Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 111 posts

Re: Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

#51

Post by DiabloD3 »

zoeysmithe wrote: post #25
DiabloD3 wrote: post #17

We already have this though. SD Express, which allows SD cards to actually protocol switch to one lane PCI-E NVME. It's been part of the spec officially since 2018, and an enhancement slightly later to add more pins to allow a second lane. And since, underneath, it becomes a standard PCI-E NVME with standard lanes, there is no inherent speed limit from the bus itself, only from the fact that SD cards are tiny and any…

Hmm the article isn't about the interface being novel but the drives. The article claims the SD express cards top out a 900 MB/s but this drive does 3700 MB/s. They are using their own interface, but that's not the problem being solved here from my reading of this article. I don't know the specifics but SD express might be patent/license encumbered so why pay when you can make your own for free? I'm guessing this dri…

The article is full of shit. SD Express cards, by virtue of being PCI-E x1 or x2, top out at whichever gen of PCI-E they implement.

Lets say its a brand new 4.0 card that implements x2 lanes, that is 3.93GB/s maximum speed (there aren't any 5.0 cards yet, afaik, but double that for 5.0).

Want to know where that 900MB/s figure came from? A 3.0 x1 card is 984MB/s. That is the first gen SD Express cards when the spec was launched, but not the currently available ones.

In other words, this is a PR release, this isn't news. It's marketing. They chose the worst case of their competitors, the best case of their own, and lied by omission.

Also, re: Valve's position on M2: they didn't support even swapping them when it first came out, although obviously allowed and expected, because you can put M2s in the device that are outside of the thermal parameters allowed by the design due to proximity to the battery and other heat producing items. This is also why they specifically used a 2230, as those are usually the lower power models meant for ultrathin laptops.

That said, Valve has worked with a few companies to get some officially blessed 2230s that actually do fit the intended use case and are also performant.

Like, if you think the Steam Deck sucks for actually doing the swap job, a) the new OLED replacement internally is a lot saner, with both construction and PCB layout, b) go try dealing with the really nasty designed laptops that don't have an externally accessible panel covering the drive bay; they're worse.

Re: Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

#52

Post by LeoPanthera »

dontlaugh wrote: post #46
LeoPanthera wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is probably that disk read speed just isn't that important for casual applications like games. We had a lot of great games even when storage was spinning rust.

It’s actually essential for more serious games without loading screens, which is why for example the PS5 ships with and mandates fast SSDs.

I would guess that's only a small percentage of popular games, though. The Steam Deck and the PS5 probably don't attract the same kind of gamer.

Re: Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

#53

Post by zoeysmithe »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #51
zoeysmithe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm the article isn't about the interface being novel but the drives. The article claims the SD express cards top out a 900 MB/s but this drive does 3700 MB/s. They are using their own interface, but that's not the problem being solved here from my reading of this article. I don't know the specifics but SD express might be patent/license encumbered so why pay when you can make your own for free? I'm guessing this dri…

The article is full of shit. SD Express cards, by virtue of being PCI-E x1 or x2, top out at whichever gen of PCI-E they implement. Lets say its a brand new 4.0 card that implements x2 lanes, that is 3.93GB/s maximum speed (there aren't any 5.0 cards yet, afaik, but double that for 5.0). Want to know where that 900MB/s figure came from? A 3.0 x1 card is 984MB/s. That is the first gen SD Express cards when the spec wa…

I'm sorry I dont care how hard valve tried. They still failed. To the consumer, the sd card limitation on the Deck is consumer hostile. 100 MB/s is inexcusable for a device being sold today and one expected to run Unity and Unreal 4 games that clock in at the tens of gigabytes. They should have made it more open and allowed easy access to M2 slots. Instead they used storage cynically to sell higher tier products.

The entry level deck is $399 but the 1TB one is $649. Almost $800 with tax and shipping for something that can't even play Unreal 5 games and has no proper expansion is inexcusable, not to mention the bizarre and shortsighted decision to have only one USB-C port on the device, and being locked onto the 15-watt mode of the chipset.

Some of that cost is the OLED update but frankly its deceptive and dishonest customer hostile pricing. The storage limitations are intentional to sell the higher tier Deck. Gabe didn't get 5 super yachts by being a "good guy." He's just maximizing his profit. There are no "good guys" in capitalism, instead its purely transactional and game theory dictated from top to bottom.

