Today we’re taking a look at Corsair’s Neutron NX500 SSD . This is the company’s second PCIe SSD, again based on the Phison E7 controller, but this time distinguishing itself with a custom heatsink, larger overprovisioning than almost any consumer SSD, and twice the DRAM cache of a typical consumer SSD. The price tag matches the premium specifications, but the real-world performance does not justify the premium.
Samsung has been an active participant in the high-performance external SSD market with their Portable SSD series. The T1 was introduced in early 2015, while the T3 came out in early 2016. The T3 was the first retail product to utilize Samsung’s 48-layer TLC V-NAND. Today, Samsung is launching the Portable SSD T5. It is a retail pilot vehicle for their 64-layer TLC V-NAND as they ramp up its production. The Portable SSD T5 also moves up to a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C interface, while retaining the same compact form factor and hardware encryption capabilities of the Portable SSD T3. Read on for our analysis of the product’s performance and value proposition.
In an unusual move for Intel, the chip giant has ever so slightly taken the wraps off of one of their future generation Core architectures. Basic information on the Ice Lake architecture has been published over on Intel’s codename decoder, officially confirming for the first time the existence of the architecture and that it will be made on Intel’s 10nm+ process.
This is an unexpected development as the company has yet to formally detail (let alone launch) the first 10nm Core architecture – Cannon Lake – and it’s rare these days for Intel to talk more than a generation ahead in CPU architectures. Equally as interesting is the fact that Intel is calling Ice Lake the successor to their upcoming 8th generation Coffee Lake processors, which codename bingo aside, throws some confusion on where the 14nm Coffee Lake and 10nm Cannon Lake will eventually stand.
As a refresher, the last few generations of Core have been Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Broadwell, Haswell, Skylake, with Kaby Lake being the latest and was recently released at the top of the year. Kaby Lake is Intel’s third Core product produced using a 14nm lithography process, specifically the second-generation ’14 PLUS’ (or 14+) version of Intel’s 14nm process.
Meanwhile when it comes to future products, back at CES Intel briefly showed a device based on post-Kaby Lake designs, called Cannon Lake and based on their 10nm process. Since then Intel has also confirmed that the 8th Generation of processors for desktops, called Coffee Lake, will be announced on August 21st (and we recently received promotional material to that effect). Ice Lake then, seems poised to follow both Coffee Lake and Cannon Lake, succeeding both architectures with a single architecture based on 10nm+.
Working purely on lithographic nomenclature, Intel has three processes on 14nm: 14, 14+, and 14++. As shown to everyone at Intel’s Technology Manufacturing Day a couple of months ago, these will be followed by a trio of 10nm processes: 10nm, 10nm+ (10+), and 10++,
On the desktop, Core processors will go from 14 to 14+ to 14++, such that we move from Skylake to Kaby Lake to Coffee Lake. On the Laptop side, this goes from 14 to 14+ to 14++/10, such that we move from Skylake to Kaby Lake to Coffee Lake like the desktops, but also that at some time during the Coffee Lake generation, Cannon Lake will also be launched for laptops. The next node for both after this is 10+, which will be helmed by the Ice Lake architecture.
| Intel’s Core Architecture Cadence | |||||
| Microarchitecture | Core Generation | Process Node | Release Year | ||
| Sandy Bridge | 2nd | 32nm | 2011 | ||
| Ivy Bridge | 3rd | 22nm | 2012 | ||
| Haswell | 4th | 22nm | 2013 | ||
| Broadwell | 5th | 14nm | 2014 | ||
| Skylake | 6th | 14nm | 2015 | ||
| Kaby Lake | 7th | 14nm+ | 2016 | ||
| Coffee Lake | 8th | 14nm++ | 2017 | ||
| Cannon Lake | 8th? | 10nm | 2018? | ||
| Ice Lake | 9th? | 10nm+ | 2018? | ||
The way that the desktop and laptop markets will be diverging then converging is confusing a lot of people. Why is the laptop market splitting between 14++ and 10, and why is the desktop market not going to 10nm but straight to 10+? What lies beyond is a miasma of guess work, leaked slides, and guessing Intel’s strategy, but I believe the answer lies in Intel’s manufacturing technologies and the ability to move to newer lithographic nodes.
(We should interject here that the naming of a lithographic node has slowly lost its relevance between the features of the process and the actual transistor density and performance, such that TSMC’s improved 16FF+ is called 12FFN, but relies on similar transistor sizes with enhanced attributes. But 12 is a smaller number than 14, which is the marketing angle kicking in. By all accounts, Intel has typically been considered the more accurate foundry when it comes to numerical lithographic naming of the process, which others consider is to their detriment.)
Intel originally predicted that they would move to 10nm almost a year ago, at the end of 2016 and 2 years after the launch of their 14nm process. But the challenge in managing the technology required to advance to their version of 10nm has been fraught with difficulty. In all cases it can depend on external equipment, fine tuning a process, or getting acceptable yields – while one manufacturer might be satisfied with an 80% yield, another might consider that a failure. Being able to obtain high yields (ramp up) will also be a function of die size, and so the newest nodes are typically launched with smaller mobile parts in mind first, as the yields for smaller parts are better than larger parts at the same defect rate.
