Why no larger SSDs coming out?

[lloyd709]

Any one know why things seem to stuck at 512GB?

A larger SSD (around 700GB) would be really useful to me so I've been holding off buying a 512GB version waiting and hoping for a larger one but nothing has materialised. Now OCZ have just brought out their new Vector line with nothing larger than 512GB makes me think that there might be a technological reason which someone here might know!!

Having an idea of when something larger might come out would help me a lot.

Many thanks

 

[ensign_lee]

Because realistically how many programs do you need to fill up a 512? And if you're using it for data, are you realyl going to pay $800-$1000 for your SSD?

 

[jacktesterson]

They are out there (Intel has 600GB SSD's, OCZ does have a 1TB SSD) but they are crazy expensive and not tested a whole lot on the market.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227797



The issue is using SSD's for storage is kinda pointless.

a 256GB SSD is large enough for majority of folks. I have like 15 games installed on one and its still 1/2 empty.

 

[Brahmzy]

It's not worth it for the manufacturer to cater to the .1% that want to pay $1K for a 1TB SSD. Its a losing deal for them.
When large amounts of NAND actually become affordable in a few years, we'll start to see cheaper, larger drives. Not there yet. Happening a lot slower than most thought.

 

[fleshconsumed]

For the vast majority of the people 120-250GB is more than plenty to install every program they need onto SSD and have some free space left over. The only reason you would need more than 250GB is because you have a lot of data and SSDs are just too expensive while mechanical hard drives work just fine for data and cost a fraction of what SSD would cost. Most people who need to store a lot of data will have one SSD and mechanical HDD in their desktops. It's harder with laptops, so something got to give there.

 

[lloyd709]

To spell it out then for some, I'm a photographer and it would be very useful to always have my archive image library on my laptop - so my images are always there wherever I go (I go everywhere with my laptop!) for whenever a client rings me up asking for images (without having to remember to carry and regularly update an external disk)! It's about 300GB in size and growing about about 50GB a year.

I could get a large spiny disk but don't want to.

I could import one from the US (I live in the UK where there arn't any available) but then it does get expensive.

I am willing to pay quite a bit for one but probably not as much as it would cost me to import one of the very few available from the US.

I just asked a simple question - is there a technological reason why we aren't seeing any?

 

[ensign_lee]

Yeah but you are really a super niche market to cater to unfortunately.

There are going to be very few people overall who are willing to spend $1k on a SSD that is 1TB when that same $1k could buy them closer to 12+TB with HDDs.

 

[blackened23]

The more important question here is why 512GB SSDs have such poor value. For some reason, dollar per Gigabyte skyrockets with 512GB SSDs - case in point, the samsung 830 can sell for around 170 for a 256GB SSD; yet the 512 GB 830 costs around 500$? Same story for other SSD models - for some reason 512 GB SSDs have a price premium and poor value compared to 128/256GB models.

 

[kevinsbane]

To spell it out then for some, I'm a photographer and it would be very useful to always have my archive image library on my laptop - so my images are always there wherever I go (I go everywhere with my laptop!) for whenever a client rings me up asking for images (without having to remember to carry and regularly update an external disk)! It's about 300GB in size and growing about about 50GB a year.

I could get a large spiny disk but don't want to.

I could import one from the US (I live in the UK where there arn't any available) but then it does get expensive.

I am willing to pay quite a bit for one but probably not as much as it would cost me to import one of the very few available from the US.

I just asked a simple question - is there a technological reason why we aren't seeing any?

Well, strictly speaking, you're limited by the number of channels in your controller, and the size of NAND packages are readily available.

Most controllers are 8 channel, and the largest readily available NAND chips are 128 GiB. Those only started production this year at IMFT, so I'd imagine that they still carry a significant premium over the standard 64 GiB chips. Hence why consumer drives are limited mostly to 512 GB, at 8 * 64 GiB. (Intel's 600 GB drives use a 10 channel controller). You can go higher than this, of course, but then you're essentially running a RAID at this point, so it's no longer a single drive.

blackened23: lower sales so lower cost reductions in terms of mass production; but probably more importantly, halo products. They're the best in their lines, so thus people are willing to pay more. If so, why charge less? See Intel's processors for a similar situation. i5 3570k -> i5 3770k = big price increase, small performance increase. Or i7 3930k -> i7 3980x = even bigger price increase, even smaller performance increase.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It has to do with the maximum NAND chip size, and the number of channels on the drive.

 

[zCypher]

Just give it more time, it'll get there. If you don't want to give it more time then maybe you'll have to settle with a larger number of smaller drives until then.

 

[lloyd709]

Well, strictly speaking, you're limited by the number of channels in your controller, and the size of NAND packages are readily available.

