Announcing a Q&A and Giveaway with OCZ

[jsimenhoff]

OCZ AMA/Giveaway Announcement

AnandTech recently put the OCZ VX500 SATA SSD through its paces, so what better time to announce our upcoming installment of Ask the Experts here on the AnandTech Forums. On October 6th starting at 10 AM EST, we’ll be hosting key members from the OCZ Product Management and Business Development team in our latest Ask the Experts session.

The Q&A is now over! Thanks to everyone who participated. Those were some questions and wouldn't expect anything less from the AnandTech Community. Even though the Q&A is over, the contest is still going on. Please read on below for more information.

We’re also proud to announce a SSD giveaway done in partnership with OCZ. Our prizes include one each of the 512GB and 1TB models of the brand new VX500 SATA SSD, as well as a 512 GB capacity RD400 NVMe M.2 SSD. The sweepstakes entry period starts now and will close at 12 PM EST on October 14th. Please see the contest entry page for a full list of rules and ways to enter.

Ask the Expert Rules

• No tech support questions, as these require in-depth personal follow-up and diagnostics.
• All Forum Guidelines apply.
• Keep questions direct and to the point.
• Avoid opinion bias, as in, "Why are all your products awesome/horrible?"
• Be respectful of our guests--no insults, no leading questions.
• Do not post duplicate questions or repost your question multiple times.
• Not all questions may be answered. Questions may not be answered in the order in which they are received or posted.

Our guests joining us from OCZ include:

• Alex Mei – Vice President Marketing, Consumer SSDs & Storage Outbound Marketing
• Alessandro Gilligan – Director Product Management, Etail/Retail SSDs
• Eugene Chang – Director of Business Development, Etail/Retail SSDs
• Peter Gamboa – Product Manager

Please be sure to give our guests a warm AnandTech welcome and good luck in the giveaway.

 

[Elixer]

What is the number one problem with failed SSDs, does it have to do with NAND wear, or is it controller/firmware issues that caused the drive to lock itself in a panic mode state, and not accepting any commands from BIOS to identify the drive anymore?

 

[Kartajan]

What do you see in the near future (next 1-5 years) for NVMe/ PCIe/ SATA and other interfaces?.
What kind of longevity technologies are expected in the near future (next 1-5 years)?

 

[Neutrinos]

What do you guys see as the most important aspect to focus on for making a successful SSD:

-Capacity
-Performance
-Price

The importance of all 3 of these factors has shifted over the years with things like controller limitations, SATA 3 saturation, and manufacturing technology affecting each of them. Obviously all 3 of those need to be in balance to have a well rounded product, but every product focuses on 1-2 of those aspects at the expense of the other(s). Certainly with OCZ and Toshiba now being best buds, you guys have more ability than ever to be able to pick and chose what the tech specs of your drives are and really push the envelope in any of those 3 areas and so it'll be exciting to watch OCZ products over the next few years!

 

[Anthony Santomarco]

Do they work on AMD platform? If not how can you make them work?

 

[Samus]

What, if anything, has Toshiba done with the Indilinx IP/engineers? Is there a Barefoot successor (i.e. a high performance controller) in the works?

 

[Trefugl]

What do you consider to be your target markets? Do you have plans to offer higher capacity PCIe drives for workstation type applications?

 

[Elixer]

Specifically with Toshiba/OCZ SSDs, what is the reason on why there are only a handful, (9 for the trion 150), of S.M.A.R.T attributes being listed, instead of 20-30+ attributes that your competitors have?

I assume the reason for this roots back to S.M.A.R.T being totally inadequate to be able to predict SSD failure?
If it is indeed the case that S.M.A.R.T is inadequate, is the industry pushing for either a new revision of S.M.A.R.T, or going with something completely different?

 

[corkyg]

"From a legal perspective, the term 'S.M.A.R.T.' refers only to a signaling method between internal disk drive electromechanical sensors and the host computer. Because of this the specifications of SMART are entirely vendor specific and, while many of these attributes have been standardized between drive vendors, others remain vendor-specific. SMART implementations still differ and in some cases may lack "common" or expected features such as a temperature sensor or only include a few select attributes while still allowing the manufacturer to advertise the product as "SMART compatible."

 

[Maupan]

When VX500 will be available in america and in europe? Will it replace Trion 150 in pricing anytime soon?

 

[WayneJetSki]

I would like to learn about reliability targets for this SSD. I would also love to learn about how OCZ tests this.

 

[Elixer]

I would like to learn about reliability targets for this SSD. I would also love to learn about how OCZ tests this.

There was an article about this... http://www.anandtech.com/show/9218/ocz-fab-tour

 

[WayneJetSki]

Thanks for the info Elixer

 

[Sanx]

SSDs and SDRAM have the same silicon area per one bit of information and should cost comparably. Why latter cost an order more?

 

[Sanx]

SSD speeds are actually a joke. SDRAM ramdrves are an order faster then the fastest SSD and have zero wear. Why no one makes battery backed up miniature SDRAM drives using low power SDRAM like the ones in cellphones with SSD as a backup? They will sleep months on battery if needed and keep the copy in its very cheap slow low quality SSD if battery is nearing zero (writing just the difference)

 

[MrPoletski]

SSD speeds are actually a joke. SDRAM ramdrves are an order faster then the fastest SSD and have zero wear. Why no one makes battery backed up miniature SDRAM drives using low power SDRAM like the ones in cellphones with SSD as a backup? They will sleep months on battery if needed and keep the copy in its very cheap slow low quality SSD if battery is nearing zero (writing just the difference)

I'd like to see how big 1TB of SDRAM would come out, also how expensive.

