SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm

[bulanula]

Nice read here for anyone that is interested : http://www.anandtech.com/show/5067/u...nding-tlc-nand

[Ao1]

I’ve got some specs for Samsung TLC over in the SSD NAND data base. 8K page/ 1.5MB block. Random read = 300. Page programme = 2,700 and erase = 1.5ms. Both the random read and page programme times are well in excess or 2xn/ 3xn NAND.

The price of NAND sucks.

[Christopher]

I’ve got some specs for Samsung TLC over in the SSD NAND data base. 8K page/ 1.5MB block. Random read = 300. Page programme = 2,700 and erase = 1.5ms. Both the random read and page programme times are well in excess or 2xn/ 3xn NAND.

The price of NAND sucks.

You know, I actually think cheaper NAND is going to be destructive. I'm sure companies like Intel can always charge more, but the margins will get so low [for everyone else] that people are just going to be making junk just to survive. Maybe not this year or next, but someday... but sooner than you'd hope. When the price gets much lower/GB, they're gonna become commodities. So be careful what you wish for. By the time they're dirt-cheap as you'd like, you're not gonna want one anymore.

[anzial]

You know, I actually think cheaper NAND is going to be destructive. I'm sure companies like Intel can always charge more, but the margins will get so low [for everyone else] that people are just going to be making junk just to survive. Maybe not this year or next, but someday... but sooner than you'd hope. When the price gets much lower/GB, they're gonna become commodities. So be careful what you wish for. By the time they're dirt-cheap as you'd like, you're not gonna want one anymore.

well, it was kinda obvious with 34nm to 25nm move

[Christopher]

MTRON 7000 PRO 16GB SLC, Day 15

GiB : 65215.26
TiB : 63.6874
MBs : 56.45

187 94/93/105544458

The little MTRON just keeps getting faster. I'm actually quite impressed by it's performance (and that of the 3.5" 7035, which is now the system drive in the Endurance Rig)

[canthearu]

Hmmm, my torqx is going to take a very long time to kill (if write amplification isn't terrible). To fill the time, I'll also be endurance testing an Intel 520 - 60gig SSD.

I'm interested in:

a) The failure mode. A lot of the previous Sandforce drives failed very suddenly and unexpectedly ... like wheel bearings in a car failing and the car veering off the road and crashing into a tree (then bursting into flames) ... I'm curious if Intel's QA has improved that at all.

b) The overall number of writes the drive can handle. Given intel are using 5000 cycle NAND rather then the more common 3000 cycle NAND, it will be interesting to see how long it can hold out. However, apparently intel's NAND is exactly the same as the Micron 3000 cycle NAND, so it might not make any difference at all.

c) Interested in long term steady state performance. It should be pretty good, but maybe a touch below the Toggle NAND drives.

Anyway, benchmarks and stuff a little bit later after I compile them!

[Ao1]

^ great, I'm looking forward to this one

[Christopher]

@canthearu -- are you familiar with the 60GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe I tested?


I think the big difference with the the 520 will actually be the lack of RAISE and added overprovisioning. It's still going to act like the other SF drives in other respects, but I do believe Intel when they say that their drives have the good stuff inside. Someone has to get all the schwag IMFT stuff left over, and I'd guess that stuff goes inside SF drives frequently.

In terms of testing drives, right now the cupboard is kinda bare. I'm still not giving up on running a 64GB Vertex Turbo -- I'm gonna find one that doesn't suck. The MTRON should be sticking around for a while, and I have a "mystery drive" I hope to start testing shortly.

[canthearu]

@Christopher -- yep, I have read at least most of this entire thread! I was refering to your Mushkin Chronos Deluxe when talking about the toggle NAND drives being slightly faster.

To be honest, I'm a bit of a fan of the sandforce drives .... I like their approach to reducing write amplification and the ability to run without a DRAM cache. Now, that isn't to say that other drives are bad, or that there is nothing to fault sandforce with. (as the crucial m4 and intel 320 drives are quite excellent, and the sandforce drives have certainly had their fair share of problems) I guess the main attraction was that they were the first company outside of intel to really work on a drive design that didn't suck (like the jmicron and barefoot based drives did)

[Christopher]

@Christopher -- yep, I have read at least most of this entire thread! I was refering to your Mushkin Chronos Deluxe when talking about the toggle NAND drives being slightly faster.

To be honest, I'm a bit of a fan of the sandforce drives .... I like their approach to reducing write amplification and the ability to run without a DRAM cache. Now, that isn't to say that other drives are bad, or that there is nothing to fault sandforce with. (as the crucial m4 and intel 320 drives are quite excellent, and the sandforce drives have certainly had their fair share of problems) I guess the main attraction was that they were the first company outside of intel to really work on a drive design that didn't suck (like the jmicron and barefoot based drives did)

I had never owned a SF drive until I got the Chronos Deluxe 60 for testing. Since then, I've picked up a couple to play with and I do quite like them (despite their flaws and some of my skepticism of SF's claims concerning performance and longevity).

The 120GB Chronos Deluxe is pretty excellent, and I also like the SF1500 Vertex LE 100 too, but I've hardly used either to date. I just began using the 120 ChDx full time only two weeks ago, on hardware that was problematic with the original 60GB testing drive. I've not yet had any issues, but I can't rule out the odd future BSoD. Also in the Mushkin's favor, the 240GB version was selling for insanely low prices recently (less than a 240GB Agility 3, around $278), but I missed out on the deal.

The OWCs, Patiots, and Mushkins are all assembled in America, which is a nice bonus. But the Wildfire and OWC Mercury Extreme 6g are substantially more expensive than the Deluxe.

[bluestang]

I'm still not giving up on running a 64GB Vertex Turbo -- I'm gonna find one that doesn't suck.