Most controllers are 8 channel, and the largest readily available NAND chips are 128 GiB. Those only started production this year at IMFT, so I'd imagine that they still carry a significant premium over the standard 64 GiB chips. Hence why consumer drives are limited mostly to 512 GB, at 8 * 64 GiB. (Intel's 600 GB drives use a 10 channel controller). You can go higher than this, of course, but then you're essentially running a RAID at this point, so it's no longer a single drive.

blackened23: lower sales so lower cost reductions in terms of mass production; but probably more importantly, halo products. They're the best in their lines, so thus people are willing to pay more. If so, why charge less? See Intel's processors for a similar situation. i5 3570k -> i5 3770k = big price increase, small performance increase. Or i7 3930k -> i7 3980x = even bigger price increase, even smaller performance increase.

Many thanks. That's interesting. So I guess they are on their way in not the too distant future! I'll probably hang on for a few more months then.

 

[Hellhammer]

Well, strictly speaking, you're limited by the number of channels in your controller, and the size of NAND packages are readily available.

Most controllers are 8 channel, and the largest readily available NAND chips are 128 GiB. Those only started production this year at IMFT, so I'd imagine that they still carry a significant premium over the standard 64 GiB chips. Hence why consumer drives are limited mostly to 512 GB, at 8 * 64 GiB. (Intel's 600 GB drives use a 10 channel controller). You can go higher than this, of course, but then you're essentially running a RAID at this point, so it's no longer a single drive.

128GiB NAND packages are not available in volume yet. It's true that they are in production but Intel just pushed out 20nm 8GB die, so it will take a while before 16GiB dies which are needed for 128GiB packages will be sufficient in terms of volume. Firmwares also require tweaking because 16GiB dies will carry a bigger page and block size.

To be accurate, the limitation is not about how many packages the controller can handle, it's about the amount of NAND dies the controller can handle. Most SandForce SSDs have 16 NAND packages (you can have multiple packages per channel, up to 4 with SandForce AFAIK) so with 64GiB NAND packages, you could build a 1024GiB SSD. However, the controller can't address more than 64 NAND dies (up to 512GiB with 2Xnm NAND, 256GiB with 3Xnm NAND).

The more dies you add, the more LBAs there are to process. Hence 16GiB die will make 1TB SSDs possible because the amount of LBAs will remain the same (page and block size are both 2x compared to 8GiB die).

This limitation is strictly controller/firmware based, though. For example Apple is offering a 768GB Samsung 830 based SSD in Macs, even though the retail version tops out at 512GB. I actually talked to Samsung about this and nothing is stopping them from making a 1TB SSD (they actually had plans for 1TB 840 before), but they see that the market is not big enough for such SSD (yet). The SandForce limitation means that small OEMs can't make 1TB SSDs and right now it seems that the big players are not interested in such a small niche (but will gladly make one for a big client like Apple).

blackened23: lower sales so lower cost reductions in terms of mass production; but probably more importantly, halo products. They're the best in their lines, so thus people are willing to pay more. If so, why charge less? See Intel's processors for a similar situation. i5 3570k -> i5 3770k = big price increase, small performance increase. Or i7 3930k -> i7 3980x = even bigger price increase, even smaller performance increase.

The CPU comparison doesn't really work. The reason why high-end CPUs cost more is that they are of the highest bin. With SSDs, higher capacity drives simply have more NAND dies but they are all the same quality. SSD quality NAND is already fairly high binned but the highest binned NAND is usually sold to enterprises because they are ready to pay more for increased endurance.

 

[kevinsbane]

The CPU comparison doesn't really work. The reason why high-end CPUs cost more is that they are of the highest bin. With SSDs, higher capacity drives simply have more NAND dies but they are all the same quality. SSD quality NAND is already fairly high binned but the highest binned NAND is usually sold to enterprises because they are ready to pay more for increased endurance.

Wouldn't you say that the largest capacity SSDs are still "halo" items, and a great deal of their price is dependent on perception of "premiumness"? Binning exists in CPUs of course, but binning didn't account for all of the jump from the i7 920 ($284) -> i7 965x ($999) in Nehalem.

 

[Hellhammer]

Wouldn't you say that the largest capacity SSDs are still "halo" items, and a great deal of their price is dependent on perception of "premiumness"? Binning exists in CPUs of course, but binning didn't account for all of the jump from the i7 920 ($284) -> i7 965x ($999) in Nehalem.

I think the reason lies in how economics work, at least partially. 128GB and 256GB SSDs sell in high volume, which means retailers buy bigger stocks and hence get lower pricing. Manufacturers also want to give lower prices because there is lots of competition, you won't get much sales if you're priced higher than the others.

