Samsung to halt SATA SSD production, leaker warns of up to 18 months of SSD price pressure, worse than Micron ending consumer RAM
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Samsung-to-halt-SATA-SSD-production-leaker-warns-of-up-to-18-months-of-SSD-price-pressure-worse-than-Micron-ending-consumer-RAM.1184896.0.htmlOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works909
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I remember when 8TB SATA SSD was $350
pepperidge farm remembers
sure grandma, lets get you to bed
My mind forgot that M.2 is probably more prevalent these days and that they’re not just shutting down for no reason.
Is it though? Pretty much every single current-gen mainboard still comes with a number of SATA ports.
Most people have one drive. Everything else is cloud based now. It's horrible 😭
Omg I didn't even mean OneDrive but I guess that's still accurate since windows is dominant on home PCs
I've got 4 drives and better upgrade while I can.
Ever seen a Chromebook? Almost no drive space, because Google.
Everyone is going to buy M.2 SSDs first, and only buy SATA if they don't have enough M.2 slots. I really doubt SATA SSDs are selling well.
With that said, I don't see SATA going anywhere. It's (comparatively low) bandwidth means you can throw a few ports on your board and not sacrifice much. For some quick math: a M.2 port back-hauled by PCIe 4.0 x4 has 7.8 GB/s of data lines going to it. While SATA 6.0 has only 0.75 GB/s of data lines going to it.
SATA is really convenient for larger storage, though. I keep my OS on nvmes, but I've got a couple of SATA drive and a hot swap bay for games, media, etc.
I'm still running SATA spinny disks for my big-ish data. I can't afford a 16TB SSD...
I know that's off topic, but HDDs are still a thing too.
I'm very excited for the day I can replace my spinners with SSDs. That day is coming, but it is not today.
Right‽ I don't think anyone expected spinners to outlast SATA SSDs!
They have become expensive too IMO, a 3-4 TB drive costs more today than a couple of years ago, and the used market here in europe is insane.
And how many motherboards have the same amount of m.2 slots as they do sata slots? And what generation? So now I need new ram which is inflated to high hell, a new motherboard and cpu to increase storage on my gaming rig? Its not like games are small these days I like to keep most games i have installed and that takes multiple terabytes of storage that is cheaper to do via sata ssds.... this is clearly anti consumer and done purely to push people to newer systems in the hope people stay with windows instead of swapping to linux. Its being done to keep the ai bubble going...
They are going to have less m.2 slots as they require a ton more data lanes. If you do need another m.2 slot, a PCIe adapter card or a SATA adapter are both good options.
Even then, NVMe riser cards are a thing to just stick an NVMe drive in a spare PCIe slot.
Does require you to have the PCIe lanes for it, BIOS support for booting to PCIe (which Intel 6th gen core CPUs were the first to support. 4th gen never did but some had m.2 slots and NVMe support for secondary drives and the 5th gen X99s had some receive BIOS updates to support but that's its own can of worms) and both Intel and AMD have historically been pretty bad about being stingy about PCIe lane availability
Plus to run more than a single NVMe on a single slot your motherboard either needs to support PCIe bifurcation which is almost exclusively an enterprise feature or they need to have the right lane configuration available to support that x16 slot handing out 4x4 lanes (or 2x8/2x4 for dual NVMe)
Y'know what, I honestly haven't looked at what the PCIe lane layout is like on newer chipsets. Maybe it's gotten better since I last really paid attention like 5+ years ago. I remember in early-mid AM4 there was a lot of grumbling about how there's only 20 PCIe 3 lanes followed by early PCIe 4 platforms that would give only 16-20 lanes with another 8 or so PCI 3 lanes. I also didn't really pay much attention to AMD before AM4 given how far behind Intel they were. But I could be entirely out of date now that I think about it
Phoenix2 APUs like the R3 8300G and R5 8500G are the worst offenders in the 'cutting PCIe lanes' department.
The R5 8500G only has 14 lanes, for example. The FX-8350 and 8370 from a decade earlier, would've had 32 lanes available on the 990FX chipset, and half that on the 990X and 970 chipsets per contemporary reviews from when those CPUs were new, but they were all PCIe 2 as AM3+ was a PCIe 2 platform.
This is the specific review I'm going off of for this. FX-8350 review
Per that review, 990FX would've supported 2 x16 or 4 x8 slots, while 990X would've supported 2 x8 slots, and 970 would've only supported a single x16 slot, but of course configs varied by the board makers, and there would've been nothing stopping someone from making a 990FX board with a single x16 slot, three x4 slots, and two x2 slots, for example, nor a 990X board with a single x16 slot or a 970 board with a single x8 slot and two x4 slots.
Higher spec boards dont have this issue; Typically an issue with low and mid range boards due to cost savings.
