allow you to slot dozens into a box, and have that box be the RAID card too. Physically, and in terms of bus speed, whatever you could squeeze in could more-than-handle anything you could throw at a decent sized server.

      Roll on the death of spinning disks.

    2. Tom 38

      Re: Lovely for a micro server

      If that's what you want, wouldn't you go for NVMe?

      1. Charles 9

        Re: Lovely for a micro server

        M.2 supports NVMe. The article IIRC notes they use the four-lane PCIe v.3 configuration.

  2. Alistair
    Joke

    Has to be said:

    Those are blazing fast .......

    *cough*

    1. Jeroen Braamhaar

      Re: Has to be said:

      "Rethink what an SSD can do!"

    2. richardcox13

      Re: Has to be said:

      > Those are blazing fast .......

      ISWYDT

      That said, having a 961 (the, currently available OEM version), the term "ludicrous speed" starts to make sense (for example on startup the BIOS part is unnoticeably longer than OS boot time).

  3. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    I want to get WORMs when my spinning disks die.

    WORM allows smaller cell sizes (costs endurance that isn't needed any more), more bits per cell (hits endurance again) and does not require significant over-provisioning. Combined, that should reduce to price to the point where solid state reliability is worth the extra money. My plan is to put new files on a 128GB SSD. When it gets over 80% full, copy the oldest 30GB to the WORM and replace those files on the SSD with symbolic links. Backups remain on the surviving spinning disks that only spin up for the backup.

    This won't suit everyone, but if your use case has files getting modified, then becoming stable but still accessed for years then you might want to get WORMs too.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: I want to get WORMs when my spinning disks die.

      High bit-per-cell drives are meant for WORM-like usage: call it WIRE usage: write infrequently, read extensively. You still need to worry about bit rot (provision error codes or similar) and controller failure (sudden catastrophic filure, have a duplicate)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I want to get WORMs when my spinning disks die.

      WORM's and temp files to RAMdisk, natch. No worries about TBW here but I've always done it that way. Good security practice.

  4. jms222

    What does "prices start at" mean ? Those ARE the prices aren't they or are they for something else ?

    1. Dr. Mouse

      I would guess it means that's the price for the lowest capacity model of each. So it'd be $129.99 for the 256GB EVO, and $329.99 for the 512GB Pro.

  5. The Original Steve

    Scary

    Thinking back just a few years ago.... A consumer drive today has higher IOPS than entire shelf's of disks in an enterprise SAN costing £60k.

    Can't even imagine what an array with these in could run. Incredible stuff really.

  6. Banksy

    Sexeh

    I would like the 2TB 960 Pro but my wallet will surely take a beating.

    I've not had my 256GB 950 for long but it's probably not quite big enough now that some game installs are clocking in at 50GB. I don't want to add spinning rust to my machine as I like the lack of cables.

  7. spudmasterflex

    I have the 512GB version in my desktop alongside 4x traditional samsung SATA SSD's of varying sizes.

    Its boots so quickly from post to usable desktop ~6 seconds and opens any application in the blink of the eye, totally immense and the world away from traditional spinning rust.

    I just wonder if a bottleneck exists, is it's elsewhere in the system now.

    I can easily achieve a sustained 1500MBps + file transfers totally bonkers.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Next PCIe lanes as optical unless they reduce the entire machine, SSD included, to one 3d package.

  8. Vector

    Sigh...

    My poor laptop (which really isn't that old) only has mSATA slots.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Laptops with dual M.2 slots?

    Anyone know of any? I keep hoping to see that, so you could RAID a laptop as was possible in the old days (in models that let you remove the CD/DVD drive and replace it with a second hard drive)

    Considering how small the M.2 cards are, that should be possible even in something going for thin-n-light...

    1. Banksy

      Re: Laptops with dual M.2 slots?

      I believe there are a few out there now but not sure about 'thin and light'. Look at the latest MSI, Alienware, ASUS, etc. with NVIDIA 10-series graphics. Problem is they cost ££££.

      On a side note check out this desktop mobo with triple m.2 slots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dA8yNEZgQU

    2. Nate Amsden

      Re: Laptops with dual M.2 slots?

      My lenovo p50 has dual 512GB 950 pro(pci e 4x 10gig) and a 1TB 850 pro sata. With this config and 3 year on site support about 3500.

      I expect to be using it for at least 5 years(previous laptop was a toshiba and was primary computer for 5 years gets light usage still).

      I see no difference in performance between 850 pro and 950 pro outside of benchmark scores. Everything is plenty fast.

      My normal operating system is linux mint though have windows 7 dual boot in the rare chance i want it for gaming.

  10. I just wish to be anonymous.

    Bob Dylan sang

    These times they are a changin.....

  11. Daniel B.
    Boffin

    Um...

    "The device supports up to 400TB written"

    That's too low. Given heavy usage of such an SSD, I guess it'll die within the 3 years given by the manufacturer.

    1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Um...

      So what?

      For the sharp, pointy end of the usage bell-curve, lifespan might be limited to a few years. And your claim is that this invalidates the entire product range?

      Tough crowd.

      GJC

      1. Andy The Hat Silver badge

        Re: Um...

        This is the EVO version so *should* be used in retail situations where the majority of work is read not write. For that, 365Gb per day is a fair old whack ...

  12. herman

    Don't worry, Windows 11 will ensure that it is too small and slow to save more than a handful of one line Word docxz.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Viable as SAN replacement?

    So could a small (3-5 drives) array of 1 or 2 TB m.2. drives , or maybe even a single M.2. drive replace an older 15K RPM SAS SAN with say 24 drives? With a huge performance boost?

    Would write performance keep up if you ran a DB on it? or VMs? On paper this seems feasible but I think I might be missing something. A caching controller perhaps?

    1. Nate Amsden

      Re: Viable as SAN replacement?

      SANs are all about high availability and data services. A lot of which is very sophisticated software and hardware architecture.

      You can certainly have a very fast disk array with this kind of storage but it wouldn't really be in the same space as a traditional SAN product. And no the open source storage stacks don't come close to being adequate either unless you are very committed and have significant internal resources for support. Support will of course matter most when shit hits the fan.

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