The market would grow even faster if prices would come down further. I'd kill (well, probably not, but definitely maim) for a sub £300 2TB M.2 SSD, or a sub £300 4TB 2.5" SATA SSD.

33% grow is useless information unless they state how many they sell 🙄 I'd be curious about real sales numbers. Still haven't heard about all too many being in private use.

The market would grow even faster if prices would come down further. I'd kill (well, probably not, but definitely maim) for a sub £300 2TB M.2 SSD, or a sub £300 4TB 2.5" SATA SSD.

Yeah, sadly by the time SSDs become truly affordable, there will likely be something better out to take the spot they're in now, and we'll be back in square one. :P

Hmm, I never heard of Memblaze, Nimbus, or Violin. Also, where's Mushkin or Plextor? Anyway, I'm a bit surprised there isn't a SATA4 by now. Such a thing would reduce the need for PCIe interfaces and ought to be fast enough for the foreseeable future.

Hmm, I never heard of Memblaze, Nimbus, or Violin. Also, where's Mushkin or Plextor? Anyway, I'm a bit surprised there isn't a SATA4 by now. Such a thing would reduce the need for PCIe interfaces and ought to be fast enough for the foreseeable future.

What advantage would a theoretical SATA 4 have over U.2?

What advantage would a theoretical SATA 4 have over U.2?

A few, in order of least to most important: * Easy accessibility - sometimes a GPU could block you from taking out a U.2 drive. * Since slots like U.2 are always on the motherboard itself, there's a greater limit to the amount you can have. * To my knowledge, no RAID support * Backward compatibility - A SATA4 drive would still readily work on older computers, just not as fast. Getting U.2 to work on older PCs should be possible (via something like a PCIe card) but I doubt that's a cheap addition. * Software compatibility - To my understanding, PCIe-based drives can require proprietary drivers. When it comes to SATA, generally all the OS needs is to support the chipset. There may also be capacity limits to U.2 due to it's physical size, compared to "traditional" PCIe drives, or SATA/SAS drives. Also, aren't some U.2 drives SATA based anyway?

Hmm, I never heard of Memblaze, Nimbus, or Violin. Also, where's Mushkin or Plextor? Anyway, I'm a bit surprised there isn't a SATA4 by now. Such a thing would reduce the need for PCIe interfaces and ought to be fast enough for the foreseeable future.

The new 960 evo disks are rated at 3500mbps, that would require a massive 28gbps SATA interface to achieve, not factoring in overhead. We barely have 12gbps SAS interfaces currently, with projected next gen SAS interface at only 24gbps. What we're seeing is the death of serial attached storage, for good. Serial interfaces are no longer viable for the capabilities of storage technology. What we could use is an easier storage express connector standard, like what we have for NVMe in servers. Maybe even DIMM storage modules. This would mean no more need for M.2 or pci-e storage cards in desktops, since the form factor seems better suited to a mobile system.

Display port 1.3 does 32.4gbits/sec, so it should be no problem designing some new cable connection for internal data drives. "DisplayPort version 1.4 was published March 1, 2016.[21] No new transmission modes are defined, so HBR3 (32.4 Gbit/s) as introduced in version 1.3 still remains as the highest available mode" source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort

Maybe even DIMM storage modules.

Dimm sticks right up from the mobo and the socket eats a lot of space on it. I don't see anybody wanting to increase their numbers. If they become a really common form of solid state storage, I could also foresee some people damaging their mobos by accident. So, in the end, it would be no different from the current m.2 connector. Of course if we reach a point where there's no difference between RAM and mass storage, things could be different, but that's still beyond the horizon.

If prices drop by 66% sure.

What we're seeing is the death of serial attached storage, for good. Serial interfaces are no longer viable for the capabilities of storage technology.

Wait... what ? PCI-Express is serial. Just that it has more lanes, each of one however is... serial. M.2 or U.2 are just PCI-e in a pluggable form. So is Thunderbolt. USB is... well, serial. DisplayPort is serial. And so on... Except for memory interfaces (DDR, GDDR, HBM), everything is serial these days. What the heck are you talking about "death of serial storage"?

What we're seeing is the death of serial attached storage, for good. Serial interfaces are no longer viable for the capabilities of storage technology.

Nope. M.2 is still serial as it just a form factor that is based around the PCI Express specification. Sata Express also still uses serial communication as it just combines SATA3, with PCI Express and eliminates the middle man (the SATA bus). http://www.snia.org/sites/default/files/12May%20M.2%20Tanguy%20M.2.pdf [URL="https://www.sata-io.org/sites/default/files/documents/M2_Webcast_Slides.pdf"]https://www.sata-io.org/sites/default/files/documents/M2_Webcast_Slides.pdf http://www.legitreviews.com/what-is-sata-express-and-why-it-matters_140093 [/URL]