Computex 2014: Samsung Launches TLC-Based 845DC EVO for The Enterprise
by Kristian Vättö on June 3, 2014 12:20 PM EST
While this is technically not a Computex announcement, Samsung is launching their TLC NAND based 845DC EVO today. This isn't Samsung's first TLC based enterprise SSD as a while ago they announced the PM853T but that drive is OEM only and is thus mostly limited to Samsung's large OEM customers, whereas the 845DC EVO will be available in retail for small and medium data center use.
Essentially, the 845DC EVO is just the retail version of the PM853T as everything from the NAND to the controller and firmware are similar. Samsung is only disclosing that the drive uses 10nm-class NAND, although I'm fairly certain that it's the same 19nm process as found inside the 840 EVO. I hate to admit that I don't know the exact controller inside the drive because PM853T was never sampled to media but I do have samples of the 845DC EVO, so once I get back from Taipei I will open up the drives and see what's inside.
I don't have the full data sheet yet but Samsung's press release mentions that the drive is capable of up to 530MB/s sequential read speeds and 87K IOPS random read, which are quite typical for a SATA 6Gbps drive. The endurance goes all the way to up to 600TB, so while that is not MLC level, it's still pretty good given that we are dealing with much lower endurance TLC NAND (e.g. the 800GB Micron M500DC does up to 1.9PB) and the drive is more geared towards the read-centric enterprise market (e.g. web servers).
The pricing is very competitive in the enterprise segment. The 845DC EVO will be available in capacities of 240GB, 480GB and 960GB with MSRPs of $250, $490 and $969 respectively. I'll be reviewing the drives in detail once I get back, so stay tuned for our in-depth review in a few weeks.
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blanarahul - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
So, this doesn't have Turbo-Write, right?npaladin2000 - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
The write endurance on this is atrocious. non-enterprise MLC gets better than 600 TB on a 900+ GB drive!LtGoonRush - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
Pricing is definitely a problem, Intel's enterprise SSDs actually cheaper and as you noted deliver MUCH higher endurance. Using TLC NAND should result in pretty significant cost reductions but those don't seem to be apparent.ImSpartacus - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
We can only hope that prices will swiftly drop shortly after release.Krysto - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
I think Intel's SSDs have much poorer write performance, though? But yeah, forget performance. SATA 3 is more than enough for now. They should be trying to push prices to under $0.5/GB instead.hojnikb - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
Yeah but this is TLC, which translates to 3x reduction of write cycles..hpglow - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
I don't think that its the case, but even if it were the reliability of tlc is exponentially worse than slc or mlc. I wouldn't be worried about a tlc drive in most cases the controller along with overprovisioning mitigates the risks.Solid State Brain - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
On Tom's Hardware the reviewer calculated that the normalized value of the wear leveling count SMART parameter reaches 1% at 3181 P/E cycles. Therefore, the rated 600 TB write endurance likely implies it's with random data, as assuming a write amplification of 1x (ie with 100% sequential data) 1024 GB of raw NAND capacity and 3181 P/E cycles the drive should be able to withstand 3+ PB of writes.Of course, it all depends on the workload.
Krysto - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
Can TLC last 10 years with average use? Or is it more like 5 at best?Silenus - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
Well...what's "average" use? There is no such thing. For a server use case where the application is more write heavy than it'll be fine. For an extremely write heavy database....perhaps not. It all depends.