M.2 and SSD's 20 to 40 Gbps with NVMe

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So, I guess there will be no new SSD's or M.2's coming out with the new NVMe interface until the motherboards and CPU's come out that support it, which, I'm guessing, won't be until Intel's Skylake comes out after Broadwell. So, summer at the earliest?

I wish they'd give us some accurate news on when we can expect to see the some new NVMe SSD's and M.2's being made available to consumers. Or do the newer SSD's and M.2's already have support for NVMe?

Z97 & X99 already support NVMe though. Maybe some particular motherboards don't, but the chipset itself does as far as I'm aware. Some might just need a BIOS update or something.
 
New BIOS for my Z97 board dated 17/02/2015

MAXIMUS VII GENE BIOS 2304
1.Support 5th-Generation Intel Core Processors
2.Support USB 3.1
3.Support NVMe
 
Currently running a standard 840 EVO. I have a 97 board so I'm waiting to jump on the first M.2 NVMe drive that becomes available.... :D
 
Humm,

"The SM951 made its first appearance at Samsung SSD Global Summit in July 2014 where it was touted to be the first client SSD with NVMe support. Unfortunately, Samsung changed its initial plans and the SM951 as it's known today does not support NVMe, but it still provides an upgrade from PCIe Gen2 to Gen3, which theoretically doubles the available bandwidth. Samsung is tight-lipped about the reasoning behind the decision to dump NVMe support, but from what I understand the current chipsets don't have proper NVMe support by default. It's likely that Samsung's PC OEM partners wanted to stick with known AHCI command set for improved compatibility, so Samsung decided to push the introduction of client NVMe SSD a bit further back.

Some motherboard manufacturers have gone through the extra steps to update their BIOSes with NVMe support, but I haven't been able to get a detailed answer of what exactly needs to be changed to enable NVMe on current chipsets. Anyway, the SM951 is not NVMe enabled and will not gain NVMe support later either, so for now there isn't a single client-oriented NVMe SSD. Samsung has, however, stated that the company is working on a client NVMe SSDs, which means we may seen one soon after all."

Samsung SM951 Review

IMG_2038-1_678x452.jpg
 
I think it's pretty unacceptable to pull a bait-and-switch like that. Might have to avoid both Samsung and Intel (see my sig) for my next drive. I think it'll be a Marvell-based drive for me.
 
Here's my own predicament ... what would you do?:

I need a new HD as my current HD is used as I pulled it out of an older system that was replaced a couple years ago:: WD Blue 500g SATA3, 16mb cache

Should I just get a WD Black Series 2 TB SATA III or wait for a WD Hybrid SATA Express HD at 10 Gbps or wait until the dust settles from the price premium for these new next generation NVMe SSD's/M.2? Or, just settle for a SATA III/ AHCI 240/256 Samsung SSD without NVMe for now? I'm in quite a pickle but, mostly because I'm trying to save money or get what I really want. Won't prices come down on the soon to be obsolete SATA III/ AHCI disc HD's? Another issue is that my system is old enough that new SSD's may not be compatible. This is largely why I've taken such an interest in this subject and started this thread. Plus, the fact that the new next generation NVMe SSD's are the best thing to happen to computers since the multi-core CPU.

My current system:

MB: MSI 790FX-GD70
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955
HD: WD Blue 500g SATA3, 16mb cache
EX.HD: WD Passport 1T
RAM: 8g Mushkin 1600
GPU: Evga 760 SC 2g
PSU: Seasonic X-750w

I hope to be able to do a new build after Intel's Skylake comes out and prices are decent on DDR4, SSD's/M.2 etc., most likely spring of 2016. Unless I win the lotto, I will keep my PSU, GPU and Ex.HD to save money and replace them as needed.


If you're going for your OS drive, I'd opt for an SSD.
If you're looking for mass storage, go for the WD Black.
Honestly, I wouldn't take one of WD's hybrid drives if you paid me. The manner in which they handle the SSD-HD interface is possibly one of the dumbest things I've ever seen as if you have a failure of the SSD portion you can wind up with a completely bricked drive and lose ALL your data.

I'd recommend a Seagate Hybrid before I'd recommend the WD Hybrid. And I've got absolutely no love for Seagate.


As for the M2 drives and PCI drives. Great. Fine. Wonderful.
For one drive at a time.
If I want to run an array (either hardware or software), the tech isn't much use in its current state.
 
