The theme of this year's Samsung SSD Global Summit, in Seoul, Korea, was SSDs For Everyone. More than 100 journalists from around the world showed up for this one-of-a-kind event, where we got a taste of the future in solid-state storage.
Last month, Samsung held its annual SSD Global Summit in Seoul, South Korea. More than 100 journalists from around the world were present. Tom's Hardware sent its U.S. and German teams to learn more about the company's 840 EVO, which we reviewed in Samsung 840 EVO SSD: Tested At 120, 250, 500, And 1000 GB, a handful of drives that aren't available yet, and upcoming storage technologies expected to dramatically change the performance characteristics of next-gen devices.
The summit began with a little background on Samsung. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has ever purchased an SSD, a phone, a notebook, a TV, a refrigerator, built an oil refining plant, or insured a car in South Korea, but Samsung is a very big conglomerate with many different businesses. It pulled in more than $180 billion dollars in revenue last year.
There's no way to attribute the company's success to any one industry, but heavy investment in NAND research and production is certainly a big reason why it's doing so well in the semiconductor space.

Consider the sheer magnitude of current and future NAND shipments. In 2013, there will be 40 billion gigabytes of flash that ship out, or 40 EB (exabytes), a four with 19 zeroes behind it. At a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45%, NAND shipments should hit 140 EB by 2016.

Of course, not all of that NAND is destined for SSDs. Only 16% of it went into solid-state drives last year. By 2016, Samsung predicts that number will rise to nearly 26%, with the majority of flash memory going into mobile phones.
The market share numbers give us a pretty telling story about Samsung's position in this space.

As of 2012, Samsung claimed 40% of the total NAND market. It's a familiar position for the company, which has held that crown for the past 11 years.

When you break down the SSD forecasts according to segment, it's clear that the PC space dominates. The enterprise-oriented server storage market isn't as large, naturally. But it's expected to grow over the next several years.

