Samsung Launches Z-SSD SZ985: Up To 800GB Of Z-NAND

Breakthrough storage for a new generation of enterprise and data center infrastructure (PDF)
Ultra-Low Latency with Samsung Z-NAND SSD
https://www.samsung.com/us/labs/pdfs/collateral/Samsung_Z-NAND_Technology_Brief_v5.pdf

Samsung Launches Z-SSD SZ985: Up To 800GB Of Z-NAND
by Billy Tallis on January 29, 2018 9:00 PM EST
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12376/samsung-launches-zssd-sz985-up-to-800gb-of-znand



Samsung announced today that they are officially launching their first Z-SSD product, the SZ985. The Z-SSD uses Samsung's Z-NAND memory, a high-performance derivative of their 3D NAND flash memory and Samsung's intended competition for Intel's 3D XPoint memory. The SZ985 is a high-performance, high-endurance enterprise NVMe SSD.

Samsung has been talking about Z-NAND and the SZ985 for quite a while, including showing off prototypes at several trade shows and conferences. Their initial announcement in 2016 of Z-NAND memory and Z-SSD drives promised 1TB drives in 2016 to be followed by 2TB and 4TB drives in 2017. Today's launch of 800GB and 240GB models is far behind that initial timeline, but the Z-SSD is finally ready for broad release, almost a year after Intel's Optane products first hit the shelves. Samsung hasn't provided much new information about how the Z-SSD works under the hood, but they have disclosed that the drive includes 1.5GB of LPDDR4 DRAM. This suggests that the Z-SSD either has huge overprovisioning with as much as 1.5TB or Z-NAND memory for the 800GB model, or that the Z-NAND is being managed in a way that requires more than the usual 1GB of DRAM per TB of NAND flash used by most SSDs.



Samsung has not provided full performance specifications for the SZ985, but they have highlighted several key metrics that put the Z-SSD in the top performance tier. The SZ985 can deliver up to 750k random read IOPS, well above the 550k IOPS that Intel's Optane SSD DC P4800X is rated for. Write performance from the SZ985 is much less impressive at only 170k random write IOPS. The random write speed rating on Intel's P4800X is only 9% slower than the random read speed, while the Samsung SZ985 will have a random write speed that is 77% slower than random reads. Samsung has not been able to overcome all of the limitations of flash memory, but they have produced some impressive improvements.

Samsung also makes a few comparisons against more mainstream enterprise SSDs based on 3D TLC NAND flash memory. The memory cell read performance of their Z-NAND is ten times higher than their 3D TLC NAND, leading to 70% higher random read throughput than their PM963 NVMe SSD. Exact read latency isn't specified, but write latency on the SZ985 is quoted as 16 µs.



Despite not having record-setting write performance, the SZ985 is still designed to handle very write-intensive workloads. The endurance rating is 30 drive writes per day for five years, matching Intel's Optane SSD. However, both drives still fall short of the long-gone Micron P320h SLC NAND SSD, in both performance and endurance (though Intel has at least exceeded the random write speed of the P320h). Samsung's most significant accomplishment with the Z-SSS SZ985 is likely that they can offer the performance of planar SLC at much lower cost thanks to their 3D NAND structure.

Samsung will be presenting the Z-SSD SZ985 at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, February 11-15.

At Flash Memory Summit last year, Samsung announced a second generation of Z-NAND memory. The SZ985 is still a first-generation product, and drives with the second-generation Z-NAND could still be a long way from launching.

Source: Samsung

Introducing Samsung Z-SSD the fastest SSD ever

 

Nothing useful for notebooks. All is about desktops.

 

Not even for normal desktops.

 

I suppose the usual PCIE extender could be used and an external rack put together as people have done for GPU's, but you'd need a pretty specific application that get's primary use on the laptop to make it worth while.

Samsung will likely be the first to implement the design for M.2, but given the size of the controller, shrinking it is going to be way hotter even than the current hot NVME controllers on the M2 SSD's.

For now it's not worth putting in the effort to provide a form factor for notebooks yet, it'll be years before it's worth the R&D.

Desktop use of this or the Intel Optane 900P isn't even useful for 99% of the users. Of course the same goes for NvME M.2's vs. SATA M.2's, but that hasn't stopped people from wasting their money buying NVME SSD's.

 

Are you talking about the "crazy speeds / responsiveness" when gathering "high dollar" NVME $CASH$ from customers?

Even Intel Optane, with better than NVME performance, SATA performance is still "close enough" in 99% of tasks to make Optane and NVME not worth even a few % more in cost - to match the small margin of benchmarkable difference.

If we are talking user perceptible difference, there is none...


You are paying up to 2x the cost for NVME vs SATA just to run hotter and throttle quicker.

The fastest SSD for gaming(?), and one big problem..


Only very specific long running jobs benefit from Optane, less from NVME, and in those cases then yes, order NVME and Optane when it shrinks down small enough for a notebook, otherwise save $ buying SATA SSD's and apply those $$$'s-$$$$'s to better CPU / GPU / Display / etc.

This movie effects professional physics rendering application workload is a good example where the expenditure for Optane / NVME vs SATA might be justifiable, unless you can have a work buffer in RAM, then it doesn't matter here either:


It's more likely Samsung will shrink their new Z-SSD technology into an M.2 product before Intel:

Spoiler: Next gen M.2 => M.3(?) form-factor: NGSFF

Samsung At Flash Memory Summit: 96-Layer V-NAND, MLC Z-NAND, New Interfaces
by Billy Tallis on August 9, 2017 10:30 AM EST
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1170...summit-96layer-vnand-mlc-znand-new-interfaces

"...Samsung is also previewing a proposed new enterprise SSD form factor they are referring to as "NGSFF" for now.

This form factor uses a 30.5mm by 110mm PCB, substantially wider than the most commonly implemented M.2 form factors and wide enough to accommodate two rows of flash packages.

The PCB is mounted on a metal carrier that allows the drive to be used in a new hot-swappable backplane.

Samsung is demonstrating a reference 1U server design codenamed "Mission Peak" that achieves a total capacity of 576TB through the use of 36 PM983 SSDs in the NGSFF form factor, each with a 16TB capacity.

The motivation and benefits of this style of form factor are the same as for Intel's newly announced "Ruler" form factor: M.2 offers great density but isn't hot-swappable, and high-capacity 2.5" SSDs are hard to cool effectively when they stack two PCBs inside a closed 15mm case.

Samsung has not mentioned whether they intend to participate in making NGSFF into an industry standard.""

 

Waiting patiently for 8TB m.2 2280 SSD.

 

You will need.....

 

Thanks for this thread.

Not my idea of a breakthrough though... playing catch up to Intel more likely...

Price will be important here; not really hopeful that Samsung will comply.