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  • shabby - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link

    I think my grandma is going to introduce a sata ssd soon, stay tuned!
  • Holliday75 - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link

    LOL
  • Operandi - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link

    Does your grandma make her own NAND flash and or controller? If not she probably shouldn't bother. Hynix does FYI so it makes sense for them to get into the retail market.
  • regsEx - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link

    Most sub $1000 notebooks with SSDs comes with Hynix SSDs.
  • PeachNCream - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    Shut up and take my money!
  • Anonymoussy - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link

    How soon can we expect a review?
  • Billy Tallis - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    They haven't sent me a tracking number for the samples yet, so I probably won't have it to start testing until later next week. And there are enough other reviews in my queue at the moment that this one probably won't be ready until late September, depending on the order I finish up the reviews. A fully SK Hynix SSD is definitely novel, but I also have some Realtek and Maxio-based drives in the pipeline.
  • CaedenV - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link

    Curious.
    On the SATA high end we have Samsung with 500GB at ~$80. On the low end, Microcenter's home-brew brand is selling 120GB SSDs for $15 each. If this drive really sells for full MSRP then it should be about Sammy's performance... I have doubts... but look forward to reading a review that proves me wrong :)
  • Xajel - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    I really wish a true successor to SATA comes quickly.

    U.2 is not good enough and manufacrers are abandoing it for the consumer market. And I see potential with OCuLink. Mainly the flexibility of splitting the 4x lanes to multi 2x or 1x lanes depending on needs which will make wonders for low cost/end SSD's. But it seems SATA holds it place tightly. Maybe a new PCIe based protocol for older mechanical drives will come to the rescue?
  • Greg100 - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    What makes something a real successor to SATA?

    1. Faster transfer?
    2. Lower price?

    Both these parameters are met by the U.2 SSDs.

    If we compare 4TB SSDs and above drives with TLC, what do we get?

    Cheapest 4TB+ TLC U.2 SSD:
    Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN630 - 0.8DWPD 7.68TB, ISE, U.2

    ab € 957,06 [Xitra - Germany, include 19% VAT]
    (124,617/TB)

    Cheapest 4TB+ TLC SATA SSD:
    SanDisk Ultra 3D 4TB

    ab € 499,99 [SanDisk at amazon.de, include 19% VAT]
    (124,998/TB)

    Why did I choose TLC? In today's low prices of SSDs it is not worth looking for QLC.

    Why did I choose 4TB and bigger drives? For personal data such capacity is in my opinion the minimum, and if someone wants to have a smaller, separate SSD for OS then anyway the only reasonable choice is Intel’s 3D XPoint and here again we have U.2...
  • Greg100 - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    I also checked prices of the 2TB drives:

    and WOW...

    SanDisk Ultra 3D 2TB, SATA
    € 187,90 (Mindfactory - Germany)
    93,950/TB!!!

    Yes, this price include 19% VAT.

    ...so, does anyone still want to produce SSDs with a maximum capacity of only 1TB?

    Anybody?

    Hynix?
  • DyneCorp - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    If you knew anything about the current SSD market, you'd know the vast majority of consumers don't purchase 4TB SSDs. Choosing 4TB's is silly as a general metric.

    Choosing an insanely expensive Intel Optane SSD for an OS drive is reasonable? You can't be serious.
  • DyneCorp - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    U.2 is not good enough? What? Are you trolling? Or do you know nothing about U.2?
  • Xajel - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link

    U.2 is just a a cabled M.2.. that's it.

    But the point with M.2/U.2 is the fact that at the motherboard level, you have to select 1x, 2x, 4 lanes for the port. OCuLink is more flexible on this regard, you can have a single 4x lane port, then split it with a cable to 4x 1xLanes ports for 4 drives of lower bandwidth, a PCIe 4.0 x1 lane can give you 2GB/s max. So that's a lot of bandwidth already.

    SATA became cheap because you still get good bandwidth for mechanic drives, while not so much with SSD's.
    A 1x lane PCIe 3.0 / 4.0 will give you 1~2GB/s bandwidth for mechanical drives and low cost SSD's, if you don't need 4x lanes SSD's you can also have 2x lanes or even 1x lanes depending on your needs.

    Technically also, you can have 8 drives by just two OCuLink ports on the motherboard by splitting each port to 4x 1x lanes, saving space on the motherboard and less cable management also, it's like using a mini SAS cable where you can get 4x SATA drives using a single port on the motherboard/controller.

    The point is, you don't need the full bandwidth of 4x lanes of PCIe 3 or even 4 for your drives, normally you'll have 2~3 drives with full bandwidth needed (OS, main data, and a third for other stuff like cache or so), the rest of drives anyone might have are almost like a storage devices where you don't need the full bandwidth. Usually even people with all SSD storage will just use the lowest priced SSD they can have here with good reliability.

    Ofcourse splitting the lanes of the port must be supported by the PCIe controller from the beginning, ie PCIe bifurcation like how the first x16 slot in a motherboard can be splitted to x8 + x8 to serve the second slot also.
  • urbanman2004 - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link

    At those prices it's a hard pass for me. I had just bought an ADATA 1TB 2.5-inch SSD the other day for $91 if that means anything.
  • MASSAMKULABOX - Wednesday, August 21, 2019 - link

    Sata SSD are pretty much good enough for 90% ? You can always sell people "faster" but who neds it? The big leap was going from HDD to SSD. IN the daatacentre however, faster is more money.
    You gotta wonder .. How long before we get an amazon Basics SSD..
    1tb for £80 ..

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