What happened to SATA Express?

[Chiyawa]

Hi,

 

I've come across this 'obscured' technology called SATA Express. I think we may find it in some Intel 100 Series motherboard (according to Wikipedia, Intel introduce it for their 9 series motherboard), but I don't think I see a device support it (maybe too rare?).

 

So, for those of you who don't know what SATA Express is, Wikipedia has a page for that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA_Express

 

TL;DR: It's basically 2 SATA port and 2 PCIe lanes combined, giving you good chunk of bandwidth

 

Since we have this technology, why aren't our 2.5 inch SATA SSD adopt it so we can gain a little more performance from it since SSD speed can surpass SATA 3.0? I know NVMe SSD can outperform it by a lot, but we're talking about the era where I believe M.2 NVMe protocol is still at its infancy and M.2 SATA couldn't gain much traction because SSD is still very expensive. Also, why HDD just doesn't want to adopt it?

 

In Wikipedia, it mention that it was consider failed standard when it launched due to M.2 and NVMe launched almost the same time and became very popular, but it did note that the statement is lack of citation, so this statement proves inconclusive.

 

There's not much explanation found in Youtube why SATA Express fail, other than this TechQuickie video from Youtube mention that you can't get a device that use SATA Express as of yet (from the time it published):

 

So, yeah, what really happens? Why there are virtually no adoptions?

 

Regards,

Chiyawa

[FRSHPRNCFBLR]

I think it’s just down to bad timing, with NVME SSDs launching for consumers at the same time. 
 

Even with the additional bandwidth, you would still be limited by the SATA protocol iirc. 
 

And SATA Express SSDs just came with too much of a premium I thinks. 

[Moonzy]

11 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

why HDD just doesn't want to adopt it?

HDD can barely saturate SATA 3.0 speeds, so i don't see why they should

 

M.2 is easier and more compact to install, so i don't see why we will adopt SATA express now

[Kilrah]

I have a 2014 mobo that has both SATA Express and M.2, at the time there weren't even any m.2 drives you could buy but they started appearing in laptops. Due to that they quickly became available generally and performance was better than SATA Express could do. The SATA Express connector is big on the mobo side so seeing nobody used it mobo manufacturers stopped including it, and then as a drive manufacturer it makes no sense to release drives that few/no mobos support, so...

[Chiyawa]

1 hour ago, Moonzy said:

Snip

27 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Snip

I see. Hmm...

 

Well, it may be sounds a little silly, but I guess we should update our SATA. The 2.5 inch SSD can get a good boost from SATA Express or more newer protocol like U3. M.2 SSD always overheat and had their performance drop to a crawl even with heat sink on because they are quite tiny and generate too much heat because they are way too fast. 2.5 inch has a larger surface to dissipate heat and since they are larger, they can fit a bigger cooling fins. Also, hope SSD will come in 3.5 inch form to increase their cooling capacity.

 

Sad to see this technology never took flight, It would be a game changer if it did and SSHD might be more common than ever as the SSD side can take advantage of the speed while the HDD side offers big storage capacity at a low cost. Of course now it's a different story...

[Moonzy]

13 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

Also, hope SSD will come in 3.5 inch form to increase their cooling capacity.

unless majority of the volume is heatsink, packing more NAND into a larger volume decreases surface area per volume and thus lower the cooling performance, actually

 

14 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

SSHD

SSHD is bad, u cant pick what to store in the SSD part and the SSD part tends to die sooner because of the small capacity and thus more read/write cycles

[Chiyawa]

4 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

unless majority of the volume is heatsink, packing more NAND into a larger volume decreases surface area per volume and thus lower the cooling performance, actually

True, but if you use fin type heat sink, you actually will increase its surface area. You can also install small axial fan to cool the SSD as well.

 

5 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

SSHD is bad, u cant pick what to store in the SSD part and the SSD part tends to die sooner because of the small capacity and thus more read/write cycles

Yep, one major problem with SSHD. Still, If instead of SSD, we have RAM cache instead...

[AlfaProto]

Just speculation but SSD manufacturers COULD have produced 3.5 inch SSD for consumer using SATA Express, but no, they decided to relegate it to Enterprise/Server space AND price fix, because they don't want another SD card scenario which 16gigs and 32 gigs are nearly identical in price, even if they uses the same NAND controller.

I mean, how does a 240-256 gigs SATA still exist under US$30-50? Doesn't make sense. It should be 500 gigs at that price point, though starting MSRP is US$40.

I mean, I'm not the only one in the consumer or even pro-sumer that is willing to have:

• A 3.5 inch SSD
• Large capacity over speed (SSD speeds are quicker than HDD, even with a slow controller)

Currently, 2.5 inch SSD of 1 or 2TB takes 1/4 or 1/2 the length 2.5 inch case. You don't need to imagine what the capacity is like for a full length 3.5 inch SSD, in fact, Linus covered this in the ExaDrive video.