Which just also shows why this is a very anti consumer move. Its trying to artifically push people to by new hardware because there hasn't been significant enough changes to really warrant it. This then means more people who might have swapped off of windows to keep their existing hardware might end up having to upgrade then stick with their familiar windows platform so that the ai bubble can continue. Its completely fucked up
Yeah, but I think SATA is quickly being relegated to large mechanical storage drives. For things that don't require performance, like storage and what have.. because SATA is not getting any faster, I doubt anyones gonna come out with a SATA IV standard at this point, when PCIE over M2 is easier, simpler, and faster, and.. outside of silicon shortage stupidities, getting cheaper and more affordable.
Comes with them, but only for legacy media. Outside of my NAS I haven’t bought a new sata drive in probably 10 years. And I haven’t touched my onboard sata ports in 5.
The fact that they’re still there impresses me at this point. But their numbers are slowly dwindling. Sata is usually the first thing that gets dropped when you need more pcie lanes. And even then most boards only have 4 at this point. They’re switching back to those god awful vertical ports which tells you all you need to know about their priority.
Most people at least put their OS on M2. I guess if you haven't upgraded since M2 became common on motherboards you might not.
Edit: I internet says M2 was common around 2016 2017 motherboards.
SATA is not intended for fast storage devices but bulk storage, at this point.
Guess it’s time to get some m.2 to SATA adapters
I would be surprised if m2 has overtaken regular sata connections for the majority of computers produced for businesses and individuals, but maybe they don't make enough in that area.
They definitely have. The smaller form factor is better for laptops, and if you can share parts between laptop and desktop it's cheaper.
This bubble is going to become the entire market, isn't it. Until it becomes too big to fail because 80% of the workforce is tied up in it. Then it is allowed to pop, costing the western world everything, all going into the pockets of the super rich, and we get to start over.
That’s the entire point. It’s a scam.
Compared to crypto and NFTs, there is at least something in this mix, not that I could identify it.
I've become increasingly comfortable with LLM usage, to the point that myself from last year would hate me. Compared to projects I used to do with where I'd be deep into Google Reddit and Wikipedia, ChatGPT gives me pretty good answers much more quickly, and far more tailored to my needs.
I'm getting into home labs, and currently everything I have runs on ass old laptops and phones, but I do daydream if the day where I can run an ethically and sustainably trained, LLM myself that compares to current GPT-5 because as much as I hate to say it, it's really useful to my life to have a sometimes incorrect but overalls knowledgeable voice that's perpetually ready to support me.
The irony is that I'll never build a server that can run a local LLM due to the price hikes caused by the technology in the first place.
Please hate yourself, reflect on that and walk back from contributing to destroying the environment by furthering widespread adoption of this shitty technology. The only reason you seem to get "useful answers" is because of search engine and website enshittification. What you are getting is still tons worse than a good web research 10 years ago.
Basically you were taught to enjoy rancid butter because all restaurants around you had started tasting like shit first, then someone opened a rancid butter shop.
I do agree entirely. If I could use the internet of 2015 I would, but I can't do so in a practical way that isn't much more tedious than asking an LLM.
My options are the least rancid butter of the rancid butter restaurants or I churn my own. I'd love to churn my own and daydream of it, but I am busy, and can barely manage to die on every other hill I've chosen.
web search isnt magically going back to how it was, and its not just search engines its every mf trying tk take advantage of seo and push their content to the top, search is going to get worse evry year, ai did speed it up by making a bunch of ai images pop up whenever you search an image
problem is that the widespread use of (and thereby provision of your data to) LLMs contributes to the rise of totalitarian regimes, wage-slavery and destroying our planet's ecosystem. Not a single problem in any of our lives is important enough to justify this. And convenience because we are too lazy to think for ourselves, or to do some longer (more effort) web research, is definitely not a good excuse to be complicit in murder, torture and ecoterrorism.
I agree except for the fact that it's unavoidable
It's horrific, but its inescapable, the problem is not going away and while you're refusing to use LLMs to accelerate your progress, the opposition isn't
Don't get me wrong, anyone who blindly believes sycophantic LLM garbage is a fool.
Its taken 4 years to overcome my llm moral ocd - and its only because I need to start working, in a world where every company forces AI down your throat, there are many who simply have no choice if they want to compete
Also I'm kinda glad I can spend more of my useful energy working towards my goals rather than battling the exact minutiae without any sort of guide
The thing is: LLMs do not accelerate the progress of proper software development. Your processes have to be truly broken to be able to experience a net gain from using LLMs. It enables shitty coders to output pull requests that look like they were written by someone competent, and thereby effectively waste the time of skilled developers who review such pull requests out of respect for the contributor, only to find out it is utter garbage.