I think it's pretty unacceptable to pull a bait-and-switch like that. Might have to avoid both Samsung and Intel (see my sig) for my next drive. I think it'll be a Marvell-based drive for me.

Why?

Samsung made a decision to hold back because motherboard makers are the ones being slow to adapt, thus limiting the market Samsung can sell to..

This isn't a bait and switch since the drives were never for sale yet really so be glad they made the change pre-sale.
 
impatient for a 1tb PCIe 3.0 4x NVME m.2 stick...

Optimistically it is one month of waiting, pessimistically its summertime :D: Using the Phison PS5007 controller, the Hyperion relies on PCIe 3.0 x4 and this M.2 SSD will be available 2015 Q2 in capacities of 128,256,512 and 1TB. The controller itself supports 256-Bit AES encryption, has end-to-end data protection, supports both NVMe and AHCI protocols and present specs identify read performance as high as 2.8GB/s, write as high as 1.2GB/s and IOPS as high as 350K.
 
I'm torn on all this new found speed. On one level, it's awesome. On another, I'm afraid it will give license to developers to be lazy. I don't want to eventually require this speed to run an OS.

We already have PC's with 8GB and 16GB of RAM. For the same reasons, I find that quite ridiculous.
 
Why?

Samsung made a decision to hold back because motherboard makers are the ones being slow to adapt, thus limiting the market Samsung can sell to..

This isn't a bait and switch since the drives were never for sale yet really so be glad they made the change pre-sale.

Because if they weren't going to make it NVMe, it should have been known from the beginning.

If manufacturers are holding back NVMe SSDs, motherboard manufacturers aren't going to feel very pressured into adopting it. It's ridiculous. Someone needs to start with a product and in this case it needed to be Samsung.

Besides, MOTHERBOARDS DO support it. My el-cheapo Asrock board supports it! What more do they expect!? Did they expect motherboard manufacturers to recall all their past boards from all customers and swap them out with new ones that support NVMe?

I believe that if you say you are going to do something, you DO IT. If you aren't going to do it, never say you will! This is still a bait-and-switch to me.
 
Samsung can sell on the increased throughput using PCI-e. They can then sell again in 12 months time to the same mugs, improved latency using NVMe. The tech is ready now, it's all about the £££. Depressing
 
Samsung can sell on the increased throughput using PCI-e. They can then sell again in 12 months time to the same mugs, improved latency using NVMe. The tech is ready now, it's all about the £££. Depressing

They already rode the PCI-E platform with the XP941. So in 12 months they claimed they were going to switch to NVMe for more performance but it was a bait and switch instead.

Half of the people in this thread that end up buying the SM951 probably wouldn't have given it much thought had they not heard the NVMe claim in the first place. The bait and switch probably already succeeded.
 
I have e-mailed a relevant company asking when we might see NVMe products and they basically responded that new products like that are more likely to be launched with new or relevant platform launches so, it's more likely that we won't see the flood of new NVMe SSD's and M.2's until summer when Skylake is launched. That does not mean we won't see ANY since z97 and x99 do support it but, only that we will see more products most likely after the launch of Skylake, which will support NVMe in the BIOS.
 
I think it's pretty unacceptable to pull a bait-and-switch like that. Might have to avoid both Samsung and Intel (see my sig) for my next drive. I think it'll be a Marvell-based drive for me.

I don't think you can do bait-and-switch tactics for OEM-only products, at least not without major consequences for future contracts.
The companies that will buy these SSDs will be well aware of the specs.

Or do they plan do make these SSDs a retail product after all? At least the name does not look like that. It would be more like "950 Pro" in that case.
 
I don't think you can do bait-and-switch tactics for OEM-only products, at least not without major consequences for future contracts.
The companies that will buy these SSDs will be well aware of the specs.

Or do they plan do make these SSDs a retail product after all? At least the name does not look like that. It would be more like "950 Pro" in that case.

Several people are using the "bait and switch" phrase far too liberally here. Bait-and-switch would only apply if a retailer advertiser let you purchase a drive labeled as NVMe and then delivered a non-NVMe drive instead.

Samsung had tentatively planned on an NVMe drive in their early marketing materials, but ultimately decided that NVMe support wasn't feasible or worth the resources at the moment. Let's not forget that they very clearly released the drive without NVMe support, so the lack of NVMe won't come as a surprise to anyone buying one of these drives. There is no bait-and-switch here.