Heck, the m.2 form factor can't even accommodate the same cost effectiveness like 2.5 inch SSD, especially if it's 4TB or above.

 

[Kilrah]

By the point the 3.5" form factor would be needed to actually fit the NAND to attain a certin capacity... the price would be way above what you'd want to pay. 

[tkitch]

16 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

By the point the 3.5" form factor would be needed to actually fit the NAND to attain a certin capacity... the price would be way above what you'd want to pay. 

Although, my imagination is running wild now:

3.5" Drive footprint of Flash Chips, but similar thickness to 2.5", then add a bit of finned heatsink on top, giving it half the height profile of a 3.5" HDD.

Stack 2 in the space of a single 3.5" HDD.  Could probably get 16-20TB on storage on a single drive that size, with current flash chip tech.  So, 30-40TB of SSD in the volume of a single 3.5" bay?  (I mean, it'd still be 2 Grand plus per drive, but still, wicked cool!)

[AlfaProto]

22 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

By the point the 3.5" form factor would be needed to actually fit the NAND to attain a certin capacity... the price would be way above what you'd want to pay. 

  

Given that Linus did a video on an Enterprise 3.5 inch SSD, a single PCB stack contains 25TB (maybe MLC NAND), I think consumer grade would be below US$1K, or US$500.

1. It's a single stack
2. A 'off-the-shelf' controller instead of custom controller with FPGA chip.

Once again, though speculation, it's the SSD/NAND flash manufacturers price fixing their stuff in order to avoid SD card scenario, which 16-64 gigs SD card of the same speed are no-brainer to buy, just get 64 gigs because most devices can support 64 gigs SD card.

[AlfaProto]

4 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Although, my imagination is running wild now:

3.5" Drive footprint of Flash Chips, but similar thickness to 2.5", then add a bit of finned heatsink on top, giving it half the height profile of a 3.5" HDD.

Stack 2 in the space of a single 3.5" HDD.  Could probably get 16-20TB on storage on a single drive that size, with current flash chip tech.  So, 30-40TB of SSD in the volume of a single 3.5" bay?  (I mean, it'd still be 2 Grand plus per drive, but still, wicked cool!)

This is what I'm thinking too! Even with current SSD tech, or even older tech, a slim 15mm 3.5 inch SSD should exist in the consumer or pro-sumer space.

 

[tkitch]

5 minutes ago, AlfaProto said:

This is what I'm thinking too! Even with current SSD tech, or even older tech, a slim 15mm 3.5 inch SSD should exist in the consumer or pro-sumer space.

 

it wouldn't be consumer.  There's no advantage to the size, unless using the extra physical area for chips.  

[AlfaProto]

1 minute ago, tkitch said:

it wouldn't be consumer.  There's no advantage to the size, unless using the extra physical area for chips.  

Advantage of 3.5 inch SSD: larger capacity from the start (maybe 10TB, even MLC).

I can definitely say that it's slower than NVME or even SATA--either controllers, but it is still way faster than mechanical storage.

I did say pro-sumer would likely to want to have this kind of large SSD, maybe using it as a large SSD caching--especially video editing, photo-editing, etc. I mean really, 2x4TB 2.5inch SSD over 1x10TB 3.5inch SSD? This is basically back to SLI/XFire.

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, AlfaProto said:

Just speculation

-snip-

You seem to think that "if we had more physical space, we would get more storage capacity for the same price", which is completely illogical.

 

 

4 hours ago, AlfaProto said:

how does a 240-256 gigs SATA still exist under US$30-50? Doesn't make sense. It should be 500 gigs at that price point, though starting MSRP is US$40.

Why do you think a 500GB SSD should cost 40 dollars? Why do you think that price "makes sense"? What cost analysis did you make do get to that number?

 

A single 16GB NAND chip from Samsung costs about 4 dollars. 

 

 

1 hour ago, AlfaProto said:

I think consumer grade would be below US$1K, or US$500.

25TB SSD for 500 USD...

And you base that on... What exactly?

 

Remember, the Samsung 870 QVO, which is about as low end of an SSD you can get, costs 730 USD for an 8TB model.

It's also worth noting that the 8TB model of the 870 QVO is nowhere near size constrained. This is what the 4TB model looks like. The 8TB model just has two extra chips in the empty slots.

Spoiler

 

They could easily make like a 20TB model without any issues inside a 2.5" form factor. The problem is that it's not worth it because barely anyone want to pay ~2000 dollars for a really slow 20TB SSD. Flash is nowhere near cheap enough for your fantasy 25TB drive at 500 dollar price point. Even using super cheap QLC flash, we're still talking thousands of dollars of flash chips just to fill a 2.5" drive enclosure, let alone a 3.5".

