245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping • Hacker News Board

Re: 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping

#191

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Thu, May 07, 2026, 7:59 AM UTC

close04 wrote: post #105

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The average user doesn't have that much data The average user consumes that much quite regularly. They've been taught to stream it off of someone else's computer, mostly so that the next time they stream it they can be compelled to pay for it again. It's fun going back to dumb terminals.

Consuming and needing to store are very different things. Most media is disposable, one-time consumption. How many people stored the newspapers they read? Why would you want to store every movie or series you watch? 30TB of data is something like 1 year of uninterrupted streaming at average Netflix 4K bitrates. Even more at HD bit rates. How many people would ever store years worth of movies on SSDs no less? Enough f…

>Most media is disposable

It isn't. The number of books I've read again, that I've wanted to have my children read. Music. Shows. The old VHS tapes were only disposable because the format was so deteriorating. It was inconvenient because of the physical size.

But, if people realize that media could be non-disposable, how could the recording industry get rich selling you the same albums you'd already bought a half dozen times before? I've been storing everything as FLAC... it'll be good for centuries. Books already have a "good for centuries" file format. I suspect very strongly that 4K is the ultimate res for all media made up until today (no way to do 8k remasters). It doesn't need to be disposable, it just is because there are people who want to get rich off of you renting your own culture back from them.

>How many people would ever store years worth of movies on SSDs no less?

Send me a boxfull of these 245TB SSDs, I'll show you. My film count surpassed Netflix's about 12 years ago, and I haven't slowed down once.

Re: 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping

#192

Post by throwaway67743 » Thu, May 07, 2026, 9:59 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #183

throwaway67743 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or their continued collective inability to predict or manage supply and demand, it happens repeatedly and previous events were very minor in comparison... The other obvious reason is profiteering but pretty much impossible to prove.

> The other obvious reason is profiteering When supply is constrained, widgets to get sold to whoever is willing to pay the most. It’s capitalism, baby. Arguably this is a good thing, because the limited resources are allocated to the people who can create the most value from them. And high prices provide an economic incentive to bring more supply online. Nvidia is making big profits right now because they don’t have…

That only works if the market is not controlled by basically 3 vendors and if the market isn't also pretty much impossible to break into. The value proposition is tenuous at best, the real value is being produced in other arenas, not this one.

Re: 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping

#193

Post by r_lee » Thu, May 07, 2026, 11:57 AM UTC

HDBaseT wrote: post #189

r_lee wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was quoted $18K for a 3.7 TB Dell NVMe disk surely you don't actually think that's realistic pricing?

What is "realistic" in this context? It is very real, that is the price they quote. You can buy it through Dell at that price.

as in that it reflects market prices in any way. I feel like anybody who works in this field knows that Dell etc. rip off naive customers this way and you can either negotiate it back to reality or just buy 1 small drive and order your own separately

Re: 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping

#194

Post by spacebacon » Thu, May 07, 2026, 12:14 PM UTC

lgg wrote: post #167

wtallis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many computer components competing for the same resources (fabs, wafers). That's a bit off the mark. Processors, RAM, and flash memory each require their own specialized fabs. TSMC makes processors but not DRAM or NAND flash. Kioxia makes flash only. Samsung has all three types of fabs. Micron does DRAM and NAND, in different fabs. The increase in SSD prices is not because there are many components compet…

I mostly agree, but if you go further back in the supply chain there are a number of common inputs/tools. For example, as 2025 the new LPDDR lines are using EUV systems, which means for new fab production both DRAM and logic producers are competing for machines from ASML. It doesn't change your point that these lines are different and the immediate price spike is not about them competing for capacity in the same faci…

Shared skilled labor is another thing to consider.

