Adata's Kevin Chen On The SSD Industry In Transition

[Guest]

Take a seat at the table during an interview with Kevin Chen of Adata during Computex 2016 as we discuss the changing SSD industry.

Adata's Kevin Chen On The SSD Industry In Transition : Read more

 

[redgarl]

Interesting

 

[abbadon_34]

I doubt I'd ever be comfortable using drive with an 18 month warranty, let alone 12 months. I find the comment on "HDD replacement" troubling and hard to believe.


"Chen also commented that DRAMless SSDs, which usually employ TLC NAND and no DRAM package, are going to be more common as OEMs increase adoption of the emerging "HDD replacement" segment. Endurance becomes more of a concern with DRAMless SSDs, and some vendors may choose to lower warranty periods to one year to 18 months, but Chen noted that Adata will continue to provide a three-year warranty."

 

[JimmiG]

Yeah, the race to the bottom is becoming a serious issue for the SSD market. It used to be that you could buy any cheap SSD, because anything would be faster than an HDD. While this is generally still true, some TLC drives come close to HDD-level performance, with worse data retention and performance inconsistencies.

DRAM-less SSD's is taking things too far. It will give SSD's a bad rep due to the risk of system hangs while writing data, poor endurance and questionable data retention. Sadly, most OEMs will love the concept, since they can save a few bucks per system while advertising "high performance SSD storage".

 

[belardo]

Including a toolbox software, like intel's is a good idea that many vendors don't bother with at all. Seems like they learned something from Intel, especially when they used to sell SSDs manufactured by INTEL with an ADATA label. (bought some of these and saved 15% off the price of an intel - back then)

What I find amazing is that the OLD HD companies which are **HUGE** companies, Seagate, WD, Toshiba don't have anything in the SSD market. For most biz and typical users, a 480~1TB SSD will handle everything they need.

For low-end work stations, I use a $90 240GB SSD and Linux (usually) and they work great.

TLC (tender loving care) drives seem... a bit too cheap. As long as they offer high end, then oh well. right?

 

[Caanis Lupus]

@BELARDO WD bought Sandisk, Toshiba has OCZ, Seagate has SSD offerings(don't know if who they are rebranding).

I bought 3 of the S60 Adata drives when Amazon was selling them for under $40. Put them in some older 2nd/3rd gen I3/I5 systems that did quite a bit to help with responsiveness in Windows 7 and just 4gb of ram for work.

 

[belardo]

Ah, I forgot about toshiba/OCZ. Didn't know about WD. But I would think for brand recognition, WD, Toshiba and Seagate would have their names on their products. WD, for example owns HGST for corp/enterprise market.

My bigger issue with TLC drives (great marketing name, eh) is the performance. Of course OEMs will LOVE it as they'll sell computers with such drives and get an excellent markup on low-end drives. When I ordered Thinkpads from Lenovo, I would get them with the smalled HDs, and install intel drives. Why? Because the ONLY info you got was "100GB SSD" - not a brand or model or series or anything. Why spend $300 premium on an unknown when I could spend $240 and know what I am getting? Plus use the HHD unit as a back-up drive after its been cloned.

The typical custom won't know they have a low-end product. Going DRAMless to save a buck seems kind of stupid... but for some markets, a $1 is like $20 to us.

The life-span of the drives are not that big of a deal (for consumers and Small biz) compared to servers and enterprise. I was checking out a review comparing stress test of recent MLC and TLC drives to stress with the goal of hitting PB (1000TB of writes and beyond before failure). They all survived 700TB of writes, some hit 1000TB, including TLC. Those that died, gave SMART warning.

I checked my status on my intel 520 series 120GB drive from 2012 (My C: drive) and over the past 4 years of daily use, it only racked up 14.28TB writes! I typically run two broswers with 3 windows with about 50 tabs in use, photoshop and other tools. My SSD isn't close to death. Geez. my ancient intel X25-M 80GB (2009 tech) in my 2004 Thinkpad used to be my desktop drive, it has logged 7.54TB of writes... still works fine.