I was reading over the rumored specs of Wednesday's MBA, and couldn't help but thinking that this SSD Card is not an entirely new idea.. I owned a Dell Mini 9 netbook with a Mini PCI-E SSD that also resembled a stick of ram.. so what is the difference??
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SSD "Card" Not Something New??
- Thread starter bperrella
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It's not a new idea, the only thing you have heard of such SSDs as your previously stated as PCIe SSDs. These are fastest in the market and at the same time carry a hefty premium.
The difference here is that Apple is designing the entire layout and SSD capacity/responsiveness.
The difference here is that Apple is designing the entire layout and SSD capacity/responsiveness.
Mini PCIe SSDs are very slow because they use a cheap controller and cheap chips to keep the price low for the netbooks. The PCIe SSDs that jav6454 is talking about are for desktops and are a whole other animal. They are expensive because they are built for performance, not low cost.
The Apple one looks like it is a custom chip which is both affordable while faster than the ones used in the netbooks.
The Apple one looks like it is a custom chip which is both affordable while faster than the ones used in the netbooks.
Those can have I/O that is over 1 GB/s
Apple doesn't use what a consumer can tell is cheap crap. Apple will use a much faster SSD
judging from the leaked prototype pictures, me thinks they will be using a SSD DIMM like this:
http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archive...lls_out_ssd_in_a_dimm_memory_form_factor.html
http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archive...lls_out_ssd_in_a_dimm_memory_form_factor.html
I think fuzzielitlpanda has hit it right on the nose. Those Viking SSD-DIMMS look like just the thing for the new Airs. And they sort of look like the leaked picture.
Can't wait for Wednesday!
Can't wait for Wednesday!
Didnt they already say its sandisk and toshiba controller and chips mounted on the board, viking dimms sounds like a longshot at this point.
Those can have I/O that is over 1 GB/s
Actually, those can have as much as 4GB/s. PCIe SSDs normally are grouped into RAID (RAID 0 commonly) configurations due to the fast controllers and multiple parallel NAND Flash modules. See OCZs PCIe SSDs.
Also, PCIe 2.0 haxe 500MB/s per x1 lane, and many of these PCIe SSDs have x4, or x8 configurations giving them insane speeds 4GB/s or 2GB/s.
Also the Vikings require an open full size DIMM slot which is not going to happen on the MBA if not simply for size and height reasons.
i don't know if it will be viking branded or not, but it seems very likely that apple will be using the same type of form factor for the SSD:
Whatever that "SSD" thing is, it sure looks like a DIMM. The latest rumors on AppleInsider say that the picture above is likely of the 11.6":
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...book_air_photo_is_of_new_11_6_inch_model.html
Soldered in NAND flash chips don't require DIMM slots, just an open PCIe x1 port, which Intel's chipsets have.
How many PCIe lanes it fits in doesn't matter as long as it exceeds the I/O, for example most GPUs run fine at x8 speeds.
PS the reason they take that many slots is because they are too big to be supported otherwise
It is magical.
Seriously though, I own a mini 9 as well and it is basically exactly the same thing.
In our case, the MacBook Air would have an PCIe 2.0 x1 interface for the Integrated SSD. That would give the Air a 500MB/s bandwidth; quite fast. However, knowing Apple, they may cripple it to save costs and thus make this a PCIe 1.1 x1 lane; thus cutting the transfer rate by half to 250MB/s. Still, an x1 @ 250MB/s transfers, that is still quite fast for the Air.
It would be cheaper for Apple to go with a Pin Compatible SATA connector as opposed to a mPCIe SSD as they currently use ribbon cables to break out to mSATA anyways on the MBA.
We are taking into account the reports of integrated SSD, so, the integrated means no ribbons around. Cheaper would mean, older and slower controller, in other words, PCIe 1.1 speeds.