Then you better get a Crucial M225 and do what I did

[Christopher]

Then you better get a Crucial M225 and do what I did

Zing!

Check back on Monday and see the next great hope for humanity... another new 64GB Vertex Turbo. Cross your fingers, say a prayer, and sacrifice a chicken -- then hope for the best.

[Ao1]

For the 520 NAND writes (249) = 1iGB increments. For host writes (241) a value of 1 = 32GiB, so in the example below 2,656 = 83GiB for host writes vs 80GiB nand writes.

The threshold for the media wear out indicator is 0, unlike non Intel SF drives, which have a threshold of 10.



For the SF2xxx NAND writes (233) = 1GiB increments. For host writes (241) a value of 1 = 1GiB



For the SF1xxx NAND writes (233) = 1GiB increments. For host writes (241) a value of 1 = 1GiB



For the X25-M NAND writes are unknown



For the Samsung 830 host writes (241) 1 raw increment = ( 1 * 512 ) / 1073741824 = GiB.

Medial Wear Out Indictor =
Wear Levelling Count (177)
Raw value /5,000 *100 = x ( 100- x) = % remaining life
10/5000*100 = 0.2 (100-0.2) = 99.8%

[Christopher]

For the 530 NAND writes (249) = 1GB increments. For host writes (241) a value of 1 = 32GB, so in the example below 2,656 = 83GB for host writes vs 80GB nand writes.

If I'm honest, 530 sounds much more awesome than 520.

The fact that two different reporting standards are used for host and raw writes is irritating. It would actually be handy if both were in 32MiB increments, but anything is better than 64GB chunks.

[Ao1]

Hah well spotted and the values for the Intel drives are GiB (even though the Intel manual reports them as GB). Better change that before John gives me a bollocking

Anyway with your 830 did you record 199 when your read/ write speeds were messed up?

(199) UltraDMA CRC Error Count
This is generally the literal count of how many times the controller encountered an error while processing an ATA command in UDMA mode. It also counts how many times a CRC checksum has mismatched during operations. Usually, this indicates a problem with the cabling or drive electronics. These errors can also be triggered by incorrect IDE device chaining or simply a faulty IDE or SATA cable, or when device firmware bug match some chipset detection problem (SATA II at 3.0Gb/s drive misdetecting SATA I at 1.5Gb/s bus controller).

[johnw]

Hah well spotted and the values for the Intel drives are GiB (even though the Intel manual reports them as GB). Better change that before John gives me a bollocking

I saw it already, but I did not complain because it is Intel's mistake, not yours!

[Christopher]

Last available SMART data from from the 830 was:


199 never incremented. It was never an issue of anything 199-related.

[Ao1]

Oh well. Did you ever get to the bottom of it?

[Christopher]

Oh well. Did you ever get to the bottom of it?

Not yet. I'm working on it.

[bulanula]

Anyone here have a Larson Creek Intel 311 drive to test ?

I think it would be interesting due to small NAND size but SLC specification.

[canthearu]

Ok, I got sidetracked for a while there when my body decided it was time to sleep rather then post on the internet!

Thoughts on the Intel 520: Somewhat faster then my Patriot Pyro 60gig, though not enough to change my mind that the 120gig sandforce drives with cheaper async NAND offer the best price/performance. And for those looking for just an easy 60gig drive, the intel price is a bit hard to swallow. I am only paying for the intel by giving up my entertainment budget for a couple of weeks. But the proof of the pudding will show in the coming months.

Anyway, here is some benchmarks for the intel 520 (I made sure it was not running fresh by endurance testing it for about 80gig or so)





Crystaldiskinfo also reveals a lot of juicy details for this drive.



Does anyone know a program that correctly decode the Power on Hours?

I will try and report daily on progress with this drive. I'll report on the erase fail/program fail count, the host and claimed drive writes, reallocation count, and the wearout indicator.

[Christopher]

Anyone here have a Larson Creek Intel 311 drive to test ?

I think it would be interesting due to small NAND size but SLC specification.

I got one. I tested it out with some endurance loop and it did fantastic. But at the time (several months ago), it didn't seem like there was any point. Hopefully, the MTRON could have fairly high WA to shorten the process, but that 311 was seriously going to take three or four years. Assuming it would ever die, that is.

[canthearu]

Well, I have started the torture.



This drive is cracking along reasonably quickly. I am using the following settings:

Static Data:12 gig static data (copy of windows install + a few gig of incompressable data)
OS/Platform: Core duo 2 - 2160@3.0ghz - Windows 7 x64
Date Started: 25/2/2012
Over-Provisioning: None

Drive details (for the record, though everyone should know it off by heart!)
Controller: SF-2281
NAND: Intel 25nm Synchronous - 5000 cycles.

[canthearu]

I got one. I tested it out with some endurance loop and it did fantastic. But at the time, it didn't seem like there was any point. The MTRON could have fairly high WA, but that 311 was seriously going to take three or four years. Assuming it would ever die, that is.

Given that the MLC NAND can often handle 2-3 times the specified write cycle count before actually dieing, and SLC is 10/20 times more durable and ton more forgiving of wear, it may be that the 311 (or even the MTRON) simply never dies.

[Ao1]

Does anyone know a program that correctly decode the Power on Hours?

According to the manual:
The raw value reports two values: the first 4 bytes report the cumulative number of power-on hours over the life of the device,
the remaining bytes report the number of milliseconds since the last hour increment.

That does not seem to mean anything however.

If you run this command with smartctl you will see the true power on hours under the device statistics

smartctl -q noserial -i -l devstat,0 -l devstat /dev/sda

The last letter is a reference to the sata port so you will need to change the value depending on which sata port you are on. The command will only work with the 520& 710. (No other drives support device statistics).