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NVMe, the fast future for SSDs

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Re: NVMe, the fast future for SSDs

#4

Wasn't someone here saying these SSDs consume an abnormal amount of power to achieve those (2x?) faster speeds than current PCIe SSDs? Or was that applicable just to Intel's SSDs?

That's just a design decision for those models. It's still PCIe, nothing is causing wasted power.

Re: NVMe, the fast future for SSDs

#5

Wasn't someone here saying these SSDs consume an abnormal amount of power to achieve those (2x?) faster speeds than current PCIe SSDs? Or was that applicable just to Intel's SSDs?

Samsung claims the opposite: NVMe SSD provides low energy consumption to help data centers and enterprises operate more efficiently and reduce expenses. Power-related costs typically represent 31% of total data center costs, with the memory and storage portion of the power (including cooling) consuming 32% of the total data center power. NVMe SSD requires lower power (less than 6W active power) with energy efficiency (IOPS/Watt) that is 2.5x as efficient as SATA.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/product... http://www.pcworld.com/article/2866912/samsungs-ludicrously-...

Re: NVMe, the fast future for SSDs

#6

I can remember putting ISA "hardcards" in my 286s and similar. Full circle!

I'm just happy that for once we got to see standards converge (SATA PHY ditched for PCIe) rather than proliferate.

BTW, does anyone know if NVMe uses the ATA command set for side channel stuff like configuring encryption and the like?

Re: NVMe, the fast future for SSDs

#7
post #5

Wasn't someone here saying these SSDs consume an abnormal amount of power to achieve those (2x?) faster speeds than current PCIe SSDs? Or was that applicable just to Intel's SSDs?

Samsung claims the opposite: NVMe SSD provides low energy consumption to help data centers and enterprises operate more efficiently and reduce expenses. Power-related costs typically represent 31% of total data center costs, with the memory and storage portion of the power (including cooling) consuming 32% of the total data center power. NVMe SSD requires lower power (less than 6W active power) with energy efficiency…

And as far as I understand, isn't NVMe SSD just a "different name" for PCIe SSD? PCIe being the protocol (that's already being used for graphics cards), and NVMe the standard for SSDs to understand that protocol.

Re: NVMe, the fast future for SSDs

#8

I can remember putting ISA "hardcards" in my 286s and similar. Full circle!

I'm just happy that for once we got to see standards converge (SATA PHY ditched for PCIe) rather than proliferate. BTW, does anyone know if NVMe uses the ATA command set for side channel stuff like configuring encryption and the like?

No I dont think so, it has a new command set.

Re: NVMe, the fast future for SSDs

#9

Wasn't someone here saying these SSDs consume an abnormal amount of power to achieve those (2x?) faster speeds than current PCIe SSDs? Or was that applicable just to Intel's SSDs?

That's just a design decision for those models. It's still PCIe, nothing is causing wasted power.

Last time I looked at the SATA PHY it seemed pretty wasteful. During every transaction the back channel was running at full speed blasting "R_OK R_OK R_OK" to the transmitting party. Not a checksum, mind you, just a bunch of magic DWORDs indicating that the drive was receiving (it would use a checksum too once the transmission was over, of course). I guess it's an easy way to keep the PLLs locked but it seemed like a pretty huge piece of low-hanging fruit towards the goal of reducing power consumption.

In comparison, PCIe is a much more sophisticated serial protocol. It's an entire damned packet network with addresses, subnets (so to speak), routing, retry, a credit system for bandwidth sharing. Unlike ethernet, which typically tops out at achieving ~75% of its theoretical bandwidth, PCIe typically tops out at ~95% of its theoretical bandwidth. Crazy stuff.

I'd bet good money that the PCIe PHY can beat the crap out of the SATA PHY on energy/bit and that the disparity will only widen with time.

Re: NVMe, the fast future for SSDs

#10
The numbers in the article are all wrong. SATA's ceiling is 600 MBps (megabytes per second), not 600 Gpbs (gigabits per second). SAS goes up to 12Gbps, not 12GBps, which is actually the same thing as 1.5GBps. At least the PCIe numbers look right.
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