It's the difference between a pyramid scheme and an MLM: one of them has a product in the mix.
I heard a theory (that I don't believe, but still) that Deepseek is only competitive to lock the USA into a false AI race.
that would be the funniest thing.
It's the space race all over again!
After the bailouts at the expense of the poor, of course.
In 2008, banking sector and auto industry needed bailouts for the investor/financial class. Certainly, there was no need to layoff core banking employees, if government support was the last resort to keep the doors open AND gain controlling stake over future banking profitablity in a hopefully sustainable (low risk in addition to low climate/global destruction) fashion. The auto bailout did have harsher terms than the banking bailout, and recessions definitely harm the sector, but the bailouts were definitely focused on the executives/shareholders who have access to political friendships that result in gifts instead of truly needed lifelines, or wider redistribution of benefits from sustainable business.
The point, is that workforce is a "talking point" with no actual relevance in bailouts/too big to fail. That entire stock market wealth is concentrated in the sector, and that we have to all give them the rest of our money (and militarist backed surveillance freedom) or "China will win" at the only sector we pretend to have a competitive chance in, is why our establishment needs another "too big to fail moment". We've started QE ahead of the crash this time.
Work force is relatively small in AI sector. Big construction, but relatively low operations employment. It displaces other hiring too.
the shoe event horizon.
AI has taken more things since it's big push to be adopted in the public sector.
Clean Air
Water
Fair electricity bills
Ram
GPUs
SSDs
Jobs
Other people's art and writing.
There are no benefit to this stuff. It is just grifting.
Also free and fair elections. Fidesz published a clearly AI-generated document claiming it was a leak from current oppposition party Tisza, as a real program.
true
Yet another chapter in the fucking AI craze started up by them fucking techbros.
Also, someone forgot that in some places in the world, people have to use older PCs with SATA drives. That, until their discontinuation announcements, Crucial and Samsung SATA drives were several tiers better than, say, those cheapo Ramsta drives.
Discontinuing outdated tech has nothing to do with AI. SATA SSDs need to be retired. NVME is superior and widely available.
Especially since you can get M.2 to SATA adapters, so people stuck with SATA only motherboards can still upgrade their storage.
Literally the same deal when companies stopped making IDE drives, people just used SATA to IDE adapters instead.
Do you know of any m.2 to SATA adapters that support NVMe? Or are these only for Sata M.2s?
Man, it sure would be helpful for my argument if I could.
I went back and checked the ones I was looking at, very helpful fine print stating "not for NVEM ssds", so they all only work with mSATA M.2 SSDs, hell of a let down.
Despite how similar the interface is the protocol is completely different. NVMe is basically just PCIe, so adaptating it so that it runs "under" SATA would be difficult if not almost impossible. And most definitely not worth the extra price.
Well no you can translate, but it just seems that nobody has actually made a product to do so.
e.g. those M.2 SSD to USB adapters, those aren't speaking NVMe to the host device. They either talk the traditional USB "bulk transfer" protocol, or potentially SCSI, translating that to NVMe for the SSD itself.
Damn... I was hoping you were aware of things that I had missed...
Anyway, if you run out of M.2 NVMe slots on your motherboard there are still options, since NVMe is just PCIe:
https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Converter-Reader-Expansion-Internal/dp/B0BK2R7T57
Can we just burst this damn AI bubble already?
When I built a PC a couple of years ago when I really didn’t need one, then over specced it just because. I’m very happy right now as the prices are insane, feel like I could sell the PC for more than it cost me which mental.
Cries in PC gamer
I'm glad I already have a good setup and shouldn't be buying anything for a good while, but damn it. First the GPU, then RAM, now SSDs.
Next step, modular desktops as a concept will die, probably.
I hope people like locked-down black boxes they can't upgrade and can't run their own OS on in the future, so byebye Linux and BSD in that scenario outside of niche devices.
what's baffling is that modular desktops are probably a better long-term money making strategy for hardware makers. When you can cycle gear with ease - the temptation to try something new will be bigger.
At the same time, just expanding a device with new parts is a far cheaper way to get more performance than buying a new device - after all, whatever price problem there is with some kinds of parts, it will be the same whether they're sold as lose parts or as part of a device.
Poor working class young me in a poorer European country after getting his first PC quickly found out that to get a more powerful machine he had to start upgrading that machine because there wasn't money to buy a whole new one every couple of years.
My point is that this might very well yield the very opposite effect of what you describ: buying whole devices to replace older models becomes too expensive so people favor more expandable devices - because those can have their performance improved with just some new parts, which are cheaper than getting a whole new device - and the market just responds to that.