On a side note, I'd love to hear what OCZ have as their silver bullet against samsung SSD's. Samsung just look like a behemoth waiting to take over the entirety of the SSD market. Say it aint so, ocz! Tell us what you've got that'll make yours the SSD to buy.

 

[Marius M]

How do you see the future of SSDs?
How do you plan to respond to the next-gen technologies like 3D Xpoint, Z-NAND, SST-MRAM announced by the competitors?

 

[Mat Bailie]

How do you see PCs in 5 years time? Dominated by Laptops or some other (possibly new) form factor? The distinction between RAM and Storage becoming blurred or completely removed? What's the vision you're building towards?

 

[hojnikb]

SSDs and SDRAM have the same silicon area per one bit of information and should cost comparably. Why latter cost an order more?

Thats actually not true at all. NAND is much denser, because you can fit up to 3 bits per single floating gate transistor (4 actually, but not really used anymore), while dram is 1T1C configuration, so sorta like SLC, but with added capacitor. Thats the reason why dram die sizes end at 8Gbit, but flash has 384Gbit.

 

[IronWing]

For years, conventional wisdom has suggested that SSDs are not suitable for long term storage of data. With SSDs increasing in size and declining in price, consumers will certainly not think twice about buying SSDs for long term storage. Do the warnings concerning the integrity of data in untouched files over the period of years still hold for modern SSDs?

 

[sheh]

To OCZ:

Could you elaborate on data retention? The behavior of fresh cells, exhausted ones, in the middle, SLC/MLC/TLC, different process technologies, what sort of scrubbing/rewriting is done... Other than random anecdotes, most of the publicly available information is just the JEDEC standards, which are difficult to interpret and relate to real life drives.

Why no one makes battery backed up miniature SDRAM drives using low power SDRAM like the ones in cellphones with SSD as a backup? They will sleep months on battery if needed and keep the copy in its very cheap slow low quality SSD if battery is nearing zero (writing just the difference)

There's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVDIMM

You can also sorta do that right now with RAM drives and extra software. Flushing before the battery runs out could be a problem if you have any substantial capacity. But I wouldn't trust any of my data to an inherently volatile device, never mind the limited capacity.

SSD speeds are hardly a joke, especially PCIe/NVMe based ones. I also don't know how much of a difference you'd see in day-to-day use with current software, because it's designed with certain assumptions on the performance characteristics of the storage medium.

 

[dlop]

When DRAM-less MLC SSD (like VX500) with capacitor-based power loss protection will be available?
For me: Low price and high reliability are more important than high performance.

 

[Eugene Chang]

OCZ AMA/Giveaway Announcement

AnandTech recently put the OCZ VX500 SATA SSD through its paces, so what better time to announce our upcoming installment of Ask the Experts here on the AnandTech Forums. On October 6th starting at 10 AM EST, we’ll be hosting key members from the OCZ Product Management and Business Development team in our latest Ask the Experts session. If you’ve ever had any burning questions now is your chance to ask OCZ directly.

Our Q&A session with OCZ won’t start until next week, but we’re collecting questions ahead of time. Please submit all questions to this thread. All questions will be moderated and supervised by AnandTech Assistant Community Manager Joshua Simenhoff, as well as a full team of AnandTech Senior Moderators.

We’re also proud to announce a SSD giveaway done in partnership with OCZ. Our prizes include one each of the 512GB and 1TB models of the brand new VX500 SATA SSD, as well as a 512 GB capacity RD400 NVMe M.2 SSD. The sweepstakes entry period starts now and will close at 12 PM EST on October 14th. Please see the contest entry page for a full list of rules and ways to enter.

Ask the Expert Rules

• No tech support questions, as these require in-depth personal follow-up and diagnostics.
• All Forum Guidelines apply.
• Keep questions direct and to the point.
• Avoid opinion bias, as in, "Why are all your products awesome/horrible?"
• Be respectful of our guests--no insults, no leading questions.
• Do not post duplicate questions or repost your question multiple times.
• Not all questions may be answered. Questions may not be answered in the order in which they are received or posted.

Our guests joining us from OCZ include:

• Alex Mei – Vice President Marketing, Consumer SSDs & Storage Outbound Marketing
• Alessandro Gilligan – Director Product Management, Etail/Retail SSDs
• Eugene Chang – Director of Business Development, Etail/Retail SSDs
• Peter Gamboa – Product Manager

Please be sure to give our guests a warm AnandTech welcome and good luck in the giveaway.

Hey Guys! Just wanted to let you know that we are here, and that we're going to round up the gang at 1PM EDT and go through these questions as a team. Sorry for the slight delay on the response, but this will provide you a more enriched and complete answers to the questions. See you in a bit!

 

[OCZ_AG]

Hey Guys! Just wanted to let you know that we are here, and that we're going to round up the gang at 1PM EDT and go through these questions as a team. Sorry for the slight delay on the response, but this will provide you a more enriched and complete answers to the questions. See you in a bit!

Hello all, Alessandro Gilligan here! /salute

 

[ocztosh]

Hi Guys, Alex signing in here and will be in and out through the day. Just wanted to thank AnandTech and all the readers here for the opportunity to have a direct dialogue with you all. We came into existence as a company/brand that was focused on end users and really appreciate the opportunity to have direct communication with you all.