Info SK Hynix returning to retail SATA SSD market

[UsandThem]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sk-hynix-retail-ssd-market-sata-drives,40183.html

I just came across this over at Tom's. With falling / flat SSD pricing, now is a tough time to compete against the already established players (especially since many outside of tech have never even heard of SK Hynix).

5 year warranty, typical SATA SSD performance, and only available through Amazon right now in the U.S., and comes in 250 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB sizes.

 

[chetansha]

With all the new boards and laptop coming with m2 nvme slots, why is hynix going Sata ssd

 

[UsandThem]

With all the new boards and laptop coming with m2 nvme slots, why is hynix going Sata ssd

SATA SSDs can still work in most M.2 slots (most offer either PCIe and SATA drives), so I'm sure they will eventually release products for that if they decide to stay in the retail market. It does say they are working on PCIe storage, but they haven't provided much details.

The bulk of the market for SATA SSDs (people upgrading their PCs pre-2015) are still using the regular 2.5" version of the drives, so I can see why they are testing the retail waters in that style first. However, going forward they would be wise to release a M.2 version.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Too little, too late? Maybe they can partner with game companies, or GPU companies, or something / some company "Gaming"-related, to come up with partner bundles to sell their drives.

Though, IMHO, Team Group is coming on strong, for the budget SATA 2.5" SSD market, and Crucial, Samsung (especially), and less so (because of higher prices) Intel, hold onto the high-end of the market. And WD, whom I can't quite place in the market. Are there people that buy WD SSDs? Just seems, "off", to me. The HDD Black/Blue/Green branding just doesn't work for me, for their SSDs. I think that they should have gone with something else for branding.

Edit: I'll say that if they can get a PCI-E NVMe controller going well, then there's certainly room in the market for a properly price/performance/temp/value M.2 NVMe drive family still. The market is still fresh and young, and performance isn't tapped out to the top like the SATA 2.5" SSD market is. There's room for something new in NVMe. Maybe offer smaller, shorter sizes, too? Or industrial? Although, that article talks about a "return to retail".

Edit: Here's an idea: Combine an NVMe SSD controller, with one or more x64 CPU cores (Atom derivatives, maybe revive Puma+?), and sell it as a blade server, "embedded VM server". The idea being, that it would house the VM storage on the NVMe SSD NAND, while at the same time, having self-contained CPU resources to run the VM. Now imagine these, spread out among mega-NVMe "micro-blade" / "ruler" servers.

Surely Intel has thought about that, for "ruler servers", given their groundbreaking "PC on a stick" a few years back. Or maybe not. Send the royalties to my e-mail address using Paypal, Thanks Intel.

Edit: Thinking further about that, it wouldn't be a bad idea for software distribution, pre-packaged VM server images, replete with CPU power, all on a little NVMe / ruler stick. Just plug it in and go! The ultimate "micro-blade" (or maybe "nano-blade") server?

Edit: When you think about it, that's like, the inverse of the premise behind eMMC storage. There, you've got a motherboard (maybe with SoC), and then your storage is on a chip, soldered to a board. In this case, you have an NVMe stick, and then you solder an SoC onto it.

Call it, "SoC-on-a-stick". NVSoConS - Non-Volatile System on a Chip on a Stick.

 

[UsandThem]

And WD, whom I can't quite place in the market. Are there people that buy WD SSDs? Just seems, "off", to me. The HDD Black/Blue/Green branding just doesn't work for me, for their SSDs. I think that they should have gone with something else for branding.

Yeah, their SATA SSD branding has been odd (especially when they released basically the same drives in the WD Blue 3D and Sandisk Ultra 3D models). I look at both of those as mid-range (going up against drives like the Crucial MX500 line). For many years, the only real way for consumers to SK Hynix drives were if they were OEM pulls or similar, often only having a warranty through the individual sellers.

However, WD's Black series NVMe drives are high-end (and great performers) though, but they try to price them as high as Samsung prices their products, and I think many people would consider Samsung as the "gold standard" in SSDs (both SATA and PCIe). For me personally, when it comes to WD vs. Samsung products being priced the same, I would buy Samsung.