I think most people in countries which until recently were wealthier, such as the US, are far too used to the mindset of "throw the old one out and but a new one" which is not at all the mindset of people in places were resources are constrained or require a lot bigger fraction of people's income to buy (certainly my experience living in the UK after having grown up in a country which was much poorer left me with that impression: the Brits just felt incredibly wasteful to somebody who like me grew up in a situation were "gettting a new iPhone every 2 years" was the kind of think only a rich person or a stupid person would do).
didn't actually read the article, but the Micron/Crucial announcement was about leaving the DIY direct market, as opposed to not keeping supply deals with OEMs. Though new contracts with them will be higher.
The AI builders must be buying all the fab time and components to go to the build outs.
Desktops will go first and fade as the entire production chain stops.
Notebooks will be next, at least PC parts have a premium price, notebooks are too cheap to avoid it for long. Game consoles will face the same pressure.
The supply shock is going to be as bad as COVID.
What makes you think that? Even as prices rise, people are still buying and building PCs.
Eventual discontinuation of more PC parts to appease the AI grifters until all that's left for consumers is mini PCs or ARM black boxes.
But that hasn't happened at all and there's no evidence of that happening? To my knowledge at least. If you have some I'd love to see it.
I'm just speculating on what could happen if this stuff gets worse.
Chinese companies are most likely going to fill at least some of the void that the other companies will be leaving to chase AI hype. It won't necessarily be cheap though.
You could just run Linux on a 2009 thinkpad. Oh no, I will have to buy even cheaper machines to run Linux.
I ordered an S10 tab, paid my first rate, they finally try to order it, inform me it's gone from the page, and try to get me to pay MORE for a weaker device.
I refuse, ask for a refund, and that is how I got screwed over last moment from owning something I need, just before the crash.
Who is "they" in this? Some sort of intermediary you were using?
Tbh its not a bad call. Used to work somewhere that bought hundreds of 500gb SATA SSDs for laptop upgrades that just... sat on a shelf, because none of the new laptops ordered could even take a SATA drive. Hell, they're Crucial branded so they're probably collectable if micron keeps crucial dead for long enough.
That sucks. They probably could give them out to employees as a little bonus thing. Build a bit of goodwill. Rather than have them sit on a shelf.
Government. Ain't nobody want to get caught "stealing" from the government (they're probably going to be destroyed ten years after they're completely obsolete). Waste of damn near a hundred terabytes of storage.
It's fine as long as you're rich. Trump and friends are clearing the place out.
You can't send them to surplus auction?
And then most people won't know what to do with it, possibly flooding the helpdesk with requests.
It would have to be a voluntary thing, not just handed to everyone. "Put your name on this sheet if you want one."
My wife would sign up and she has no idea what a drive is, of any type. If you try to explain it to her she'll turn her ears off. But she'll only hear "FREE STUFF!".
So maybe that computer I just bought will be my last for a while then.
What if we get a lack-of-new-computers-crisis before the AI-bubble bursts
Don't worry, you can use AI on anything that can access the internet! No need to ever have personal (let alone private) thoughts - I'm sorry, data - again.
MS has been trying to get you to give up your personal computer for years. Do everything in the cloud, please! Even gaming with Stadia! And now they're getting their wish. All it took was running the entire global economy.
Doing everything in the cloud is crazy. I'm so glad I jumped over to Linux a couple years ago!
Still need hardware to run it on ☹️
Me with my 5 lenovo thinkcentres: 😎
awesome! Thank you shitty ai.
I have 4x 6TB HDDs in my NAS. Around 5 years ago I decided to simply replace any dead drives with 6TB ones instead of my previous strategy of slowly upgrading their size. I figured I could swap to 8TB 2.5" SATA SSDs that had just started to exist and would surely only get cheaper in the future...
M.2 to sata converters will probably come to your rescue. But probably not as cheap as you were hoping.
In my head I thought one could make relatively cheap high capacity in 2.5" SATA form factor by having more NAND chips of lower capacity. You give up speed and PCB space but that's fine since bandwidth and IOPS are limited by SATA anyway and there's plenty of space compared to M.2.
Turns out to not shake out that way, controller ICs that support SATA aren't coming out any more, and NAND ICs are internally stacked to use up channels while not taking up PCB space.
There are some enterprise options, but they're mad expensive.
I've cracked open a few faulty sata SSDs. Quite a few of the recent models are just 2242 or 2230 m.2 ssd's with a converter. Even bigger 2TB ones.
The ai crash is going to slap the tech industry hard
Not just the tech industry. A huge proportion of the US economy is made up of betting on AI. Like the crash of 2008 (but worse, some predict) it will hurt everyone but the richest, who will become even richer.