Also, the Samsung drives are, as far as I know, still OEM-only products. Unless something has changed since I last checked, these drives weren't even labeled for retail sale. I would guess that Samsung's OEM relationships haven't demanded NVMe yet, so they opted to forgo the necessary development on this round of products.

I'd love an NVMe drive as much as anyone, but the entitlement in this thread is getting out of hand.
 
The SSDs will be officially revealed in about 18 days according to a special promo page with a countdown that Intel has put online:

http://www.intelgamingpromo.com/intel15b/ssd/notice?s=myce

http://www.myce.com/news/intel-showcases-nvm-express-ssds-consumers-75324/

So, to day is the day and it looks like Intel is releasing the 750 Series SSD's with NVMe:

Intel Solid-State Drive 750 Series: Performance Unleashed

Here's the Intel SSD 750 Series Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

GIGABYTE X99, Z97 and H97 Series Motherboards Ready for New Intel® 750 Series PCIe SSDs

mb-news-0402-1.png


GIGABYTE Is Ready For Intel 750 Series PCIe SSDs – First Intel PCIe NVMe SSDs

It looks like we'll be getting PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes at 32 Gbps, which is awesome! The prices are apparently: $389.00 for the 400GB and $1029.00 for the 1.2TB. That is right, Intel is releasing this SSD out into the market for under $1 per GB!

Intel's 750 Series solid-state drive reviewed

Intel Unleashes NVMe SSD 750 Series For Consumer PCs

drives.jpg


Intel 750 Series SSD Overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLqL2g13V-U

For the Intel SSD 750 Series Live Stream and Giveaway - check these out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8zZvqzolE

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/PCPer-Live-Intel-SSD-Live-Stream-and-Giveaway

http://www.pcper.com/live/

Now, we still need the 128G and 240/256G and 800G versions as the 400G and 1.2T versions are still out of the price range of most average consumers. But, perhaps other NVMe SSD makers will fill that gap soon.
 
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So, to day is the day and it looks like Intel is releasing the 750 Series SSD's with NVMe:

Intel Solid-State Drive 750 Series: Performance Unleashed

Here's the Intel SSD 750 Series Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

GIGABYTE X99, Z97 and H97 Series Motherboards Ready for New Intel® 750 Series PCIe SSDs

mb-news-0402-1.png


GIGABYTE Is Ready For Intel 750 Series PCIe SSDs – First Intel PCIe NVMe SSDs

It looks like we'll be getting PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes at 32 Gbps, which is awesome! The prices are apparently: $389.00 for the 400GB and $1029.00 for the 1.2TB. That is right, Intel is releasing this SSD out into the market for under $1 per GB!

Intel's 750 Series solid-state drive reviewed

Intel Unleashes NVMe SSD 750 Series For Consumer PCs

drives.jpg


Intel 750 Series SSD Overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLqL2g13V-U

For the Intel SSD 750 Series Live Stream and Giveaway - check these out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8zZvqzolE

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/PCPer-Live-Intel-SSD-Live-Stream-and-Giveaway

http://www.pcper.com/live/

Now, we still need the 128G and 240/256G and 800G versions as the 400G and 1.2T versions are still out of the price range of most average consumers. But, perhaps other NVMe SSD makers will fill that gap soon.

Intel SSD 750 PCIe Review: NVMe for the Client
 
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Love it, but it's also interesting to see that the SM951 still wins in a lot of AnandTech's benchmarks.

Also, what's the story behind the NVMe version of the SM951 mentioned in the AnandTech article?

It turns out that the SM951 is overall faster than the SSD 750 in our heavy trace as it beats the SSD 750 in both data rate and average latency. I was expecting the SSD 750 to do better due to NVMe, but it looks like the SM951 is a very capable drive despite lacking NVMe (although there appears to be an NVMe version too after all). On the other hand, I'm not too surprised because the SM951 has specifically been built for client workloads, whereas the SSD 750 has an enterprise heritage and even on the client side it's designed for the most intensive workloads.
 
I was luckily able to get an SM951 from the UK for 300 bucks so I am happy with that.
 
Very interested to see what the NVMe SM951 can do. I have one of the M.2's on pre-order here in the US, but would cancel in a second if that version rears it's head.
 
