SATA 4, 12 Gb/s (SATAe 16 Gb/s) for SSD's?

[josejones]

I'm just curious if there's any idea when SATA 4, 12 Gbit/s (SATAe 16 Gbit/s) might be coming out, at least for Solid State Drives (SSD's) ?

I've seen no mention of it at all over at Serial ATA - maybe somebody could ask them? There's no mention of SATA 4 at Wiki either - Serial ATA.

Is SATA 4 even in the pipe? SSD's seem to be making some great strides so, it seemed like SATA 4 would be coming at some point.

Added edit: SSDs to get faster with SATA Express = 16Gb/s

 

[josejones]

When M.2 and PCIe along with the new NVMe interface and connectors becomes the new standard in 2015 we will eventually see PCIe SSD's at 20 to 40 g/ps:

Welcome to the fast-moving world of flash connectors
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014/11/13/flash_connectors/

The Interface of Choice for SSDs
http://www.cadalyst.com/hardware/workstations/interface-choice-ssds-21388

"With a 4 x PCI Express 3.0/2.0 bandwidth, M.2 supports up to 32Gbps data-transfer speeds..."

ASUS X99-E WS LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132263&cm_re=ASUS_X99-E_WS_LGA_2011-v3_Intel_X99-_-13-132-263-_-Product

 

[k1114]

The port never increased hdd performance. Let's just forget hdds, why you mentioned them ever made no sense.

You mention an obsolete sata 3 when 3.2 is not hitting it's max. Sata isn't going anywhere so why will there never be sata 4? Isn't it a logical to eventually hit 4?

You are putting too much importance on the max bandwidth. Give most any user a pcie ssd and a ssd on a sata 1 port and they won't know the difference.

 

[josejones]

k1114, it just seems like you either have no clue what you're talking about and are not reading the posts before your face or have a severe lack of comprehension. I will waste no more time on you.

k1114, read that quote in context as many times as it takes until it all sinks in. What part of this do you not understand?:

"I never said SATA 4 hit its limit since SATA 4 does not exist and never will as SATA 3 has already hit its limit with standard hard drives and those connectors as mentioned by yumri and the AHCI interface. Today's SATA interface maxes out at 600 MB/second which limits SSD's. So, SATA 3 is already maxed out.

SSD's will go 12g/ps and 16g/ps but as far as I can tell never regular hard drives as they have already hit their limits at least with those connectors and the AHCI interface.

yumri is probably correct, the future of SATA is likely M.2 and PCIe with NVMe...."

SATA 3.2 did little to increase performance for standard disc Hard Drives (HD). SATA 3.2 was more for M.2 and SSD's since, as already discussed, HD's are limited by the AHCI interface and the connecters that limit them to 600 MB/s making SATA disc HD's soon to be obsolete AFTER M.2 and PCIe along with a new NVMe interface and connectors becomes the new standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_revision_3.2_.2816_Gbit.2Fs.2C_1969_MB.2Fs.29

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2013/08/13/sata-32/1

When M.2 and PCIe, along with the new NVMe interface and connectors becomes the new standard we will see PCIe SSD's at 20 to 40 g/ps:

Welcome to the fast-moving world of flash connectors
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014/11/13/flash_connectors/

The Interface of Choice for SSDs
http://www.cadalyst.com/hardware/workstations/interface-choice-ssds-21388

"With a 4 x PCI Express 3.0/2.0 bandwidth, M.2 supports up to 32Gbps data-transfer speeds..."

ASUS X99-E WS LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132263&cm_re=ASUS_X99-E_WS_LGA_2011-v3_Intel_X99-_-13-132-263-_-Product

 

[yumri]

k1114, it just seems like you either have no clue what you're talking about and are not reading the posts before your face or have a severe lack of comprehension. I will waste no more time on you.

k1114, read that quote in context as many times as it takes until it all sinks in. What part of this do you not understand?:

I think K1114 is taking about the other kind of M.2 as there are several kinds of M.2 some faster some slower and some not even for hard drives. The kind of M.2 which i am referring to in my post above is the M.2 with PCIE x2 hard drive B Socket or PCIE x4 lane support for hard drives M Socket. Which ussualy run faster than anything on SATA 6Gb/s do while still being bootable drives.
In that mSATA is not the same as M.2 nor are they compataible with each other.
an example of M.2 PCIE x4 is the Samsung XP941 the M.2 PCIE x2 for example the Plexor M6e line now for SATA 6Gb/s lots go to Western Digital with their Black edition hard drives .

