SSD is getting incredibly fast

[haraldo]

Look at this new SSD from Samsung:
Up to 2.15 GB/s read and 1.55 GB/s write speeds
In sizes up to 512GB

http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/08/samsung-sm941-pcie-ssd/

 

[KEW]

Damn, that makes the Crucial M500 I just got look like a slug!

I wonder what the real world change in performance looks like?
In other words, say in the case of loading the OS using a "normal speed" SSD how much are we waiting on the SSD vs the processor vs the bus? Is the SSD still the weaklink (as the HDD was before it)?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

yea, SATA was always the bottleneck for SSDs. PCIe is where the speed is at now.
Lets just hope prices will come down to be somewhat affordable.

On the other hand I have a bit slower Intel 520 SSD - but Win 8.1 still a breeze with it

 

[Irvrobinson]

The sm941 is the cute little guy. Search for the Samsung XS1715, the muscular enterprise server SSD. 750,000 random read IOPS and 3GB/sec of sequential throughput on 1.6TB in a 2.5" form factor. The price is a little higher though.

The I/O bottleneck has been relieved. Unfortunately the rest of the I/O system software (and the file systems) were written and optimized for HDDs, so it's going to be awhile before everything is optimized, but fast clock rate i7s are suddenly looking more interesting than they were with HDDs.

 

[bompus]

I recently bought the Samsung 850 Pro. It's super nice, but not nearly as fast as the PCIe m.2 stuff that will be coming out. I really hope they gain in popularity as they have many uses with their small form factor. You could end up popping them into a motherboard slot just like a stick of RAM.

 

[lsiberian]

Damn, that makes the Crucial M500 I just got look like a slug!

I wonder what the real world change in performance looks like?
In other words, say in the case of loading the OS using a "normal speed" SSD how much are we waiting on the SSD vs the processor vs the bus? Is the SSD still the weaklink (as the HDD was before it)?

Actually there are bottlenecks everywhere in the system. Registers are the fastest followed by Cache(nanonseconds), RAM(microseconds), HD(milliseconds) SSD is made from ROM chips(remember your NES)

 

[Irvrobinson]

Actually there are bottlenecks everywhere in the system. Registers are the fastest followed by Cache(nanonseconds), RAM(microseconds), HD(milliseconds) SSD is made from ROM chips(remember your NES)

SSDs are not made from ROM (read-only memory) chips. They're made from NAND memory chips (more commonly called flash memory). Also, DRAM has access times in the tens of nanoseconds, not microseconds.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

While hd access in in milliseconds, ssd access is significantly faster, several degrees faster, and ssd is definitely not built on any resembling rom chips. In addition to nand architecture, flash storage sometimes is using nor design. My usb key is several times faster than most hard drives (SanDisk extreme 64gb usb 3.0)

 

[jinjuku]

It's both raw throughput and IOPS that are important metrics. I could just imagine SQL being ran off of a parity storage pool of these. Yowza.

And the power draw is a measly 6 watts per. Insane.

The other great use for these is VDI. You wouldn't have to run with GB upon GB of RAM for normal workstation tasks. Just give the OS a GB and with paging that quick you would never realize the performance hit.