There are a number of simultaneous bubbles at the moment, the AI one being a lot like the Internet bubble of the late 90s but possibly worse (bigger share of GDP and it seems there is actually less value in most of the tech invested in as "AI" than on the Internet-related tech) and at the same time there is a financial debt bubble like in 2007 (in the US mainly around loans for car purchase, but more in general overall consumer indebtness has reached the 2007 levels), a worldwide realestate bubble (measured in terms of house-price to income ratios) and a stockmarket bubble measured in terms of P/E ratios, just to mention the biggest ones.
The risk is that when one blows the rest blow by contagium: something the 2008 Crash showed us is that in modern markets when there are sudden large losses on a asset class it pulls money over to cover them from all other asset classes, in turn creating downwards price pressure in those other asset classes, which in turn might cause price collapses there with large losses and that will pull even more money out from other asset classes. IMHO assets classes with historically high valuation not backed by fundamentals (for example stocks with P/E which are 10+ times the historical average) are likely to be far more likely to collapse when money gets pulled away from them to cover losses elsewhere. Also there is the panic factor: fearing exactly what I describe, many investors will preemptivelly sell their assets in those assets classes they feel as more speculative - i.e. less supported by fundamentals - possibly creating the very problem they fear in those markets by starting a stampede to the exits.
All this to say that I expect this one when it blows up will be bigger than 2008 and 2000, possibly bigger than both of those combined.
Going by inflation adjusted market cap values, it certainly looks like the financial facet of the AI companies alone are bigger than both those events.... This is going to be beyond messy...
Is there anything a normal person can do to insulate against it to any degree?
Assets are more valuable than money is now, consider what can maintain fundamental value regardless of the economy
Food, weapons and armour?
MF.. And why they wind down SSD production this time? Last time was 2 years ago, because the SSD prices were low and they wanted to raise them (which happened).
Because AI is better for €€€
May all bankrupt when the bubble bursts.
we all know as soon as big bad chip daddy comes back with a big discount everyone not in this thread (and even some that are) will spread their cheeks and beg for more.
humans are dumb greedy little assholes that have zero willpower. that's why it's so easy to manipulate us.
Just bought 2tb for $89.
I just spent $200 on a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB :/
I'm finally swapping my main PC to Linux full time and ended up buying an entire new boot drive rather than dealing with shuffling files around to make space.
I did similar when preparing my wife and I for windows 10 EOL. I went back to Linux on the new drive, my wife to Windows 11. Honestly both have a similar amount of issues (mostly wake from sleep challenges on Linux, although my PC wasn't great about waking from sleep on Windows to begin with) and most importantly my wife can still play Fortnite and I can have fun trying new stuff out and reveling at how every single game I try just works on Linux whereas 5 years ago it was more of a 50/50 chance whether or not a game would work
I bought exactly that one for my linux box (because I swapped mains to linux and wanted a big boot :-) ), but that was a while back, it's 280€ now, so $328...
This one if for the raz pi 5.
Nice, where'd you get that deal?
More importantly, what brand, type and/or specs. It's easy to get cheap disks with crap performance. I have a few around that we quickly dubbed "Super Slow Disks".
HDTCA40XK3CA
https://www.shopmyexchange.com/
For vets. No taxes and shipping is free or a standard $5 charge.
Nice, that's awesome.
If prices get bad enough, I'll start buying from there and selling out of my trunk.
Lol may as well stock up now. It's coming
AFAIK this has already been a problem, you can find Samsung M.2 SSDs for cheaper than Samsung SATA SSDs at the same capacity, because their cloud customers have all flown past classic SATA/SAS for NVME U.2 and U.3, which is much more similar to M.2 due to NVME.
I was planning on adding a big SSD array to my server which has a bunch of external 2.5 SAS slots, but it ended up being cheaper and faster to buy a 4 slot M.2 PCIe card and buy 4 M.2 drives instead.
Putting it on a x16 PCIe slot gives me 4 lanes per drive with bifurication, which gets me the advertised maximum possible speed on PCIe 4.
Whether or not the RAM surge will affect chip production capacity is the real issue. It seems all 3 OEMs could effectively reduce capacity for all other components after slugging billions of dollars into HBM RAM. It wouldn't just be SSDs, anything that relies on the same supply chain could be heavily affected.
Exactly this. Micron ended their consumer RAM. Sansung here is just stopping producing something that is arguably outdated, and has a perfectly fine, already more available, most often cheaper or equivalent modern replacement.
Isn’t the source of this one of those YouTubers that just throws everything at the wall until they get something right?
He seems to be one of the less accurate ones, yes. Turns out when you use really wide brackets for numbers predictions, that makes it easier to get things right (who'd've thunk) and even then he only gets like 50% of claims right.
I take issue with this forced distinction they are making
Nobody ever officially suggested the Crucial supply was likely to shift to the other manufacturers for consumers. On the contrary people expect this to be a step towards a general redistribution of manufacturing capacity towards HBM for parallel compute products.
