[citation][nom]CaedenV[/nom]HAMR is neat tech, but it promised a 10x increase in density back in the day when 1TB drives were available, making for 10TB drives, not 100TB drives... even if it was true today then we would be talking about 40TB drives which is still less than 1/2 of a 100TB drive. Amazing does not equal Magic.As for the rest of what you were saying... I am a bit confused as to what you are even saying. Current gen 1TB SSDs have multiple boards in them and are essentially 2 seperate SSD boards linked together via an internal SATA and RAID array. What makes them expensive is the inclusion of the RAID processing, and the duplication of things like the SSD controller which cost more than the actuial SSD nand units. There are nand units available to SSD manufacturers today that allow them to do 512GB drives with only 8 chips. The reason they do not go doubble-sided with these types of chips is because the current gen controllers max out at 512GB of flash on board.What this means is that when the new controllers are released and start being used we will see 1TB SSDs fall in line with the pricing of normal SSDs rather than having the 'RAID tax' on them that make them so much more expensive. We will then see internally RAIDed 2TB SSDs wich will be ridiculously expensive until yet another set of die shrinks. But this means we will see 2TB SSDs that fit in the size of a traditional laptop HDD, which to my knowledge has only been done by WD on one drive so far. The other thing which can be done, if SSDs were ever to move to a full Desktop format, is that they could put multiple drives on a single long raided board. You could easily fit 4 double-sided boards inside of a traditional desktop HDD space. At 2 drives per board * 4 boards with 1TB each that would be an easy 8TB you could put in there, and if they played with he layout they could easily fit more. Obviously this would not be practical because you would essentially be RAIDing 8 drives together, which is a nightmare, and it would be insanely expensive... but the point is that it could be done using today's tech rather than needing to wait 10 years for them to figure out how to do it. And if someone where to make a controller that was designed for this type of application and could control more than 16 chips then it could go a lot easier and cheaper... but there is 0 demand for it, so it will not happen any time soon.Another advancement in drive density that brings the price down is the movement from SLC, to MLC, to TLC. It is not so much that it makes the die smaller, but it allows multiple bits to be placed in the same location by allowing more values than a simple 0 or 1 to be used. TLC essentially says that the value can be a 0, 1 or 2, which is essentially a way to use trinary storage a compression for a binary signal. What it boils down to is that you get more storage density for the same amount of flash memory at the cost of more expensive voltage regulation, and a higher (but still acceptable) flash derogation rate. There is talk about doing this up to a base 8 at some point in the future, so once die shrinks hit the magic 6-8nm limit, they will still be able to increase density by increasing the number of different voltages each cell holds. It is a nice trick that electric storage can do that magnetic storage does not have access to.The biggest issue with HDDs is not the sheer size they can hold, because they obviously have a plan to grow in that regard, but it is that ratio of size to throughput which makes them impractical after a certain point which will eventually hurt business. They will always be great for sheer bulk storage that does not need to be often accessed, and I do not argue that point. What I find unsustainable is the idea that they can run the whole HDD market (with all of it's R&D required to keep hitting their progress marks) entirely on the bulk archival storage market.If SSDs take over slowly like they have been up to this point, then perhaps HDD makers will be able to slowly pair down their business appropriately. But if this next gen of SSDs hits that critical mass of space+performance+price that I think they will, then there is a real risk that the HDD market dries up very quickly and HDD manufacturers loose business literally overnight. If that happens then there is no way for a big business to cope with that kind of loss except to fold up and go home. It is not that I WANT HDD companies to fail. I just know what the addition of SSDs in my systems at home and work have done for me and I just sit here wondering why on earth they are not more popular than they are.Yes, $/GB is important, but once you start seeing 240GB drives for ~$120 (which is what I paid for my 2nd 240GB drive last year) then $/GB doesn't matter anymore. It is merely a drive that is 'big enough' to be very useful and cheap enough where it is a nearly negligible amount of money for most individuals. And when a $120 drive upgrade creates more of a visible performance upgrade than building a new $3-500 PC that still uses HDD tech, then you really start to wonder why on earth SSDs are not more popular in new machines. Considering a HDD cannot even push a modern i3 processor (much less an i5 or i7), it drives me crazy that there is not simply more demand for them. Buying a modern computer (even a cheap i3) and putting a HDD in it as a system drive, is just plain nuts as most things that most users do on it will be limited to the HDD throughput which makes it no faster than a 5 year old Core2Duo system (and you can get those really cheap these days).For server applications where you have multiple users accessing the same drive this effect is multiplied. For each concurrent user added on a HDD you are looking at a nearly 30% overall performance drop (meaning when 2 users are on you get 1/3 the performance of a single user going to each user), where as if you use SSDs instead then you get a negligible performance drop until you get a bunch of users, at which point performance falls of gracefully rather than catastrophically. I mean, at that point (other than a massive storage requirement) why wouldn't you move to SSDs? Yes, the SSD is more expensive, but you get to use the full performance of that SSD with a lot more load on it than a HDD. It really seems crazy not to at this point except for the use of backup servers.[/citation]
you wrote allot, so im writeing this as im reading your comment so i dont forget something and am forced to re read it, so if you addressed anything i wrote i will make a note of it instead of editing it out.