Samsung says its drives will be in six out of every 10 PCs that ship in 2013. Solid-state drives like the 840 Pro grab headlines, but it's the company's OEM business moving volume. The most recent example is Apple's MacBook Air featuring a Samsung-manufactured PCI Express-based SSD that caught a lot of people by surprise.
My 840 has about 0.41TB written to it, and i bought this drive a few months ago.
Anyway, looking forward to RAPID.
Anyone else find that this reads like an infomercial?
Everyone wins.
NVMe is a protocol to work with PCIe. This is quite clear from the slides. What is PCIe? Do you remember your last video card upgrade? The slot your card plugged into was most likely a PCIe slot. NVMe has no business with SATA, and that's the way you want it to be.
Last year, Samsung touched on some new technologies that they were working on, but didn't share any insight during their latest summit,
NVMe is a protocol to work with PCIe. This is quite clear from the slides. What is PCIe? Do you remember your last video card upgrade? The slot your card plugged into was most likely a PCIe slot. NVMe has no business with SATA, and that's the way you want it to be.
...SATA 3.2 (SATA Express) uses PCIe lanes (2x PCIe 3.0) to provide faster communication between the CPU and the storage media, hence reducing the bottleneck. I understand NVMe is an independent tech from SATA 3.2 (notice that ".2" behind the 3).
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That's a solid question and one that isn't always easy to answer. There are so many new interfaces and protocols, it's hard to keep them all straight. To answer your question, SATA 3.2 now includes SATA Express. SATA Express is a standard that defines two driver interfaces and two physical interfaces. You can connect via legacy SATA or PCIe. For SATA, you will use the AHCI interface. In this way, it will work just like every other SATA SSD that is on the market. For PCIe, the driver interface is either AHCI or NVMe. With AHCI, you still see a PCIe device dangling off of the PCIe root port and you use the same AHCI drivers that comes with your operating system of choice. With NVMe, you get all of the added benefits of the new protocol, but you will need OS driver support. All of that should *crosses fingers* be ironed out in the next year.
What makes things slightly confusing is that any of these combinations are valid, so you have to pay particular attention to whether your M.2 card is SATA or PCIe, and if it is PCIe, whether it is AHCI or NVMe. If you want more information, I recommended looking at the SATAIO page, they have a lot of good information. https://www.sata-io.org/sata-express
My 840 Pro 256GB doesn't allow for RAPID even while using Samsung Magician 4.2
It passes the Genuine Validation check and everything so I don't think this is true, or I'm an unlucky bloke.
Does anyone have an answer as to why this is?
This should be able to clarify
Any ideas fellas?
That's a solid question and one that isn't always easy to answer. There are so many new interfaces and protocols, it's hard to keep them all straight. To answer your question, SATA 3.2 now includes SATA Express. SATA Express is a standard that defines two driver interfaces and two physical interfaces. You can connect via legacy SATA or PCIe. For SATA, you will use the AHCI interface. In this way, it will work just like every other SATA SSD that is on the market. For PCIe, the driver interface is either AHCI or NVMe. With AHCI, you still see a PCIe device dangling off of the PCIe root port and you use the same AHCI drivers that comes with your operating system of choice. With NVMe, you get all of the added benefits of the new protocol, but you will need OS driver support. All of that should *crosses fingers* be ironed out in the next year.
What makes things slightly confusing is that any of these combinations are valid, so you have to pay particular attention to whether your M.2 card is SATA or PCIe, and if it is PCIe, whether it is AHCI or NVMe. If you want more information, I recommended looking at the SATAIO page, they have a lot of good information. https://www.sata-io.org/sata-express
Thank you for addressing my query.
This should be able to clarify
Any ideas fellas?
There is a note on the Samsung Magician download page ATM:
* Notice : Official release of Magician 4.2 will be tentatively postponed until late August in order to ensure compatibility with all devices.
My early release of 4.2 didn't support the 840 Pro, and I seemed to recall Samsung saying that the 840 Pro would get a FW upgrade that would let it use RAPID (but don't quote me on this). Or, it's just that they couldn't work out the kinks, and you'll have to wait until later this month for a fixed version.
I know RAPID doesn't work on my 840 Pros with the 4.2 Beta that I used in the EVO review.
Regards,
Christopher Ryan
There is a note on the Samsung Magician download page ATM:
* Notice : Official release of Magician 4.2 will be tentatively postponed until late August in order to ensure compatibility with all devices.
My early release of 4.2 didn't support the 840 Pro, and I seemed to recall Samsung saying that the 840 Pro would get a FW upgrade that would let it use RAPID (but don't quote me on this). Or, it's just that they couldn't work out the kinks, and you'll have to wait until later this month for a fixed version.
I know RAPID doesn't work on my 840 Pros with the 4.2 Beta that I used in the EVO review.
Regards,
Christopher Ryan
Isn't that something... my magician actually got notified and auto-updated lol, I don't have an EVO since RAPID would probably work if I did, and the download page DID have 4.2 on there a few days ago so it I guess they reverted their decision to offer 4.2 to download.
I did know that reviews stated their 840 Pro's weren't detected in 4.2 to allow enabling RAPID but since it was an auto-update, I was under suspicion it was a minor version updated vs the 4.2 software included in the EVO packaging which allowed enabling of RAPID from being an official update for me.
Ill give a screeny & checksum of my magician installer in-case anyone want to see vs theirs since I don't think this is 4.2 Beta. And if anyone wants I can upload it for others to download.
Guess I'll need to wait for Magician 4.2.1/4.3 or a FW update then.
Good to know I wasn't preventing it's ability to update, and that it's still incompatible at the moment.
Thank you for the verification
There is a note on the Samsung Magician download page ATM:
* Notice : Official release of Magician 4.2 will be tentatively postponed until late August in order to ensure compatibility with all devices.
My early release of 4.2 didn't support the 840 Pro, and I seemed to recall Samsung saying that the 840 Pro would get a FW upgrade that would let it use RAPID (but don't quote me on this). Or, it's just that they couldn't work out the kinks, and you'll have to wait until later this month for a fixed version.
I know RAPID doesn't work on my 840 Pros with the 4.2 Beta that I used in the EVO review.
Regards,
Christopher Ryan
Isn't that something... my magician actually got notified and auto-updated lol, I don't have an EVO since RAPID would probably work if I did, and the download page DID have 4.2 on there a few days ago so it I guess they reverted their decision to offer 4.2 to download.
I did know that reviews stated their 840 Pro's weren't detected in 4.2 to allow enabling RAPID but since it was an auto-update, I was under suspicion it was a minor version updated vs the 4.2 software included in the EVO packaging which allowed enabling of RAPID from being an official update for me.
Ill give a screeny & checksum of my magician installer in-case anyone want to see vs theirs since I don't think this is 4.2 Beta. And if anyone wants I can upload it for others to download.
Guess I'll need to wait for Magician 4.2.1/4.3 or a FW update then.
Good to know I wasn't preventing it's ability to update, and that it's still incompatible at the moment.
Thank you for the verification
Yeah, it seems as though it was pulled. The version most reviewers were supplied with was basically just a 4.2 preview.
The 830 and 470 won't be getting any more FW updates, but the 840 lines should be getting new FW over the next couple weeks/months. I believe most 840 EVOs will be available on the 20th, so its possible that the new updated version of Magician will coincide with the launch -- though the early retail packaging I have included 4.1 on the software CD. I'd expect most retail 840 EVOs will have new firmware and a new Magician version to download.
It would be incredibly awesome if the 830 could get RAPID too, though.
Regards,
Christopher Ryan