 

You're just pulling numbers out of your ass.

 

 

 

52 minutes ago, AlfaProto said:

Advantage of 3.5 inch SSD: larger capacity from the start (maybe 10TB, even MLC).

Why do you think having a 3.5" SSD would make it larger capacity? We aren't close to even filling up 2.5" drives. Space is not an issue. Price of the flash is.

We can make 10TB 2.5" drives. It's just that they would be stupidly expensive because the NAND chips necessary to make them are expensive.

 

Making the enclosure bigger would not affect the capacity. It's not in the enclosure we store data. It's in the NAND chips that are located inside that we store data.

What you're saying makes as much sense as going "Volkswagen should make the trunk of the Golf 10 centimeters longer. It would make the car way faster".

It doesn't make any sense.

The physical size of the SSD enclosure is not what determines storage capacity.

[Chiyawa]

11 hours ago, tkitch said:

3.5" Drive footprint of Flash Chips, but similar thickness to 2.5", then add a bit of finned heatsink on top, giving it half the height profile of a 3.5" HDD.

That's my initial idea as well. After hearing that M.2 NVMe drive overheating, I say we need our old 3.5 inch form factor back with lots of heat sink and a fan to cool it down.

 

12 hours ago, Kilrah said:

By the point the 3.5" form factor would be needed to actually fit the NAND to attain a certin capacity... the price would be way above what you'd want to pay. 

Yeah, it became too complex for the controller to handle.

 

10 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Why do you think having a 3.5" SSD would make it larger capacity? We aren't close to even filling up 2.5" drives.

Well, as @AlfaProtomentioned, we can have less densely pack MLC NAND flash which could require double the die size of QLC flash chip. MLC has a higher tolerance and higher endurance.

[Vishera]

18 hours ago, Kilrah said:

I have a 2014 mobo that has both SATA Express and M.2, at the time there weren't even any m.2 drives you could buy but they started appearing in laptops.

Even in 2011 when i started building PCs i didn't know what SATA Express is and have never seen it in my whole life.

Back then none of the motherboards i worked on had it.

I was working with Sandy Bridge stuff back then,and a year later Ivy Bridge stuff.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Storage Devices

[LAwLz]

11 hours ago, Chiyawa said:

Well, as @AlfaProtomentioned, we can have less densely pack MLC NAND flash which could require double the die size of QLC flash chip. MLC has a higher tolerance and higher endurance.

Higher density NAND is often cheaper per GB than lower density.

Going from let's say 128GB of storage on 4 chips to 128GB of storage on 8 chips would most likely increase the price, not decrease it.

[Chiyawa]

11 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Going from let's say 128GB of storage on 4 chips to 128GB of storage on 8 chips would most likely increase the price, not decrease it.

Indeed, but when reliability matters, this is a trade off that has to be made. MLC can be written close to double of QLC, and MLC has higher error tolerance rate. MLC also has a better write speed as well. For those who move a lot of data in and out every single time, we still need SLC and MLC NAND flash because they can write more data over and over again and degrade slower than QLC.

[gamagama69]

There is a standard for cabled pcie drives. It's called u.2. It's nvme, but through a cable. Usually it's used by servers so they can hotswap the drives.

 

And thanks for mentioning this. My brother has a 4770 system in a z70 board that had weird sata ports, and now I know what they are.

[Chiyawa]

6 minutes ago, gamagama69 said:

There is a standard for cabled pcie drives. It's called u.2

I think there's a new type call U3, which is backward compatible with U2, SAS and SATA.

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, Chiyawa said:

Indeed, but when reliability matters, this is a trade off that has to be made. MLC can be written close to double of QLC, and MLC has higher error tolerance rate. MLC also has a better write speed as well. For those who move a lot of data in and out every single time, we still need SLC and MLC NAND flash because they can write more data over and over again and degrade slower than QLC.

Yes, but we were specifically talking about price per GB, not speed or endurance. 

 

MLC has benefits but my objection was to the person who said we would be able to buy 25TB SSDs for 500 dollars it they just used the 3.5" form factor. My objection was specifically about price per GB. Changing to more but lower capacity chips (such as MLC) would drive the price per GB up, not down. It could have other benefits like you said (speed and endurance), but the price would end up even higher compared to QLC drives.

[Chiyawa]

24 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Yes, but we were specifically talking about price per GB, not speed or endurance. 

Okay.

[Pyrolite]

There are 2.5'' drives with more than 15 TB in TLC, like the Micron 9300 and Samsung PM1733. (Edit: The Samsung PM1643a also comes in 30.72 TB). And those are enterprise drives which could mean a lot more overprovisioning and DRAM than in a consumer-oriented drive as well as capacitors crammed in there.