Re: 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping

#195

Post by aftbit » Thu, May 07, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

state_less wrote: post #141

aftbit wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a dubious notion though, the demand is here to stay and new supply needs to come online to meet demand. This is a big bet. Look at what happened in 2001 with the dot-com boom. We're still trading on their dark fiber over-build today. Meanwhile any overcapacity built in fabs will quickly be made obsolete by newer and better fab technology (or at least, that's been the pattern for the past 30 years). I think you'…

The idea that we're still trading dark fiber from 2001 is an old narrative right? I guess it is still floating around. But, we're in a second big fiber build out for not only residential, but also to connect all these new data centers. Could there be some demand oscillation for silicon? Sure, but overall deep learning is not some passing fad even if someone gets too far out over their skis and over buys. So far Big T…

This seems like it would be easy to structurally solve - big tech could make strategic partnerships with 5 to 10 year horizons with the very fabs in question. If they promised to spend a flat or growing $X on silicon (without easy contract cancellation) over the next decade, then the risk would be entirely on the tech companies and not on the fab companies. Of course, there's always bankruptcy to worry about, but that's less of a threat for Google and Apple than it is for OpenAI or NVIDIA.

The fact that we _haven't_ seen such deals be made, and that ~50% of new datacenter builds have been quietly cancelled[1], suggests to me that we're dealing with paper demand more than true sustained demand.

1: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...

Re: 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping

#196

Post by dlenski » Thu, May 07, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

jasomill wrote: post #43

bogometer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fondly remember when i could buy a well-rated consumer-level SSD for a lot less per TB...

I paid $300 each for my last two SSDs, 4 TB Samsung 990 Pros. They’re currently selling for $942.72 on Amazon.

> They’re currently selling for $942.72 on Amazon.

The price graphs of these are wild, wow. https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0CHGT1KFJ

Looks like prices for NAND spiked at the end of last year, a couple of months behind DRAM.

Happy not to be building or buying any new computers these days.

Re: 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping

#197

Post by wredcoll » Thu, May 07, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

bravoetch wrote: post #182

wredcoll wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this, is there a world where we need fewer cpu/ram/ssds in the future? Like, there's so many things that could benefit from a cheap processor involved in their operation, the growth seems effectively unlimited.

There's definitely a world where we need newer products, but not as many or as fast in iteration. My gaming PC has 128GB of RAM... And I built it years ago when RAM was laughably cheap. I still never touch the sides on it.

Ok sure, assuning your gaming machine lasts 5-10 years, what about everyone else who is born (or turns 18 or whatever) during that timespan?

Re: 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping

#198

Post by wao0uuno » Thu, May 07, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #136

wao0uuno wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody is stopping anyone from buying a USB-C powered and connected very portable 2 or 4 slot external NVMe enclosures. That's more expensive than buying a single large capacity drive. It's also a terrible idea. I would never trust a low cost chinese controller with terabytes of my data. >The old SATA SSD form factor is dead and wont come back. That's true and very unfortunate.

I will not miss the awful, half-duplex protocol that never should have won over SAS. I just wish that PCIe switches and cheaper eMMC/UFS flash on M.2 were available for more flexible and cost effective storage options.

Yeah, the problem is most consumer motherboards don't come with that many PCIe lanes. Building storage servers for home use with M.2 SSDs is just not feasible.

Re: 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping

#199

Post by _zoltan_ » Thu, May 07, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

markhahn wrote: post #121

_zoltan_ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DWPD was the boogey man 10 years ago. everybody worried about it. now, nobody cares. I have over 500 NVMe drives in our deployment and the drive deaths are not due to wear.

then either your drives are overprovisioned or read-mostly. it's not that hard to hit 300 cycles on flash.

it's all 4TB or larger plus the drives do wear leveling internally.

Re: 245TB Micron 6600 ION Data Center SSD Now Shipping

#200

Post by MrDrMcCoy » Thu, May 07, 2026, 7:30 PM UTC

wao0uuno wrote: post #198

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will not miss the awful, half-duplex protocol that never should have won over SAS. I just wish that PCIe switches and cheaper eMMC/UFS flash on M.2 were available for more flexible and cost effective storage options.

Yeah, the problem is most consumer motherboards don't come with that many PCIe lanes. Building storage servers for home use with M.2 SSDs is just not feasible.

PCIe is a switched protocol. We ought to have had better options to make better use of the limited lanes by now. There are a few cards with switches that can give you multiple M.2 slots on x4, but that's only with gen3, which the latest GPUs won't init on, and trying to cable that is hell. Better PCIe switch options for external enclosures exist, but aren't available to mortals that I've seen.