Source of the links below:
Samsung XP941 http://www.samsung.com/us/hpworkstation/media/XP941_ProdOverview_2014_F.pdf
Plexor M6e series http://www.plextoramericas.com/index.php/pcie-ssd/m2/m6e-m2-2280?start=1
Western Digital Black series Spec Sheet http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771434.pdf

 

[josejones]

Thanks for clarifying, yumri.

Sorry, k1114 was frustrating and didn't seem to understand the conversation at all and was not communicating very clearly.

Apparently, mSATA: "suffers from all the same problems as SATA" ... "mSATA was succeeded by M.2 and is not likely to be included in any future designs"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014/11/13/flash_connectors/

The sooner they make this interface obsolete the better: Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI). The NVMe interface is at least a good start in the right direction.

"Memory Channel Storage / MCS is faster than PCIe with far lower and more consistent latency when under load. It is even closer to the CPU than PCIe storage ... MCS looks to be the next evolution of storage"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014/11/13/flash_connectors/

Doesn't all of this essentially make SATA for SSD's obsolete? They'll still use it for disc HD's but, its time seems to be up when the new standards are in place. The NVMe interface and its connectors have already started to become the new standard and certainly in the next set of new motherboards, CPU's, OS's etc.

Are there even any performance increases for standard disc HD's left? It appears to have hit the limit aside from trying to get 10g/ps out of SATA Express 3.2, mSATA ... which is why there will never be a SATA 4 for disc HD's, right? Am I communicating this clearly enough?

 

[yumri]

I think the SATA hard drive interface will stick around for a while yet as did IDE , EIDE , and PATA did but for the higher end and eutherist grade i do not see them haveing SATA 3 for much longer than needed once SATA Express drives are more aviable and easier to get.
Also i do not think M.2 socket M or M+B will take off until non-eutherist boards have wider support for it.

 

[josejones]

yumri, of course SATA will not just disappear over night but, like VGA, IDE, EIDE, and PATA, SATA now appears to be on the path towards obsolete heaven. And with SATA 3's 600 MB/s maximum, holding back the full potential of M.2 and SSD's, I say, the sooner the better.

As SATA, like VGA, IDE, EIDE, and PATA will just be taking up motherboard real-estate that could be better utilized. VGA should've been removed YEARS AGO and took up space few used, which also costs money. I'd like to see new motherboards without all that useless obsolete crap - at least so we don't have to pay for obsolete parts few will use.

What is the maximum for SATA Express and M.2 socket M or M+B ??? SATA Express appears to be limited to just two lanes and we lose access to other ports. If we use M.2 then, we lose access to SATA Express since we cannot use both simultaneously.

Give this a going over as it explains a bit of these issues I'm talking about on "A 1400 MB/s SSD: ASRock's Z97 Extreme6 And Samsung's XP941":

M.2 And SATA Express, Discussed
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-xp941-z97-pci-express,3826-2.html

Z97 Express: The Same Old Bandwidth Limitations
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-xp941-z97-pci-express,3826-3.html

"The Samsung XP941 employs AHCI, which has some inherent overhead that chokes the potential of solid-state storage. NVMe was designed to address this. However, Intel's NVMe driver isn't expected until the end of 2014. As a result, we have to accept that a PCIe-based SSD utilizing AHCI is probably going to demonstrate modest advantages, at best."

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-xp941-z97-pci-express,3826-6.html

Also, "Once an SSD is plugged into the Ultra M.2 slot, the bandwidth between CPU and GPU is cut-down by half. Therefore, while the end-user gets additional SSD performance, the end-user may lose some GPU performance because of insufficient bandwidth between it and the CPU."

The NVMe interface and its connectors are an obvious first step to remedy these issues, but not the only thing that needs done. I hope the next generation of motherboards, CPU's etc., will fix these issues.

 

[yumri]

well the current generation of PCIe has enough bandwidth to run many Graphics cards at PCIe gen. 3 x4 though nVidia cards will not accept anything below x8 of any PCIe generation.
Ultra M.2 slots yes they will reduce the PCIe lanes though most times the motherboard manual will tell you which so you can put your graphics card into a diffenret slot thus just making it bad for SLI 3-way and 4-way configurations but the ussualy single card or SLI 2-way configurations are not going to lose anything if install correctly.
Saddly with the older ports i am actually haveing to put in a Serial port card as my UPS uses that for management so there is a reason on the business class stuff need the older standards ... it also makes trouble shooting alot easier as serial port has alot fewer pins and it is easier to trouble shoot because each pin only does 1 thing not muliple thing as USB, IEEE 1394b, and thunderbolt do mulitple things per pin making them harder to trouble shoot for simple things.
But on a consumer build there is no reason for serial port(s) nor VGA port(s) as you said as those are totally oudated and i do not think anything is sold with only a VGA port anymore but at least VGA and DVI if not more connections or just DVI and HDMI and/or Display port.