Simply put, the first generation of 10nm requires small processors to ensure high yields. Intel seems to be putting the smaller die sizes (i.e. anything under 15W for a laptop) into the 10nm Cannon Lake bucket, while the larger 35W+ chips will be on 14++ Coffee Lake, a tried and tested sub-node for larger CPUs. While the desktop sits on 14++ for a bit longer, it gives time for Intel to further develop their 10nm fabrication abilities, leading to their 10+ process for larger chips by working their other large chip segments (FPGA, MIC) first.
From a manufacturing standpoint, Intel has been using multiple patterning techniques in its 14nm processes, and the industry is looking to when the transition to EUV will take place. Anton has some great writeups of the state of EUV and how different companies are transitioning to smaller nodes – they are well worth a read.
The crux of the matter is that EUV would shorten time to market and arguably make the process easier (if only more expensive), and several fab companies are waiting for Intel to jump onto it first. With EUV not ready, Intel has had to invest into deeper multi-patterning techniques, which raise costs, decrease yields, and increase wafer process times considerably.
All of which leads to a miasma of increased delays, much to the potential chagrin of investors but also customers who had banked on the power improvements that a typical new lithography node brings. Intel is still keeping spirits high, by producing numbers that would suggest that their methodology is still in tune with Moore’s Law, even if the products seem to be further strung out. Some analysts concur with Intel’s statements, while others see it as hand-waving until 10/10+ hits the market. Intel would also point out that it is developing other technologies such as Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridges (EMIB) to assist in equipping chip with high-speed fabric or glue-logic.
Given its position as a post-8th gen architecture, Ice Lake is likely to hit sometime in 2018, perhaps 2019, depending on Intel’s rate of progress with larger chips and the 10+ process. Intel’s other market segments, such as FPGAs (Altera), Xeon Phi (MIC) and custom foundry partners, are also in the mix to get into some 10nm action.
(Note that Intel’s next generation of Xeon Scalable Processors is called Cascade Lake, a 2018 refresh of the Skylake generation launched this year.)
Toshiba’s transition to their 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory continues predictably with today’s launch of their third-generation BGA SSD, the BG3 series. First unveiled in 2015, Toshiba’s family of BGA SSDs serves as their entry-level client OEM NVMe offering, with a focus on low power use and compact packaging rather than high performance. A year ago, Toshiba’s BG series became their first client SSD to adopt their 3D NAND and it was one of only a handful of products to use their 48-layer BiCS2 3D NAND. This year, Toshiba finally has 3D NAND suitable for widespread adoption in their 64-layer BiCS3 3D NAND. The BG3 is their third SSD announced with the new 3D NAND, after the XG5 mainstream NVMe SSD for the OEM market and the TR200 retail SATA SSD. So far, all of Toshiba’s 64-layer 3D NAND SSDs are using the 3-bit-per-cell TLC variant.
Aside from the update to the new generation of 3D NAND, little has changed with the BG series over the previous generation. The BG3 still uses the standard M.2 16x20mm BGA package with a PCIe 3 x2 link. As with the last generation, the BG3 is a DRAM-less SSD that supports the NVMe 1.2 Host Memory Buffer feature to mitigate the performance impact of not including DRAM on the SSD itself. The BG3 uses only about 38MB of the host system’s RAM to cache mapping information about which logical block addresses are stored in which flash memory pages. That 38MB cache is sufficient to provide a substantial performance boost for workloads with a working set in the 2GB to 16GB range, with Toshiba citing improvements of 80% to 150% for random accesses at high queue depths.
The BG3 will be available in the same three capacities from 128GB to 512GB, but the packaging has been slimmed slightly: the smaller two models are now 1.3mm thick instead of 1.4mm, and the 512GB model is now 1.5mm instead of 1.65mm. The BG3 will also be available mounted on a removable single-sided M.2 2230 card. The BG3 is rated for up to 1520 MB/s for sequential reads and 840MB/s for sequential writes, with a maximum power draw of 3.2W and a typical active power of 2.7W. As with all of their OEM SSDs, Toshiba is not disclosing exact pricing, but they say it is comparable to SATA drives. The BG3 is currently sampling to OEMs and will be on display at Flash Memory Summit next week.
Toshiba plans to continue transitioning to 64-layer 3D NAND in every segment of the SSD market. The OEM counterpart to the TR200 SATA SSD will be the Toshiba SG6, which will complete their client OEM lineup. We expect retail NVMe products to be announced later this year.
The Toshiba XG5 is their first SSD to ship with 64-layer 3D NAND and is their first mainstream SSD to use 3D NAND. The XG5 is a NVMe SSD with TLC NAND intended for OEMs. It aims to provide a balance of high performance, low power, and affordability. As our first hands-on testing of Toshiba’s 3D NAND, the XG5 previews the advancements 3D NAND will be bringing to Toshiba’s entire SSD lineup and SSDs from many other brands.