If you wanted you could make the same argument as for Micron. Who says the Samsung NAND couldn't be bought by other OEMs to make consumer SSDs. It's just as possible as the Micron supply shifting to other OEMs who make consumer RAM sticks.
To me neither are likely. The manufacturing capacity both companies are pulling from the consumer market in both cases is going to go to the higher profit margin parallel compute server market. Neither is worse than the other, they are both equally bad news for us consumers.
That is where much of the overall wafers are going. But that would be happening regardless of whether the Crucial brand is around or not. Even if Crucial was still a thing going forward, those same wafers would still be going towards HBM.
I think he hit the nail on the head when he said that Crucial being cancelled is just a symptom of our shit market, not one of the causes. It makes zero difference.
His point is that Samsung (the manufacturer) is scrapping production, not that Samsung (the consumer brand) is stopping selling products that otherwise are still being produced and sold under different brand names.
Stopping production of something sold under many brands is obviously a lot worse than a brand stopping sales of something that other brands will still sell (albeit in lower quantities in previous years due to HBM production being ramped up at the cost of DDR5).
Why would ending sata ssd production create price pressure for m2 ssds? If anything, they should be able to produce more of those.
M.2 is just a connector, you can run SATA over M.2. But you're right, freeing up 2.5" production for M.2 should reduce price pressure.
Aside: WTF are they using SSDs for?
LLM inference in the cloud is basically only done in VRAM. Rarely stale K/V cache is cached in RAM, but new attention architectures should minimize that. Large scale training, contrary to popular belief, is a pretty rare event most data centers and businesses are incapable of.
…So what do they do with so much flash storage!? Is it literally just FOMO server buying?
Storage. There aren't enough hard drives, so datacentres are also buying up SSDs, since it's needed to store training data.
Again, I don’t buy this. The training data isn’t actually that big, nor is training done on such a huge scale so frequently.
As we approach the theoretical error rate limit for LLMs, as proven in the 2020 research paper by OpenAI and corrected by the 2022 paper by Deepmind, the required training and power costs rise to infinity.
In addition to that, the companies might have many different nearly identical datasets to try to achieve different outcomes.
Things like books and wikipedia pages aren't that bad, wikipedia itself compressed is only 25GB, maybe a few hundred petabytes could store most of these items, but images and videos are also valid training data and that's much larger, and then there is readable code. On top of that, all user inputs have to be stored to reference them again later if the chatbot offers that service.
The lines used to produce vram also do ssd nand flash, so they make less ssds to make more vram
This seems like a non issue dramatised for headlines, they are phasing out outdated sata connection to only favour current m.2.
It's like gpu and motherboard manufacturers announcing they are no longer including VGA ports in favour of DVI display port and HDMI. I don't think that was a bad thing.
I'm sure some people who are lucky enough to have hardware that still requires SATA want to keep upgrading to new SATA devices but it's been enough time. I'm ok with just m.2 now.
There are millions of devices that still and will continue to use SATA.
My Synology NAS only accepts SATA. So if one of my SSDs dies I'm just shit out of luck and have to find a 8 bay M.2 NAS to have a comparable alternative?
Your comment is beyond ridiculous
lol
There are plenty of reasons to put SSDs in a home server.
And most are wrong or unnecessary. What movie requires SSD performance?
HDDs have horrible random access times, so if you need to process or just copy a lot of small files, say photos, there's a significant penalty.
Ok, but what are they doing that moves loads of random files?
Rsync, syncthing, backups, mp3s, photos, json files; idk, a lot of tasks involve large amounts of small files. I personally ran into this problem training models on millions of photos. My GPUs would only get up to 25% utilization with mirrored HDDs, so I had to switch to SSDs.
Edit: the difference is also significant when compiling large projects or just using git. I imagine some game servers need a lot of random accesses too.
There are definitely valid reasons to use SSDs in a server/array. One of my proxmox servers runs 4x m.2s in raidz1 so all my vms are super snappy. Depending on what you're running you can really see benefits, for example:
Pretty much anything with a lot of metadata or tons of files will see benefits from running on SSDs, this comes with the caveat that cheap ssds wear quickly and are a pain in the ass but if you need it, you need it
Indeed.
It's standard distributed systems design to have a hierarchy of storage with different speeds whose contents is allocated based on the frequency with which certain data is accessed, and HDDs are really only good for bulk data which is seldom accessed (basically the speed category for long term storage with low wait times when it does get needed but not really meant to be constantly accessed, which is just above things like tapes and other backup storage methods).
So for example for a dynamic website with thousands of users most current data should be in SSDs and HDDs would maybe contain low access info such as historical data from the last couple of years and in front of those SSDs there would be a ton of memory to serve as a cache for the most accessed of all data (say, the CSS, JS and images of the home page) as in-memory data is even faster to access than data in an SSD.
