Samsung announces crazy fast 256GB SSD, our knees buckle
By Ryan Block 
posted May 25th 2008 9:11PM
posted May 25th 2008 9:11PM
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Only costs as much as your current computer?
Yeah, your Power Mac.
Try 5x as much...
$2,xxx+ maybe? FAIL! I'll gab one in 2014....
seriously. I don't care about more storage. As soon as they can give me a 64gb SSD that costs less than $200, I'll care about more storage. Otherwise, this kind of technology is practically useless to me.
Eh, a Mac Pro can cost you something like 20k if you get it all suped up.
About time this is coming out. I'm getting sick and tired of the POS 3.5" HDD and I can't believe they are still spending money researching on the spinning disks.
I have 10 old useless HDD lying around.
Hate to break it to you, but this so called waste of research they are putting into spinning disks has brought the VelociRaptor which has a far better $/gigabyte ratio (1:1ish) and still has awesome speed (120MBps read/write). Okay not as great as an SSD but then again, I can't afford something like this. I would prefer to spend the monies on something more worth while (like better graphics for example).
i wish they would jump ahead and say heres 250GB SSD for $400. :)
@El Taco, you're missing the point. It will eventually filter down to the normal consumer level. All new technology starts expensive. I'm not going to be getting one, but I think this is great news.
I heard that it is going to be cheaper because it is MLC (Multi Level Cell) based and therefore cheaper and they can increase the size without compromising the performance like in the past. Currently, all SSDs are SLC (Single Level Cell) based.
OMG i just pooped my pants
gabe, that's just disgusting.
:)
She isn't even THAT good looking.
Like, ewwwww, Slawek!
Slawek, into scat are we?
She doesn't look old enough anyway.
Where is my comment?
open it up I bet you'd find 32 8GB SDHC cards
ha seriously, its gonna cost just as much.
nice case though
I always see SSDs with such nice enclosures. You don't buy them like that do they?
Why not 8 32GB SDHCs? That's be cheaper. Sandisk has them, but not price my guess is only $300....
Either way you slice it Solid State aint cheap!!! Especially when compared to 3.5" and quite a bit when compared to 7200RPM 2.5" drives.
Still I'd love to own one, but some RAM and a Penryn would do me better for cheaper.
Holy crap.
I love SSDs.
You think my wife will mind if I sell the house for one?
Alternatively, you can sell your wife instead...
He'd never get enough...
;)
This is even faster than the New Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB
Only I guess it's going to be more expensive than the laptop than you're trying to install this drive for.
That is epic win.
Neutral win.
A geek boner for flash memory.
I had one.
Well, it is MLC, so maybe it won't be super duper crazy expensive...
They announced the 500gb 2.5" HDD a while ago too, where's that?! *ggrr*
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10008355
what do i do with a 256gb ssd when i don't have any arms or legs...
cry
Stare and admire the read/write speeds of course. Just need someone to set you up in your computer chair and you're good to go.
You're not using your brain (haw):
What I mean, you still have a spare kidney :)
cut off
(You'll need to sell your kidney for when the 512GB ssd's come out)
*sigh*
It wasn't too long ago that only US firms were capable of making such stunning technological claims regarding progress in computing.
It then became Japan. Now Korea. Soon, it will be Taiwan. And then, China.
Viva globalization!
More like "Viva Lost Wages!" (que Elvis 'traveling muisc'....)
I think that's ridiculous, since American firms continue to advance, while foreign firms/development didn't just magically appear recently.
Don't forget Malasia. That's where my current Hewlett-Packard was made. As far as Samsung goes, I've had very bad luck with their products and avoid them like the plague.
SAMSUNG FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D
FAIL!
The MacBook Air with SSD is far superior in every way.
You have to consider the Holistic experience, not just one piece of a computer...
The MacBook Air SSD is not superior, it does not even outperform a CF to SATA adapter! And as it turned out, this was revealed on Engadget.
Not that I really care. An SSD is a SSD to me :).
Can someone please tell me what the hell is this guy is even talking about?
this isnt a computer, so you cant even compare the "experience" to the macbook air because once again, thats a computer, this is a hardware peice
He's a really dedicated troll, 'bout all there is to it.
