Seagate teams with LSI to enter PCIe-based SSD game
By Darren Murph 
posted January 26th 2010 1:26PM
posted January 26th 2010 1:26PM
Seagate didn't bother serving up a gaggle of new wares at CES this year, but judging by its release shot out today, it's hoping to make a serious splash in the SSD market a bit later on. Thanks to collaboration from LSI, the outfit is expected to deliver its own line of PCI Express-based solid state storage solutions. We're guessing these devices will be similar in scope to the PCIe SSDs already outed by Fusion-io and OCZ Technology, but at least initially, they'll be aimed squarely at the enterprise market. We're hoping that's just a beta test (of sorts) and that performance-minded desktop users will be able to snap one up at their local Best Buy in short order -- too bad we've no assurance that these will be priced within the realm of feasibility, though.
@Solidstate89 OCZ no longer uses Jmicron controllers (since Jan09)
Mmmm $1000 for 100gb of Uber fast space...
:/
@n0ne
More like 80gb from IOXtreme.
I suspect Seagate's devices will end up a lot like OCZ's, basically a pair of SSD boards attached to a custom RAID board and wrapped in a plastic shell.
No one else is quite doing what FusionIO is, and as a result FusionIO tends to be a whole lot faster (in addition to not being bound at any point by SATA bandwidth limits.)
MAKE IT CHEAP PLEASE!!
@rhezaganteng ...but it's only 26.000$!
@Cayman80
When did they cut a penny into 10ths!?
That picture... Is that the Mac Tablet?
@LloydChiro
::sigh::
I agree the need to get the cost down. Hey SSD and memory people, here is a hint. Go with larger wafer sizes and up the footprint of your memory IC's to get the costs down! Duh.....
There is no reason that SSD's should still be so overpriced; especially not considering the scale of memory IC production now!!!!!!!
If apple can build the 64GB touch for $180 (of which the 64GB of memory comprize less that %15 of that cost, then you ought to be able to produce and retail a 256gb for under $200... so stop being greedy and give to the needy~
@cosmicinglewood
The flash memory in the iPod Touch is no where near as fast as what's in the SSD drives you put in your computer.
Just because stuff like SD and CF cards are solid state does not make them fast.
@cosmicinglewood
Wow. You're kidding, right?
@cosmicinglewood
Your comparing simple 10mb/s MLC based NAND storage to a SLC based SSD with an onboard memory controller that is more than 15 times faster an the simple iPod storage?
@cosmicinglewood
Almost all NAND used in SSDs is made on 300mm wafers at 45-30nm today.
But why, you ask, are SSDs so expensive? It's called manufacturing losses.
Each chip in an SSD is not a single NAND chip, but several, anywhere from four to eight chips in a single package. First, you have individual die that are simply bad. Then you have chips that, for some reason or another, fail to make it through the assembly process.
An SSD, properly designed, writes to as many different chips at a time as it possibly can. This is where SSDs get all of their speed from (barring the memory controller being junk.) This moves cost into the board design and into the controller chip itself (the FusionIO's FPGA costs $500 on its own.)
Then we have the standard economy of scale. SSDs simply aren't manufactured in the sheer volume that regular HDDs are.
And the only similarity between a 16GB iPod Touch and an SSD are the media on which data is stored. Everything about how it's architected internally is different.
I would love to see Engadget (or someone else) do a story/editorial on when SSD will basically take over and leave HDD in the dust. They keep getting bigger, but when may we start to see near equal pricing in which would be the turning point in the death of HDDs. Is it two years, three....even more?
@Cringer
SSDs will displace HDDs for high speed storage but they won't leave them in the dust. With the density wall that NAND is going to hit within the next 3 years, HDDs will continue to win on density for the near term.
They'll come down in price if major vendors like Dell and HP start shipping them in volume, but that looks to be a while off (the high end needs to absorb a bit more cost.)
As long as seagates firmware doesn't kill it, it might be alright.
SSD's getting cheaper sure is taking a long time.
LSI products are fantastic. Seagate products, not so much. I hope this agreement does not affect LSI's standing. They make excellent controllers. I've got one that's 6 years old and running great. 3 SCSI drives in RAID 0, 280MB reads, 200MB writes. I want to move to SSD, but the cost isn't justifiable yet, to me.
Guess I won't be buying Seagate ever again. They lost my confidence after the 7200.11 series issues and now they're working with those lamers @ LSI. Screw that.