[mythtvnz] Has anyone seen the new Zotac units?

[Steve Hodge]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Daniel Giddens <daniel at acsdata.co.nz>wrote:

>  If you read my post you will see I bought an Intel 40GB SSD for $225. This
> is not about price per MB it is about 32 seconds boot time vs 10 seconds
> from cold not from standby. It's about achieving 300MB/s not 60MB/s. It's
> about running 4 streams at 300MB/s and not 4 streams at a few MB/s. If you
> use a new SSD drive you will never go back ... well that's my opinion
> anyway.
>
> I have multiple frontends, some with compact flash, some with HDD and now
> some with SSD's. I am speaking from first hand experience not paper theory.
>

I don't disagree with any of that. But you said "Within 2 years all drives
will be SSD's". I don't think so. That's the only point I addressed in my
reply; the bit I quoted.

I agree we are a way off getting 1TB SSD's at cheap prices today. Today we
> can get 2TB for under $230. Two years ago we probably were buying 250GB
> drives for that price.
>

Not quite. 2 years I bought a 320GB drive for $110 and 6 months after that I
bought a 500GB for $115. 2 years ago I think $230 was buying at least 500GB.

I use old style drives for the backend because yes SSD's would be way to
> expensive to use to TB's of storage. The original topic was frontends which
> is where I recommended SSD's over compact flash.
>

I'm not questioning your recommendation.


> I recon we will see TB SSD's for reasonable prices within 2 years.
> Manufacturers will be heading that way versus mechanical drives and as
> volume and competition rises the prices will fall.
>

Unlike with HDs, SSDs prices scan pretty much linearly with capacity. So
you're expecting something that right now would cost $4000+ to be say $250
in two years. Looking at the drives I've bought (12 drives between 80GB and
1500GB in that last 6 years) there's actually a pretty solid linear trend
for the log of the price per GB. It works out quite close to price/GB
falling by 33% per year. For SSDs to manage a drop from $4000 to $250 they'd
need to drop by 75% per year. SSDs are much less mature technology-wise so
they should drop faster for a while but that fast? I don't think so.

Or looking at it the other way, capacities have to increase by a factor of
nearly 16: a doubling every 6 months. SSDs seem likely to be closer to
Moore's law: doubling every 18 months.


> Lets repost in two years and see who's right :)
>

Sure. But if I can still buy a non-SSD drive then I win, right? You did say
"all" :-)

Seriously though they'll definitely be much cheaper/larger. But I think
it'll take more like 4-5 years to the 1TB for $250 type of prices. At that
point whether or not HDs have a place will depend on what sorts of
capacities they've reached. If they're still ahead by a factor of 5-10 for
the same price then they certainly will. If it's only a factor 2 then maybe
not.

Cheers,
Steve
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