How can you take anyone who has a name that begins with a lower case i followed by a capital letter seriously.
It's the iCliché, and I, for one, am sick of them all.
@Ryan Block
Comment of the week/ month/ year
To answer your question if you look at his past post he "acts" like a non intellengent troll
If I wanted a holistic experience I'd get some scented candles and sit by the fireplace with a good book. Mac addicts worry me sometimes. (don't flame me, nothing wrong with a Mac addict. I'm a PC addict myself)
Wow.
Nothing i could possibly say can do full justice to how stupid that comment was.
He's not a Mac fan. Check his previous comments, it's clear he just wants to promote anti-Mac user stereotypes. Seriously, this guy is nothing but a troll and should be banned.
iEye R baboon
you can tell this is a great product because the model is quite ugly.
lmfao
agreed
At the most you can see her face and you're calling her quite ugly? You would criticize a pr0n model if she had a visible vein on her arm.
The product does look better than model. Why Korean tech company has to alway hire the ugliest girl model for a sexy product.
Whoa i didn't even notice there was a model *really really entrance by the 256 gb sd glory*
Ha! Its so true. I sadly found the device more attractive than her.
They need to get those vacuum models they had in more of their photos.
i think the answer is simple k2001, it's their marketing strategy because if you place a beautiful and cute model over their product you wont notice how awesome their product is
http://www.arcanemind.com
did anyone else see that??? 1.8 inch versions due out in Q4!!! THAT MEANS a 256GB Ipod and Zune Lineup (Hopefully)... I mean, if they can get that much Flash memory into such a small package as that, you would think they would have already done it for the 1.8 inch hard drive models, right?
Yeah okay, and along with a 1.8inch SSD comes a $2000 iPod...you willing to pay for one? Cause they rest of us sane people sure aint!
No, i was saying that if they were able to cram 256gb of flash memory in there, they probably have done it with a HARD-DRIVE!, so no, I don't wanrt a 256GB SSD Zune, it would cost a fortune!
256GB SSD drive: $xxxxx, Zune/iPod Device: $250. Combined price of this thing: explaining to your wife why the house has been replaced by one of those wooden shit houses.
There are somethings money can't buy, for everything else, there's masturbation.
Using the advances in the miniaturization of flash memory to insinuate a similar miniaturization of hard drive platters is kind of a mistake in thought.
I'm looking forward to having that in my notebook computer...in 2010 or 2011 maybe.
I'll just sell my computer and store everything on this :)
If this was available in 8 or 16 GB, I would buy one in a heartbeat.
WANT!
Absolutely. I'm glad to see another person with common sense.
The only reason these things are fast is because of massive parallel reading/writing. A smaller capacity will never achieve that. That's probably why the 256GB version is faster than the 64GB version.
Flash memory itself is still very slow, the big deal here is the controller that writes to all the flash chips at the same time.
Official ISO SSD Speed Measurements
50 MBps read and 40MBps S/W =
Phoebe from Friends Fast
100MBps read and 80MBps S/W =
Talks-to-Themselves Fast
200MBps read and 160MBps S/W =
Crazy Fast
400MBps read and 320MBps S/W =
Axe-Killer-Talks-to-his-dead-mother-who-he-keeps-in-his-bed Fast
What is faster? this SSD or two Sata II with 16mb of buffer on raid 0? There is no longer any improvements on HDD.. there is no bigger HDD than 1Tb for a long time. So I suspect that there is no research for HDD anymore. Am I wrong?
Platter based HDD still win when it comes to burst transfers (but this is changing fast), as well as write speeds (again, this is changing).
SSD's can be RAID'ed as well, and if they got out some of these in 8-16 gig flavors (as mentioned by another poster), i would be all over these in raid for my OS.
Um, didn't they announce this in March?
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/04/samsung-intros-spinpoint-mp2-reiterates-plans-for-256gb-ssd-in/
Well folks, we are witnessing the demise of hard drives. While there will be demand for quite some time, hard drives will soon be obsolete, just like the record player.