I do find it a little depressing that Chinese and Japanese companies are eating US companies lunches because they somehow are more open, more pro-consumer, and more affordable the US offerings. When in the past the US products were the more open and hackable ones and the imports were the proprietary and locked down customer-hostile messes. Not just this but a lot of electronics now. The hackable, learnable, fun, etc ones are foreign while the US domestic ones are overly 'not repairable' and 'not hackable' and by design to maximize profit. What a shame. How far we've fallen.

Re: Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

#54

Post by DiabloD3 »

zoeysmithe wrote: post #53
DiabloD3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is full of shit. SD Express cards, by virtue of being PCI-E x1 or x2, top out at whichever gen of PCI-E they implement. Lets say its a brand new 4.0 card that implements x2 lanes, that is 3.93GB/s maximum speed (there aren't any 5.0 cards yet, afaik, but double that for 5.0). Want to know where that 900MB/s figure came from? A 3.0 x1 card is 984MB/s. That is the first gen SD Express cards when the spec wa…

I'm sorry I dont care how hard valve tried. They still failed. To the consumer, the sd card limitation on the Deck is consumer hostile. 100 MB/s is inexcusable for a device being sold today and one expected to run Unity and Unreal 4 games that clock in at the tens of gigabytes. They should have made it more open and allowed easy access to M2 slots. Instead they used storage cynically to sell higher tier products. The…

You bought a first gen product by a company that has never had an actual hardware design division, and you're complaining that it isn't perfect?

Also, how is the SD Card limitation on the Deck consumer hostile? The Steam Deck is an AMD platform PC. PCs typically do not even have SD card slots, and when they do, they are generic controllers plugged into the USB port.

To do SD Express, it requires a more expensive controller that can do PCI-E lane passthrough, and then you have to route those lanes somewhere and do it correctly. I am not aware of any laptop that opted to include an SD Express controller, and all of the Steam Deck competitors do not either.

The Steam Deck is advertised to implement a standard UHS-I card reader, and uses a better one that actually does do the full 104MB/s instead of the more frequently supported 52MB/s. UHS-I is common for 4k60fps cameras, such as Canon or Nikon bodies, or the GoPro, extremely few devices support UHS-II.

Like, I understand what you're trying to say, but nothing of that generation implements it, and the AMD SoC Valve uses afaik does not have the spare external PCI-E lanes to actually implement it anyways.

Re: Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

#56

Post by bmacho »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #14
RainyDayTmrw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SD and micro SD form factors are not the most robust or reliable. It would be nice to have a next step up form factor. In some ways, that's the motivation for CF Express Type B (and XQD before it), as popularized in digital photography.

Weird how this three day old comment shows up as 52 minutes old right now. What is going on with HN?

HN redates comments/submissions to boost engagement. Original post date is still available by hovering the date, in the alt text.

Re: Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

#57

Post by jbverschoor »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #17

We already have this though. SD Express, which allows SD cards to actually protocol switch to one lane PCI-E NVME. It's been part of the spec officially since 2018, and an enhancement slightly later to add more pins to allow a second lane. And since, underneath, it becomes a standard PCI-E NVME with standard lanes, there is no inherent speed limit from the bus itself, only from the fact that SD cards are tiny and any…

Yet I don’t trust any SD*. They always seem to corrupt, and I feel like the connector is not reliable enough. I’d rather not have such a thing directly connected to the bus

Re: Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

#58

Post by camdroidw »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #17

We already have this though. SD Express, which allows SD cards to actually protocol switch to one lane PCI-E NVME. It's been part of the spec officially since 2018, and an enhancement slightly later to add more pins to allow a second lane. And since, underneath, it becomes a standard PCI-E NVME with standard lanes, there is no inherent speed limit from the bus itself, only from the fact that SD cards are tiny and any…

One time where I "express" suffix makes something better, TIL

Re: Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

#59

Post by numpad0 »

echelon wrote: post #31
seabrookmx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth mentioning that the Nintendo Switch 2 supports SD Express, so in a few years millions of households will have these cards laying around.

I need this slot added back to my phone. Thank you very much, phone manufacturers.

I think you can thank Apple for that. They destroyed all the funky phones from competition.

Re: Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

#60

Post by PaulKeeble »

userbinator wrote: post #11

The Verge reports that a Chinese company called Biwin has developed the "Mini SSD," a 15 by 17 mm-thick card that supports read speeds of up to 3,700MB per second due to a two-lane PCI Express 4.0 interface. So this is basically a smaller NVMe SSD?

And presumably a mechanical interface designed to be external to a device to allow plugging them in and out.
Post reply on HN