 

[josejones]

to be honest, I am very unlikely to ever have more than one GPU at a time. Unless I win the Lottery or something ... even then I am unclear if it is really worth it.

I would think business class and trouble shoot would want an upgrade but, you're probably right.

I do still have my ancient VGA to DVI adapter ...

I do look forward to DisplayPort 1.3 and HDMI 2.0; even though I was pretty disappointed with some of the HDMI 2.0 specs - I had hoped it would've been closer to DisplayPort 1.3

 

[yumri]

yeah but DisplayPort 1.3 has some things that HDMI 2.0 will not for example support for up to 7680x4320 ie UHD 8k while HDMI only goes up to 4096x2160 ie UHD 4k
BUT in that HDMI is better in some others like HDMI cables can go up to 100m while DisplayPort is still restricted to only 33m with a active cable in addition to that HDMI is more used on consumer low and mid end electronics so haveing compatablity with HDMI is better than compatablity with Displayport

while most others are the same between them.

PS i do agree with you that it is very unlikely for someone to have more than just 1 graphics card at 1 time maybe a dual GPU card if they are willing to pay the extra cost for it but still only 1 card and most times that is all a consumer will need to play most games on max graphics settings at maximum resulation.

 

[josejones]

So, the driving force behind the concept of NMVe was Intel. And that makes me want to do an Intel build for my next system even tho Intel already made it clear that they will share NVMe with everybody to help advance the new standard across the board, which is awesome. I've never had an Intel system before - always AMD:

"Intel led the industry in creation of a new Non-Volatile Memory Express* (NVMe*) storage interface standard. NVMe overcomes SAS/SATA SSD performance limitations by optimizing hardware and software to take full advantage of NVM SSD technology."

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/intel-ssd-dc-family-for-pcie.html

Intel SSD Data Center Family For NVMe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c9vUuGGQeY

http://intel.com/ssd

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/solid-state-drives-ssd.html

I am wondering if there will be any adapters/connectors to help improve already existing SATA III SSD performance with the new NVMe or an update of some sort, to help them see their full potential - possibly up to 10 g/ps? Or if there's no other way to get NVMe support except to buy a new motherboard, CPU, SSD/M.2 etc.?

The video above makes it sound like new NVMe will not add to the costs either since it was an easy fix within the already existing framework. I guess we'll find out fairly soon. I just hope they don't cheap and really open up the flood gates for 12 to 40 g/ps SSD's and M.2's. Or at least 12 to 20 g/ps for now and 24 to 40 g/ps next round.

 

[yumri]

atm the only things out that can out preform a SATA III SSD are a SAS 12Gb/ps SSD, PCIe SSDs basicly any of them M.2 SSDs on socket M and/or socket B then SATA Express.
SATA is a dieing standard though it has been aroud for a while and probably it is time for it to be replaced though replaceing it will take time as SATA is on almost any and all motherboards atm and will stay for a while as there are many SATA I, SATA II and SATA III hard drives on the market already.

 

[josejones]

Agreed yumri.

Which brings us full circle back to what I mentioned on page 1 doubting that there will ever be a SATA 4 since SATA 3 is already at its limit. They would need to make changes to SATA disc HD's somehow to include NVMe and its new connectors, if that's even possible. So, I wonder if disc hard drive makers like Western Digital will figure out a way to include NVMe to improve HD performance or if that's it for disc HD's.

I have not read anywhere where disc HD makers plan to do this tho. One thing is for sure, SATA is now the new VGA, which will be used for quite some time but less and less as people upgrade to the new NVMe standards.

