News Storage Scaler Crams 16 SSDs Into One Board

[Admin]

A Kickstarter campaign hopes to produce a PCIe board with 16 SATA M.2 drives

Storage Scaler Crams 16 SSDs Into One Board : Read more

 

[mras2]

From article:
"It requires an external SATA HBA or RAID card to work, as it has no built-in drive controller. In RAID mode, it offers up to 7,377 MB/s read and 5,712 MB/s write. "

This is not true.
The 'test' configuration at their kickstarer page has a test with 16x samsung 850 where it gives those numbers.
These are not the "up to" numbers.
The "up to numbers" are defined by the sas standard, that gives you 1.5GB/sec(12gbit/s) pr channel, times 4 channel pr port, times 4 ports => 24GB/Sec.
( These are theoretical numbers, real numbers will ofcause depend on overhead of SAS standard, your SAS card, and your attached M.2 devices )
But, it's still vastly more than the stated 7377/5712MB/sec

 

[spongiemaster]

From article:
"It requires an external SATA HBA or RAID card to work, as it has no built-in drive controller. In RAID mode, it offers up to 7,377 MB/s read and 5,712 MB/s write. "

This is not true.
The 'test' configuration at their kickstarer page has a test with 16x samsung 850 where it gives those numbers.
These are not the "up to" numbers.
The "up to numbers" are defined by the sas standard, that gives you 1.5GB/sec(12gbit/s) pr channel, times 4 channel pr port, times 4 ports => 24GB/Sec.
( These are theoretical numbers, real numbers will ofcause depend on overhead of SAS standard, your SAS card, and your attached M.2 devices )
But, it's still vastly more than the stated 7377/5712MB/sec

The card uses SATA III M.2 drives. That's a theoretical maximum data transfer speed of 600MB/s per drive with real world closer to 550MB/s. For 16 drives, the theoretical max would be 9.6GB/s, which isn't all that much higher than the 7.4GB/s stated in the article.

 

[mras2]

The card uses SATA III M.2 drives. That's a theoretical maximum data transfer speed of 600MB/s per drive with real world closer to 550MB/s. For 16 drives, the theoretical max would be 9.6GB/s, which isn't all that much higher than the 7.4GB/s stated in the article.

Yeah, the SATA 3 standard, unfortunately limits it to yours stated 9600MB/sec~

Wonder if a multiplexor bridge chip is to expensive, since two of those connectors, could easely fullfll those bandwith requirements.
I'm guessing SATA3 physical ports must be too expensive, since they opted for the SAS3 ports?

But no matter what, then the stated "up to" numbers, doesn't fit.

 

[kal326]

Was interesting up until the words “M2 SATA” showed up.

 

[deesider]

Was interesting up until the words “M2 SATA” showed up.

Yeah exactly - a bit behind the times. Major manufacturers have stopped making M2 SATA drives

 

[USAFRet]

Yeah exactly - a bit behind the times. Major manufacturers have stopped making M2 SATA drives

Really?

SSD 860 EVO M.2 SATA 250GB Memory & Storage - MZ-N6E250BW | Samsung US

Learn more about Samsung SSD 860 EVO M.2 SATA 250GB with the innovative V-NAND technology and a 5-year limited warranty.

www.samsung.com

 

[deesider]

Really?

SSD 860 EVO M.2 SATA 250GB Memory & Storage - MZ-N6E250BW | Samsung US

Learn more about Samsung SSD 860 EVO M.2 SATA 250GB with the innovative V-NAND technology and a 5-year limited warranty.

www.samsung.com

Yes - that is Samsung's 'latest' SATA M2 drives launched in 2017. Local retailers advise that when current stock is sold out, will not be replaced. So if you need one get it while you can.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9799/best-ssds

The Crucial MX500 M.2 has been discontinued and Samsung has made no mention of a M.2 SATA version of the new 870 EVO, so it's pretty clear that this form factor has reached end of life. Consumers who need a capacity upgrade for a notebook that doesn't support NVMe on its M.2 slot should probably upgrade this year while new M.2 SATA drives are still readily available at reasonable prices.

 

[USAFRet]

OK, I stand corrected on the M.2 SATA.

And completely reasonable that they are going away.

 

[expunged]

They would have been better off ditching the raid card and sata3 and using Samsung's 8nm PCIE 4.0 controller with a 16x interface. But then your issue becomes PCIE lanes. With most CPUs coming in around 24 lanes unless you go threadripper or intel extreme series.