The idea that SSDs aren't useful for servers is hilarious ignorant.
Ok. But then you are not a regular person running a regular home server but an enthusiast with small scale commercial needs.
I think anyone running a home server qualifies as an enthusiast, there are more uses for home servers than just plex lol
Tell that to my school division's IT department, who have us all running Displayport to VGA adapters, attaching to our monitors and projectors via VGA. This is because our displays are either a) too old and only support VGA and DVI in, or b) they purchased displays with HDMI, but our ThinkPad laptops only have Displayport out.
Sometimes it is more a matter of mixing and matching tech in large cash-strapped systems that might get slapped by these issues as well.
And yes, those adapters cause as many headaches as you might think.
Yeah my recent IT experience is similar. I redeployed monitors that had "vista-ready" badges on them during the monitor shortages of 2021-2 I've replaced so many of those analogue to digital adapters (usually because the computer only has 1 digital output and 2 displays to drive, or 1 HDMI and 1 DisplayPort but the displays only support HDMI and I only have VGA to HDMI adapters, etc.)
The challenge simply comes down to the fact that displays tend to last so much longer than the computers they're connected to. Heck my wife is using my decade old 1080p monitors because they were an upgrade over the even older 720p monitors she had before which may well find themselves mated up to my kids' new computer
One thing about monitors lasting so long is that it feels good that I'm not making e-waste from monitors every time I upgrade my computer. For the 25 years I've been using desktops I've only bought 3 monitors, I can't say that about the rest of my computer hardware.
I hear you there. Almost every meeting presentation room I use still requires my usb-c to vga adapter and I just have to live with it. It's the natural state of such places I think. It feels so amazing when I can plug directly into my laptop without an adapter. And yea I agree, they are a headache.
As long as they keep selling the flash memory chips to drive makers, what's the big deal of them dropping the SATA protocol from their consumer devices?
There are plenty of China-based companies which still make flash memory drives with a SATA interface using Samsung chips and at this point that tech is so mature that there really isn't any great added value in terms of performance from getting Samsung SATA drives over getting some generic SATA drives with Samsung chips.
It actually makes some sense that Samsung is focusing their consumer-facing device production in a higher performance protocol which is very well established now and were the device speeds are not constrained by the protocol itself, rather than in a protocol were the maximum speed of the protocol (600 MB/s) is actually what constrains the device performance since the memory chips themselves are capable of more.
As a consumer, 6 or 7 years ago it definitelly made sense to get a Samsung SATA drive because they were actually some of the fastest in the market, but these days even shitty-shit no-name brand has SATA devices with 580MB/s read speeds (and, if large enough, similar write speeds) which is near the theoretical maximum of SATA3 and M.2 devices supporting PCI4 x16 offer several times the speeds of that.
Glad that I recently bought a bunch of storage so that I'll be covered for a good amount of time.
Bought a new pc in October and I'm soooo glad I did
Crap, I really wanted to buy a new external HD for my home server setup sometime soon.
HDDs should be fine. No?
Until next month when they cancel those too
I suppose so, it just takes forever to transfer files.
I knew I should have hoarded devices. Could have at least profited from selling RAM...
Who needs computers anyways?
Just go outside and play with real people
Syrup of Squill.
Well. I just FOMO ordered a SATA SSD. Thanks, OP.
Mostly because I got 2x64Gb sticks 2 months before they shot up to nearly 4X the price! And it doesn’t feel like this bump is going away soon.
glad i recently bought an SSD. it was expensive, and it will be more expensive in the future, damn :(
I wonder what changed, prices were being driven down on SSDs for a while there
Put a 1tb 850 Evo in our PS4 years ago for a pretty reasonable price. Kind of expected prices to continue to fall back then
AI happened. It requires an immense amount of RAM and storage for data centers, and manufacturers don't have enough production capacity to keep up.
Prices were going down because the consumer market didn't have as much of a demand for both after covid.
Fuck
Samsung makes some of the best SSDs!!
I got an old Nitro 5 with a rickity old 500gig hard drive. Will a Crucial BX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-Inch Internal SSD be a good Christmas present for it?
Probably should get something while prices are somewhat more reasonable.
If you look at the top sellers, SATA SSDs still occupy a few of those spots, including 3rd place.
There is still huge demand for SATA SSDs.
Fuck em. Last time i bought a samsung ssd it went from 100% to 20% SMART overnight and just outside warranty
The issue is that as dumb as it is, SATA ssds are still a big part of the consumer market.
Even though nvme isn't appreciably more expensive to make, it's still used as a "premium" product., and SATA is a product tier to capture budget market whole protecting their more premium market.