 

[yumri]

and even if the hard drive makers for SATA do include NVMe into it it will make it so it is no longer backwards compatiable which is one of the major selling points of SATA. In that yes SATA 1.5Gb/s, 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s is the way of the past and present but not the future. For the future i probably should have included a SAS controller in my file server build as SAS is still going to be around for a while though in that i think even SAS will still be only for big or huge hard drive arrays not for the general consumers.
In that hopefully we will get support for booting off of a PCI express bus SSD as that is the quickest SSDs which i can see. To this if the companies can find a way to bring down the price of a PCIe SSD then i think dual hard drive consumer builds using a PCIe SSD instead of a SATA SSD will take hold either that or we will see a major shift over to SATA Express and/or SAS 12Gb/s only because there are only boards with 1 or 2 M.2 slots atm is all but with some redesigning of the boards that can be fixed but i really doubt it as that would mean putting the high heat output before the GPU and/or the CPU and that isnt good or just undernearth the motherboard which again is not a good solution either. So more speed with less heat is needed for that standard to really take hold.
But for now a 512GB SSD drive is enough for most consumers so M.2 will take hold with ppl who only want or need 1 drive not many.

 

[josejones]

"Industry observers had initially believed that the issues impacting Broadwell would also cause Skylake to slip to 2016, but newer information suggests that Intel would seek to recover from these delays by bringing forward Skylake's release and shortening Broadwell's release cycle instead. ... Skylake in 2015"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_%28microarchitecture%29

Report: Intel Skylake to Have PCIe 4.0, DDR4, SATA Express

"According to a purported Intel Xeon Processor Roadmap Plan for HPC, the 14 nm “Skylake” architecture will support DDR4, PCIe 4.0 and SATA Express.

WCCFTech has published what purports to be Intel’s Xeon Processor Roadmap Plan for HPC which sheds light on the company’s post-Haswell forecast, specifically the forthcoming “Skylake” architecture that will arrive in the first half of 2015. "

"Interestingly, Skylake will also support PCIe 4.0 that offers a link bandwidth of 16 GB/s -- double that of PCIe 3.0 and far in excess of the bandwidth required by any existing graphics card. Finally, Skylake incorporates the latest AVX 3.2 instructions and SATA Express functionality which should significantly enhance the transfer speeds of hard drives and SSDs."

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Skylake-Intel-DDR4-PCIe-SATAe,news-44696.html

"Intel is preparing to launch its Broadwell and Skylake chipsets in 2015"
http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/09/intel-corporation-launching-broadwell-skylake-chips/

"Skylake will be in production in early 2015 and in products by the end of next year."
http://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/74481-intel-broadwell-skylake-client-cpus-launching-2015/

 

[yumri]

saddly most of what you said above ie not really going to be used anytime soon as PCIe 3.0 is not fully used past the x4 mark of it for the most demanding cards , DDR4 is about as good if not worse than DDR3 for consumers, is not really used by consumers so no big deal there unless running a rendering server with software that will take advange of AVX1, AVX2, AVX3, and AVX3.2 as the before version is needed for the next version to be there,SATA Express drives are not really sold yet so that will probably be a non issue for most ppl even when they come out it will be like the SATA 6Gb/s drives which were to expenive for the avg consumer, Also Skylake has been talked about for 2016 for a while so i doubt that they will just stop making Broadwell CPUs as it took a ton of R&D to come up with how to work on that die size and the smaller one has not been found out how to make yet so the fab company is the limiting factor here not Intel. This is also why the Maxwell GPU is still the larger size as the fab comany couldnt do the smaller size as of release date.

 

[josejones]

"Intel has signaled plans to launch its next-generation Skylake family of processors at some point during the second half of 2015. Kirk Skaugen, who heads the company's PC Client Group, said Intel will release both desktop and mobile Skylake parts during 2015."

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/31/why-doesnt-intel-corporations-skylake-processor-us.aspx

 

[yumri]

after reading that it looks like Skylake is going to be in 2015 just when skylake actually uses DDR4 it will be in 2016 ~ 2017 when the price of DDR4 drops by a ton according to the chart in your link

 

[josejones]

Well, I'm not sure how much we can trust the assumption by the article author that Intel will hold back DDR4 over standard price premiums that always come with new technology. That article is just silly crying over price premiums for DDR4 acting like price premiums have never happened before. WTF? It ALWAYS happens so why does the author of that article even act surprised? That's why the only thing I quoted came from an actual Intel guy saying: "Intel will release both desktop and mobile Skylake parts during 2015." I felt like that was the only thing really relevant worth mentioning.

That next generation tech is precisely what so many have been waiting for and the industry has been slow over the last 5 years to come out with it due to delays, excuses and in some ways a lack of competition etc. resulting in measly 5% performance increases.