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did HAMR ever get applied to current drives? if not, than wouldn't they still stand to gain the up to 10X that they promised back than? because as far as im aware, the only real change in drive size so far has been moving to smaller and smaller tracks instead of heat assist, though i could be wrong.
ok second paragraph.
my math was based on a budget new ssd that we knew the nm size of, the reason is because they compete with price and are not going to take a loss, so their margins were lower, allowing me to make a better estimate of the base cost of an ssd, because i knew the nm process i was able to extrapolate the data to take into account when the price for that ssd would match the price per $ of a 2tb (at the time best bang for buck) hdd, and it came to the process being in the 6-7nm range for equal pricing. i hope the way i wrote that makes sense...
ok, third one... magnetic storage to my knowledge can do more than store binary, i believe there was research to try and get different levels of it readable, but i dont know what ever happened to it.
with hdds being archive only, no i dont think they will sustain it on that alone, but look at the future, 4k is about 4 times the size of 1080p, and 8k is 4 times that, and we will most likely reach that soon.
a current 1080p encode of a movie can get to 20-25gb without doing any undue compression methods, my that logic, a 4k movie will hit 100gb and 8 k would hit close to 400gb, but lets go into compression. 720p can be compressed well down to about 2gb before most people will notice quality loss, and 1080p 8gb before you see quality loss, by that 4k will most likely take up about 32gb and 128gb, sure there is a compression codec that is suppose to halve current rates but that would still be 16 and 64gb respectively. and people love to have the media owned, as in they have a copy, they accept streaming for it being either cheaper, or easier... but 64gb movie cant be screamed, and i would like to say 16gb would be REALLY pushing it for current internet. now also take into account that this data is server side, and if they want the best quality, they have a hard coded version for each stream quality, so you are looking at 100+gb for 1 movie, with a truly massive back catalogue, with more made every day. personally, just from a video aspect, i cant see most places using ssd unless it was close to what a hdd could offer. on a home use side, i can see a home cloud becoming a thing because people are moving away from laptop and computer (older people and younger people) because they don't need them, but the space they offer on devices is minuscule. now if a home cloud is used more for video and large things, i could easily see a hdd being good enough, and an ssd would be overkill performance wise and not have the storage space required. i cant wrap my head around what 8 states would do for storage, im either over thinking it or under thinking it. what i have in my head is it either makes the storage have 4 times the space or 6 times the space, which would make a current 256gb ssd wither 1tb or 1.5tb which even still by todays prices would a drive would be twice as expensive, and thats not taking into account the extra wear that gets put on an ssd, not to mention for server proposes, those drives are basically useless (unless that easybake oven tech i heard about is implemented and works as good as they hope) so hdd may lose the home market, and probaly will, but i see the server market still useing them...
and to the why do more people not use them, its the fact they are advertised as boot drives. most people see it as windows starts up faster, the programs i use start faster, but i dont need that thing to start 5-20 seconds faster, i can wait, not realizeing that the hdd has more going on than just starting a program. its the mass uses not understanding that that makes them less popular. not to mention that even with an ssd, you still almost need a hdd unless you barely use a computer.
if you are buying an i3... you are going for a massive budget... a hdd is cheaper and gives you storage space. if you are prebuild an i3... well... they put in cheaper parts for more margin. if i didnt have the money for a big ssd (256-512), i would go hdd, but this is coming from someone who has close to 10tb current hooked up their computer and are useing about 8tb of it.
now on a server, that is beyond my understanding, but from what i remember, or what i heard, the only thing a drive is on their for is pageing and storing info, almost everything is ran off the ram. i cant talk much but my movie thing above, imagine that was netflix, or youtube where such a large volume is added all the time to the point that you cant do it with an ssd.