This move is a clear symptom of the real issue. Manufacturers shifting as much capacity as possible towards big datacenter buildouts at the expense of starving every other market for these products. Trillions of dollars that will pay whatever it takes competing with a more rational market
They're still making mobos with SATA. Not everyone uses laptops.
Most reasonably priced power edges on eBay don't have NVMe sleds yet. Some of us selfhost, y'know...
It's sort of not needed. M.2 for the OS, HDD for extra stuff like steam/epic games.
HDD for games? Enjoy your loading hours!
HDD works for media, allright.
After looking into it, yeah, that's valid. Seems like SSD offers 5x-10x better loading times.
It's no longer just loading times, many modern games just don't work with HDDs at all anymore
No that's not correct, a lot a consumer hardware have SATA port (like old laptop)
Replacing old HDD into SSD SATA to run the OS is the way to go in this case.
So not so useless...
Calm down, everyone. Who cares about SATA SSDs? SATA is nearly a decade out of date! Even budget motherboards support NVME these days. It's time to move on and quit fear-mongering. This is a non-story.
So hardware that may still be perfectly usable but predates NVMe should be tossed out then?
Although a counter-argument to that is aside from in extreme cases needing to boot from a SATA drive because if a board predates NVMe, it probably doesn't support booting from NVMe without a BIOS mod, is NVMe riser cards to add NVMe drives to a board which wouldn't otherwise support them, but that would of course fill up a PCIe slot.
Who said anything about tossing stuff out? Use what you've got for as long as you can. When it's time to upgrade, upgrade.
You are clearly a fucking little teen or something. I have tons of old systems that do the job fine and will run until the heat deah of the universe. Not everything is about the latest and greatest gaming system.
The exact same thing you already have to do to upgrade the memory on such a computer, you go buy used/old stock DDR3 or cannibalize from another system. Pre-NVMe systems are DDR3 era and older. Time goes on, interfaces update and anyone looking for compatibility with their older system will need to either use an adapter or buy used/old stock. If there's enough demand like with motherboards there can be a random Chinese brands making new hardware for old platforms using a mix of new and cannibalized parts
You must be fun at parties, eh?
Yes, actually, cause I'm usually the one bringing the cocaine or the molly.
The massive upvote count on this post is evidence that this community does not understand technology at all and just wants to be angry and yell at clouds.
Care to explain that understanding you have and the community lacks?
If you need SATA SSDs you are not a home user.
Just use a HDD for your bulk needs and a SSD m2.
A SATA SSD is a good way to speed up an aging machine, one without M2 slot. But glad to know I qualify as a professional user.
You could still stick an NVMe drive on an older system as a secondary drive, eg. as a /home drive if you're running Linux on it, by sticking it on a riser card, although you'd still need to boot off a SATA drive, and you'd take up one of your expansion slots doing that.
M2 slots are standard for more than a decade.
And those machines are still good enough to browse the web, or for text processing. I usually set them up with a small SSD for booting fast and a large HDD for the /home folder. Hell I keep a D410PT around for the times I need an absolutely silent machine (Well, as soon as I buy a picoATX for it, it will be. Too bad I missed the computer-2 case).
Does Samsung even sell a small SSD? I thought they start at like 128GB
I needed a SATA SSD for my raspberry pi 4 connected via usb3.
I am a home user.
Fair point. What the fuck are you doing with it?
Do you enjoy being an ass?
I was trying to convey confusion as to what a cheap microcomputer could even be used for that needs that much fast storage. They ought not to be using it for scientific compute, that's for sure.
Jellyfin media server. I have another one acting as my router (with a small managed switch and openWRT) and one more pi5 i am using as a retro console. That one uses 2 nvme m.2 drives but the pi4 doesnt support nvme, only sata.
That works with a raspberry? Those tiny 10€ microcomputers? Color me impressed.
Do you really need the SSDs for that? I would have guessed that hdds are plenty fine.
Yeah, cant do any transcoding though, but i dont need 4k for everything. Though as long as my client can play the format of the video then theres no issue. It would be easier with a mini PC but im enjoying learning linux and really liking the rasberry pi in general.
In terms of SSD. I could use a HDD. But it comes with 2 disadvantages. 1 is that media i copy from other devices to the drive takes A LOT longer to transfer. And 2, i have a big clunky HDD on my desk next to my 5 inch Pi.... just makes more sense to use an SSD.
But essentially i guess its just not great to assume that there is no use case for them for home users just because you dont have a use case for them personally.
Motherboards have limited M.2 slots though. I can add more SATA SSDs to easily expand my steam library - or even mix SSDs and HDDs in a cursed LVM.
Three years ago, I replaced a failing SATA SSD in my personal laptop with a new SATA SSD. That laptop had plenty of power, and I'd still be using it today if the keyboard still worked, and the screen hinges weren't cracked. It had no NVME slots.