But now, everything is coming together nicely to finally come out with the next generation tech and Intel needs to fulfill its promises and come out with DDR4, SATA Express, PCIe 4.0 and the new NVMe interface for M.2 and SSD's to finally release us from the hard drive bottleneck capping data at SATA III levels.

Remember, they already delayed SATA Express from the z97 series, while, x99 did include DDR4. So, I wish Intel would just get it done and stop monkeying around. We already know there will be price premiums. Delays will never stop the price premium for DDR4 so Intel needs to just get it out there so that the price premium can begin the process of dropping over time.

 

[yumri]

@k1114 the reason why there will not be a SATA 4 is because of the amount of voltage needed for it will break backwards compatabilty with SATA 1,2,3, 3.1, and 3.2 thus making it have to be a diffenret standard because of the voltage changes. The voltage will go up to carry more data in a shorter amount of time same as with the PCIe lanes when compared to SATA controlled lines the SATA controlled lanes are just slower when coming out of the SATA controller while with the PCIe lanes they are the same speed from the CPU to the PCIe device and back again.

SATA 4 might be the name of it but it will not be backwards compatable with the previous ones at all.

 

[pitu2600]

see HDD VS SSD VS SSHD test result : electronicsshoponline.com/?p=10

 

[yumri]

to josejanes i think SAS will be more common than M.2 just for the reason of expandabilty being more to which even though M.2 is theorically faster than SAS 12Gbps actual throughput in actual applications is fairly simular to one another. This is just for my own opinion based on well working with computers and seeing that ppl sometimes want to expand how many hard drives they have past just 1 drive of 512GB the limit of M.2 at this time. Yes i know that M.2 will get higher densities but at this moment 512GB is the highest possiable. Thus making a secondary connector needed and SAS 12Gbps very appealing as SATA 3 at 600Mbps is only half that and SAS can hold more drives more connector.
Again this is my opionin not based on any real studies nor much research at all but how i see it going in the future.

 

[josejones]

Well yumri, speak of the devil: "dual port 12Gb/s SAS"

Seagate 1200 SSD

Ultra-fast SSD plus 12GB/s SAS for Enterprise Servers and Storage

http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/solid-state-hybrid/1200-ssd/#features

$700 for the 200g
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G1S89322&cm_re=Seagate_1200_SSD_ST200FM0073-_-20-248-043-_-Product

$1,600 for the 400g
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G1S90845&cm_re=Seagate_1200_SSD-_-9SIA24G1S90845-_-Product

$2,500 for the 800g
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820248040&cm_re=Seagate_1200_SSD_ST800FM0053-_-20-248-040-_-Product

SAS vs. SATA
http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/storage-technology/sas-vs.-sata-1.html

So, I guess it's mostly for Enterprise and Servers.

 

[yumri]

yes i know SAS is mostly for Enterprise Severs but if consumers still want more and more speed SATA just isnt going to be able to deliver that kind of preformance making SAS a known standard that is already quicker and working on getting even quicker now. In that SATA was always 1 year or so behind SAS making SAS a better method for the consumers who want the most out of their SSDs without haveing to use a PCIe lane based port like M.2 or a actual PCIe card.
SAS delivers close to M.2 Speeds but not that high as of yet and the drives are much more expenive atm for the 12Gbps SAS drives compared to the M.2 SSDs which saddly are much smaller starting at 32GB and ending at 512G.
So i predict SAS to be the connector to take over for mass storage devices ... either that or SATA Express but SATA Express has no actual consumer drives atm while SAS 12Gbps has around 24 drives on the market with only the Seagate ST1000NX0333 1TB SAS 12Gbps drive being at $200 being even close to reasonabily priced for a hard drive or that size. I say reasonabily as it is doule the price for double the transfer speed. Even though $200 on a single hard drive of 1TB i do not think most cosumers will pay as that will be over how much the CPU / APU in a low - mid end computer would be. Only thing though is there are no SSDs using SAS 12Gbps .

 

[josejones]

SSD's at 64Gbps via PCIe 3.0 x8 lanes!!! Just wait until PCIe 4.0 comes out soon - 128Gbps!!!

Defining NVMe - Hands-on testing with the 1.6TB Intel P3700 SSD - NVMe Performance and Drivers
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6...ng-with-the-1-6tb-intel-p3700-ssd/index7.html

Wow, just wow, SSD's at 64Gbps via PCIe 3.0 x8 lanes!!! Just wait until PCIe 4.0 comes out soon for potential 128Gbps!!!