This is probably what you meant but in different words. Basically, most people will buy the i7-920 anyway and that's where AMD is playing as well so it must be priced reasonably. If someone really wants the i7-965X, then we might as well make a nice profit out of it. It's not like the i7-965X would have sold like hot cakes if Intel had priced it at $700 for instance. The same applies to SSDs: People wouldn't rush out and buy 512GB SSDs if they were $400 instead of $500 - most will settle for 256GB anyway because it's enough for their needs.

 

[It's Not Lupus]

Well, now that there's TLC NAND being used, I'd honestly expect SSDs to have more than 512GB. I am a bit puzzled why the Samsung 840 stops at 512.

 

[blackened23]

I think the reason lies in how economics work, at least partially. 128GB and 256GB SSDs sell in high volume, which means retailers buy bigger stocks and hence get lower pricing. Manufacturers also want to give lower prices because there is lots of competition, you won't get much sales if you're priced higher than the others.

This is probably what you meant but in different words. Basically, most people will buy the i7-920 anyway and that's where AMD is playing as well so it must be priced reasonably. If someone really wants the i7-965X, then we might as well make a nice profit out of it. It's not like the i7-965X would have sold like hot cakes if Intel had priced it at $700 for instance. The same applies to SSDs: People wouldn't rush out and buy 512GB SSDs if they were $400 instead of $500 - most will settle for 256GB anyway because it's enough for their needs.

If 512GB SSDs hit 350$, i'll buy 4 of them. I missed out on the vertex 4 299$ deal, so I settled for some intel 520s instead.

Anyway, bring on the large capacity SSDs!

 

[Makaveli]

Because realistically how many programs do you need to fill up a 512? And if you're using it for data, are you realyl going to pay $800-$1000 for your SSD?

Agreed you have to pay to play!

no one is going to pay the price a 700GB SSD is gonna cost, so with no market for it why are they going to make it?

Its important to sort your data according to your setup. You would never buy a sandforce SSD to store incompressible Data only on it like video files.

The currently SSD+HDD setup works great, put the data on the SSD that will benefit from it and store the rest on the HD.

 

[Emulex]

most 8 channel controllers stack two chips. one chip failure could take out two stacked in theory and not many people want to keep two spares free. Would you rather 1x256gb drive(out of two) or 1 512gb? plus raid-0 and backups give you monstrous speed potential or perhaps redundancy

 

[lloyd709]

Agreed you have to pay to play!

no one is going to pay the price a 700GB SSD is gonna cost, so with no market for it why are they going to make it?

Its important to sort your data according to your setup. You would never buy a sandforce SSD to store incompressible Data only on it like video files.

The currently SSD+HDD setup works great, put the data on the SSD that will benefit from it and store the rest on the HD.

Clearly you spent your time watching your incompressible videos rather than reading the thread!! Believe it or not some people have a need for a larger SSD and are willing to pay a reasonable amount for it (and they simply want to understand what's holding it back!).

 

[kowalabearhugs]

What laptop do you have? Have you considered replacing the dvd drive with another ssd or hd? I have a friend that replaced his Macbook Pro's superdrive and now runs a ssd+hd setup. Functions flawlessly and he says the battery life hit is minor.

 

[Makaveli]

Clearly you spent your time watching your incompressible videos rather than reading the thread!! Believe it or not some people have a need for a larger SSD and are willing to pay a reasonable amount for it (and they simply want to understand what's holding it back!).

I just brought that up as an example and the reason is simply price.

 

[lloyd709]

What laptop do you have? Have you considered replacing the dvd drive with another ssd or hd? I have a friend that replaced his Macbook Pro's superdrive and now runs a ssd+hd setup. Functions flawlessly and he says the battery life hit is minor.

That is an option but I have a 2011 Macbook Pro and there is an issue with the SATA connection on the DVD drive which although supposed to be of the faster type apparently doesn't work well with the faster SSDs! Plus at the moment I'm still using my DVD a bit so not that keen on putting a slower SSD in there (which apparently should work). Also, I'm really like the silent, supper fast, and supper low power requirements of SSDs so not into spiny disks anymore (in my laptop anyway).

 

[lloyd709]

I just brought that up as an example and the reason is simply price.

Sorry about my tone, wrote it late last night and just a bit tired of people basically saying 'you don't need a larger SSD' when I do (and for the doubters I posted my reasons)!

 

[BrightCandle]

You are now waiting on the doubling of density every 18 months or so. Device size is only going to get smaller, since everyone wants small laptops, so the constraints on the number of chips used on an SSD is only going to get tighter. The maximum device size will be driving the SSD maximum size and the number of channels it has is more likely to go down not up.

Of course you could get a bigger laptop with more drive space in it to get more space (or a desktop where their are no such problems AND you can run a PCI-E SSD that is much faster as well as larger).