^ Yeah, I guess I'm gonna wait until I see what Samsung comes out with regarding NVMe and M.2.

These new Intel NVMe SSD's are spec NVMe 1.0, not the latest NVMe 1.2 (top right corner in the image below). These NVMe SSD's should be getting up to 32Gbps, but they're only hitting 24Gbps to 27Gbps, which is still great but, there's still improvement to be made, and fair enough since it's new and they just came out. I am very happy they went with PCIe 3.0 and x4 lanes - I was worried they'd start out with PCIe 2.0.

I'm also curious to find out if the new Skylake platform will bring with it any NVMe SSD/M.2 performance increases such as perhaps NVMe 1.2 and x8 lanes?

http://www.nvmexpress.org

7062_02_intel-750-1-2tb-nvme-pcie-gen3-x4-aic-ssd-review.png
 
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An add-in card for storage is archaic when we have the svelte M.2 connector.

Why don't the manufacturers give us what we want and stop pissing about. It's either M.2 + SATA which is pretty much useless, M.2 + PCIe + AHCI.... better but still with the AHCI??? or PCIe + NVMe but using a ridiculous add-in card.
 
I agree, I'm waiting for the Samsung SM951 with NVMe or Crucial's alternative.
 
^ Me too. I'm also waiting to see what the Samsung SM951 with NVMe has to offer. I am also waiting for Skylake too so, I probably won't be buying any SSD until after I'm prepared for a Skylake build with Windows 10, likely this fall or winter.

I think I want a Samsung 256G M.2 at PCIe 3.0 x4 at 32Gbps and to save on money I will still need a 2T or 4T HD but, regular disc hard drives can also utilize the NVMe interface so, I'll have to wait to see how that pans out. I'm curious to see if WD will change over to the NVMe interface.
 
An add-in card for storage is archaic when we have the svelte M.2 connector.

You can't make a tiny M.2 sized device out of the impressive 18-channel hardware controller, chip layers and heat-sink that comes with the 750 series.
 
"HGST, a Western Digital Company, announced it is shipping its new NVMe Ultrastar SN100 Series PCIe SSDs. The SN100 Series is designed for cloud, hyperscale and enterprise mission-critical workloads. The SSDs can work in tandem with the HGST Flash Software Suite and HGST Device Manager to provide clustering, scalability, high availability and manageability for server-side flash architectures."

HGST Shipping NVMe Ultrastar SN100 Series PCIe SSDs

http://www.hgst.com/solid-state-storage/enterprise-ssd/pcie-ssd/ultrastar-sn100-series

So, will WD be converting the SATA interface over to the new NVMe interface even on regular disc hard drives?
 
Almost definitely not. Why would you think so?

Because they can and have already been discussing it for a couple years and they would be able to get potentially 12Gbps, Plus, SATA will eventually be obsolete like VGA:

Oh ok, so standard disc hard drives can utilize both NVMe and AHCI, so, I wonder when WD will have a Black Edition available with NVMe? It appears to have been in the works for awhile now:

(Nov 2013)
http://www.sata-io.org/sites/defaul..._Express_Interface_Options_Overview_final.pdf
 
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This is good news:

"AHCI has been the de facto consumer storage interconnect since 2004, but it was originally designed for spinning disks and suffers numerous performance limitations. SSDs have transformed the nature of our storage devices, and the AHCI interface isn't efficient enough to fully utilize today's flash-based storage devices.

A consortium of 90 companies came together to forge a new specification to propel storage into the future. The NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) interface is a refined interface that exploits the inherent advantages of non-volatile memory, such as massive parallelism and low latency, to provide faster performance. NVMe is memory-agnostic, and it was not designed with NAND specifically in mind. NVMe's focus on faster future memory technologies (PCM, MRAM) infuses the interface with more than enough speed for today's SSDs.

The NVMe ecosystem is expanding rapidly. Numerous vendors have released new SSDs, Apple jumped onboard, and motherboard vendors are adding support. Let's take a quick jog through the latest NVMe news."

- NVMe Storage Ecosystem Expands; Apple, HP And Motherboard Vendors Step Forward
 
You can't make a tiny M.2 sized device out of the impressive 18-channel hardware controller, chip layers and heat-sink that comes with the 750 series.

Are you sure? The SM951 NVMe M.2 looks just as fast.
 
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