Yeah. We're finally getting serious amounts of storage in these babies, even if they do cost serious money still - but going on how quickly these things usually become commoditised, maybe 3 years before they're everywhere? :)
The record player will outlive the CD player, just because it's analog and music is analog, but I understand what you are getting at. Maybe outlive the VHS tape?
Unless and until they can solve the relatively limited number of rewrite cycles with flash, personally I don't see the humble Hard Drive going anyway.
The bit degradation is solved.
In fact, the length of time of constant writes to the SSD hard drive before an occurrence of a dead bit region would be greater than the MTBF of a standard platter hard drive.
And now speeds are finally getting to acceptable levels.
All that is left is mass production to a grand scale, and soon we will have these by default.
the story gives a spec for sequential write speed? what does sequential vs. random access have to do with a solid state drive? lol.
64gb and 128gb are too small. 256gb is a capacity that makes it useful given how much you give up for any of the big 3 (lwindows, mac, linux). sure the price now is out of range, but thats always been the case with newer technologies. is now a matter of when, not IF SSD becomes the storage medium of choice in notebooks.
64GB is plenty big enough. I have the Samsung 64GB in my Dell M1330 and its great. I have MS Office Pro, Visual Express C++/C#, a Linux partition and some music on there. What else do you need the space for? That huge Pr0n collection of yours;)?
The price of the 64GB will drop as soon as the 256GB one comes out. That's how this technology thing works. When the 512GB SSD comes out, then the 256GB one will similarly drop in price.
You know the old saying guys, if you gotta ask you can't afford it;).
$$$
Stop teasing us.
Hope the price drops real quick can not wait to have one
What's the R/W life span? Is there a limit?
We're all looking for a reliable storage but if there is a R/W limit, it's the same as a hard disk crash. Call it a SSD crash.
A million hours, acording to this report:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/05/26/samsung_intros_256gb_ssd_that_may_reach_macbook_air.html
price is the most important thing.
You mark my words, Bill Gates will have an exclusive agreement with Samsung to only put these in machines running Microsoft software. This will make Mac users really quite miffed.
Oh that is so childish. and weak. I am only saying it to wind up Fanboys. At this post is so far down the list, they aren't liekyl to read it anyway.
You realise he has effectively retired don't you?
What's with the "160MBps *sequential* write"? I would expect that kind of measurements with mechanical platter technology, but flash-based SSDs have almost-negligible access times...?
Or did Samsung do something peculiar with their MLC technology?
So far, mechanical drives have still been beating most of the SSDs out there in sequential writes. This drive changes that.
You have to assume that these early SSDs will be like junk within two years. What's the point in consumers pursuing this early adopter stuff? I imagine some high-end applications will benefit, but I run a simple RAID and I can't remember the last time my desktop was anything but processor or video bound ... or waiting for the network 99% of the time.
Want me to pay too much for something? Offer me a gigabit Internet access. If there's a technology I can't wait to see, it's the rollout of FIOS or similar broadband technology.
> What's the point in consumers pursuing this early adopter stuff?
It makes it cheaper for those that don't adopt early, so I wouldn't bitch about it. If a shitload of rich people suddenly start buying these I won't complain, it'll just make it cheaper for me when this all matures.
I'd just love to see what speed you could get with a few of these and the right RAID controller =)
Why are so many people bitching about price and such? This is great news and good tech has to start somewhere. I can’t imagine loading an os from a drive with 200mbs read speed. Awesome!
Now more companies will try to compete on performance and price. Who wins… the consumers.
In a world where every friggen thing costs more and more each day (not just gas people) it’s nice to see tech getting better and eventually cheaper.
Well, I prefer waiting a little bit more.
The prices are freely falling when it comes to SSD.
When they make a SLC (I do't know technical details but I've heard that they are more reliable) and double or quadruple this capacity for an affordable price (e.g. 300 and 500 dollars respectively) then I can consider buying.
But hey, by that time possibly 8 TB models or something will be announced anyway :)
Anyway, a good step in the read/write speed direction.
A lot of great tech coming out of Samsung from their TVs to their SSD HDs. Sadly the newest of each probably cost about the same =p.
Can we possibly get an SSD that *doesn't* require a second mortgage?