Sandforce Life Time Throttling

[Ao1]

The more I think about it the more I think that the implementation of LTT is flawed.

In theory LTT is supposed to prevent PE depletion below the life curve, but it did not appear to do that in the endurance test. It kicked in too late and it did not then restrict writes enough to protect the life curve.

Assume a default initial credit period of 2% and a 3 year warranty = 525 power on hours/ 22 days. The 2% credit is based on PE cycles that don't count towards the life curve.

In the endurance test I was able to incur 28,352GB of writes. Approx 4,096GB of those writes were 0fill. Let's assume that equates to 25,000GB of uncompressible data over 7 days or 168 hours. (150GB per power on hour).

I was able to use 2% PE credits and 9% of the PE life curve in 168 power on hours.

Anyway you look at it LTT should have prevented 9% depletion of PE cycles in 168 hours.

I also believe writes speeds should have been reduced to 3MB/s (or less) to prevent PE depletion based on the load that was being applied.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the V3. The V2 had a life curve based on 5,000 PE cycles. The V3 will have a life curve based on 3,000 PE cycles. Unless the V3 can better compress data or reduce WA LTT should kick in quicker.