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  • milli - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    So mobile phones will have a faster interface than 90% of desktop SSD's. Cool.
    I don't understand why the SATA protocol isn't updated anymore. I think it would be very handy to have the option of SATA 1200 next to PCI-E NVMe. Even the cheapest SSD are hitting the SATA 600 limit.
  • MTEK - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Curious, which interface does the S7 use? And that graph makes it seem like UFS 3 should be out this year, never mind v2... and they'll have the same number of lanes and the same performance? Sorry if I missed something.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    It's using UFS 2.0 1-lane.
  • extide - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    The chart is displaying the years when the standards were ratified, not when devices are available with them.
  • TheWrongChristian - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Much of it would be to do with cable lengths, I'd imagine. SATA needs practical cable lengths, which adds latency and all sorts of noise, while embedded devices require only PCB traces and will have a much cleaner signal.

    In random small reads, which is the only metric you as a human will likely notice in most scenarios, SATA 3 is still more than adequate. NVMe will shave some per-transaction overhead off, but even there, random reads will dominate performance perception and random reads will still be limited by what is read off the FLASH and much closer to SATA performance than the headline sequential figures so often bandied about.
  • milli - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    It wouldn't be too hard to set cable length limitations for a supposed SATA1200. I understand that it wouldn't be perfect in any way but I guess that it would be pretty easy to implement. Especially considering so many years have passed since SATA600. A 30cm cable would be more than enough for most I guess.
    M.2 SSD's are maybe okay for boot drives but soon 1TB TLC SSD's are going be dirt cheap. A PCI-E boot drive and a 1TB or 2TB data SSD would be nice to have. For a data drive, random performance doesn't matter much.
    Also M.2 SSD's are a pain to access once the computer is built. Often blocked by your video card.
    Or, someone release a SATA-Express SSD. Ryan, didn't you ever ask manufacturers why that isn't happening? So many motherboards have the ports.
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    SATA Express is dead because it's limited to two lanes, whereas all current and upcoming PCIe/NVMe controller designs are four lane. Simply put, SATAe doesn't offer enough bandwidth.

    That's where U.2 kicks in as it's essentially SATAe on steroids (i.e. four lanes). It's the old SFF-8639 connector, which is already used by all 2.5" enterprise PCIe drives, so there's a lot of industry support behind it. There will be more U.2 client SSDs on the market once we see more PCIe SSDs shipping in general.
  • frenchy_2001 - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Understand that there will never be a SATA1200. The SATA group decided years ago to stop developping their own standard and use PCIe instead.
    There are multiple reasons for that, but the big one was that increasing speed over 6Gb was non trivial.
    PCIe itself went 2.5Gb, 5Gb then 8Gb (with better encoding ).
    The next gen storage was supposed to be SATAexpress, based on x2 lanes of PCIe gen2, but they messed up, including an undefined connector and by the time they got a full standard, including mechanical and all, the specs were too slow (pcie gen2 x2 is ~1Gb), while professionals went for hhhl cards with pcie gen3 x4. M.2 was designed with the same standard and now U.2 exists, which allows, with one plug, to use SATA 6Gb, SAS12Gb and pcie g3 x4. This is already used today in enterprise (for 2.5" pcie ssd).
    The good news is we now have the same choice in multiple form factors as M.2 and U.2 support the same signals.
  • saratoga4 - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link

    There was interest in a faster SATA a couple years ago that would have been distinct from PCIe in Sata Express, but it was apparently not worth the effort required to develop a parallel standard when most of the industry was moving towards PCIe anyway.
  • close - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    SATA/AHCI were built with spinning disks in mind. Definitely not the best way to go for solid state memory. That is what NVMe is trying to solve. It's not about the physical interface as much as the logic behind it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express#Comparis...
  • ddriver - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    More like "some" (high end) phones in 2016 will have a faster interface than the now 8 years old SATA3 interface.

    Oddly enough, there are still no SATA-Express SSDs on the market, I'd love a couple of 2TB EVOs at 1.8 GB/sec bandwidth, but for some reason nobody makes SATA-E SSDs, only SATA and PCI-E.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    SATA-Express is essentially dead. What you'll eventually see is U.2, which allows for 4 PCIe lanes instead of 2.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9363/sff8639-connect...
  • ddriver - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Without a single available product (if we don't count that butty enclosure) it is more than dead - it is practically stillborn.

    Still, the industry continues manufacturing SSDs capped by SATA rather than adopting U.2.
  • cyrand - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Intel have a consumer U.2 product the 750 pro. It comes as both a add in car or U.2.
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Switching to PCIe, especially NVMe, requires major parts of the controller and firmware to be architected. Every single SSD manufacturer is working on PCIe drives and we should start to see plenty shipping this year.
  • Poik - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Okay so Samsung has 256GB mobile memory now yet most phone shipping still have less than 64GB. While I applaud Samsung for doing this when most phones have 32GB or less (including Samsung's very own new flagship device) I feel like there's a complete disconnect. SD cards are great for photos and files you move around. A 128GB/256GB phone or tablet would be awesome. Space would no longer be an issue. I guess what I'm asking is there's hardly anything using the current 128GB chips, what's the point of double?
  • saratoga4 - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link

    Chips are usually announced long before they're available for sale, and available for sale a while before they're actually designed into a new device. 128GB will be used in premium parts this generation, then 256 GB will follow.
  • ragenalien - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Sata Express was the answer to that. It however hasn't been widely accepted and I haven't seen a single device equipped to use it. Some motherboards have it but since there are no devices with it, it's useless.
  • darkich - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    ..yet don't hold your breath for seeing this on tablets this year.
    Samsung will stuff it in the Note 6, and proudly update its Android tablet range with a SoC from last year.
  • bug77 - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    And yet, the Galaxy S7 will have 32GB of internal storage. At this point it seems a 64GB variant has very few chances to materialize.
  • jjj - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    "The new memory today is the first announced UFS 2.0 solution based on a 2-lane interface"

    That's not true.Hynix announced half a year ago a HS G3x2 lane solution.And Toshiba must have announced their first one maybe a year before that.
  • MykeM - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    "Interestingly enough, we’re seeing something of a division in the mobile storage space, as it seems that some OEMs are focusing their efforts on UFS for internal storage, while others are moving towards NVMe over mobile PCI-E. "

    Is there another manufacturer other than Apple that's using NVMe over mobile PCIe in smartphones?
  • Nirudha - Sunday, August 14, 2016 - link

    Why is it that only Apple seem to be interested in real high speed IO on mobile?

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