Intel Releases SSD DC S3510

In February Intel refreshed its enterprise SATA SSD lineup with the DC S3610 and S3710 SSDs, but left the entry-level S35xx series untouched. That changes today with the launch of the DC S3510, which succeeds the popular S3500 that has been around since late 2012.

Similar to its big brothers, the S3510 features Intel’s second generation SATA 6Gbps controller that was first introduced in the high capacity S3500 models late last year. Intel has remained quiet about the specifics of the second generation controller (and the SATA 6Gbps controller as a whole), but we do know that it adds support for larger capacities, which suggests the internal caches and DRAM controller could be larger. 

The most significant change in the S3510 is the NAND. The S3510 switches to IMFT’s latest 16nm 128Gbit MLC NAND node, which is a rather surprising move given that all Intel’s client SSDs are still utilizing 20nm NAND. The reason lies behind the fact that Intel didn’t invest in IMFT’s 16nm node, meaning that Micron produces and owns all 16nm NAND output. Intel and Micron reconsider the partnership and investments for each generation separately and for 16nm Intel decided not to invest — likely because Intel’s focus is in the enterprise nowadays and 16nm is more geared towards the client market given its lower endurance, and Intel also wanted to concentrate more heavily in the companies’ upcoming 3D NAND.

That said, Intel and Micron do have strong supply agreements in place, which gives Intel access to Micron’s 16nm NAND despite not investing in its development and production. I suspect the use of 16nm NAND is why the S3510 wasn’t launched alongside the S3610 and S3710 earlier this year because validating a new NAND node is time consuming and might be that the 16nm node wasn’t even mature enough for the enterprise back then. In any case, the S3510 is the first enterprise SSD to utilize sub-19nm NAND, which is a respectable achievement on its own already. 

On the performance side, the S3510 provides slightly better random write performance at larger capacities than its predecessor (you can find the S3500 specs here), but other than that the S3510 is a very close match with the S3500. Typical to enterprise SSDs, the S3510 features AES-256 hardware and full power loss protection that protects all data, including in-flight user writes, from sudden power losses. 

The endurance is also equal to the S3500 and comes in at 0.3 drive writes per day for five years, which is a typical rating for entry-level enterprise SSDs that are mostly aimed for read intensive workloads like media streaming. For more write-centric applications, Intel offers the S3610 and S3710 with higher endurance and better write performance (but at a higher cost, of course). I didn’t get the S3510 MSRPs from Intel yet, but I suspect that the S3510 is priced around $0.80 per gigabyte, but I’ll confirm this as soon as I hear back from Intel.

All in all, even though the industry is transitioning more and more towards PCIe and NVMe, there is still a huge market for SATA drives. Many applications don’t necessarily benefit much from higher performance and especially hyperscale customers are looking at cost and compatibility, which is where SATA is still the king of the hill. 

New Samsung SSD 840 EVO Read Performance Fix Coming Later This Month

The Samsung SSD 840 EVO read performance bug has been on the table for over six months now. Initially Samsung acknowledged the issue fairly quickly and provided a fix only a month after the news hit the mainstream tech media, but reports of read performance degradation surfaced again a few weeks after the fix had been released, making it clear that the first fix didn’t solve the issue for all users. Two months ago Samsung announced that a new fix is in the works and last week Samsung sent us the new firmware along with Magician 4.6 for testing, which will be available to the public later this month.

I covered the reason behind the issue in one of our earlier articles, but in short the read performance degradation is a result of cell charge decay over time that caused extensive read-retry cycles to retrieve the correct data. The new firmware fixes this by periodically refreshing (i.e. rewriting) old data, which recovers the cell charge back to its original state and ensures that no read-retry or ECC that would degrade the performance is needed. Samsung says that the refresh operation does not impact user performance, suggesting that it’s a relatively low priority process that is run when the drive is idling. 

The new Magician 4.6 also includes an Advanced Performance Optimization feature, which is similar to the performance restoration tool that Samsung released earlier. Basically, it’s a command that tells the SSD to rewrite all of its internal data, which resets all cell charges and hence recovers performance. It’s merely a supplementary tool as the firmware upgrade itself should be enough to restore performance, but in case the performance isn’t fully restored after the firmware upgrade (and some idle time to let the drive refresh the cells), the tool can be used to force a cell charge refresh. 

I haven’t run any tests of my own because I don’t have any 840 EVOs deployed in my systems (I only have one 2.5″ EVO anyway), but Allyn Malventano from PC Perspective managed to run some tests on a degraded drive to show the impact of the new firmware.

Before update

After update

After “Advanced Performance Optimization”

Allyn’s tests indicate that the new firmware seems to mostly fix the issue even without running the optimization tool. Note that Allyn didn’t give the drive any idle time after the firmware update, so the update appears the be very effective and with idle time the performance would likely have restored on its own.

Obviously, the big question is whether the performance will stay high because there was never a problem with freshly written data. We won’t know that for sure until a couple of months later, but given the way the new firmware handles old data it does sound more promising because no data should get old enough to be slow to read.

Some of you are likely skeptical about the effect on endurance since rewriting the data will consume P/E cycles, but I find this to be a non-issue. We know that Samsung’s 19nm TLC NAND is rated at 1,000 P/E cycles, so if the drive was to refresh all cells once a week, even that would only consume 52 cycles in a year. In five years time the total would be 260 cycles, which leaves you with 740 cycles for user data writes (for the record, that’s 52GB of NAND writes per day for five years with the 120GB 840 EVO). 

All in all, I hope this fix will finally put an end to the performance degradation. The issue has been bugging many users for months and it’s critical that the users get what they initially paid for. On one hand I’m confident enough to say that this fix is permanent given the way it works, but on the other hand I don’t want to be too optimistic this time around because the first fix didn’t turn out so great. Either way, I think this fix is the last chance for Samsung to provide a permanent solution because they already failed to do so once and it would no longer be fair to ask the customers to wait months for a fix that might or might not fix the issue. For now the only thing we can do is wait for user reports and hope for the best, but at least in theory the new firmware should be a permanent fix. 

Samsung SM951 PCIe SSD Now Available

We reviewed Samsung’s SM951 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD a little over a month ago and it ended up being clearly the fastest client-level SSD, beating its predecessor XP941 by a large margin. Our initial review sample was pulled from a Lenovo laptop as it was the only way to get early access to the drive, but RamCity just received its first batch last week and the drive is now available for purchase.

EDIT: RamCity will also be selling the SM951 through Amazon and I just got the pricing details. With today’s exchange rate it’s actually cheaper to buy from RamCity’s online store despite the shipping fees, although the downside is longer shipping time (about a week versus free two-day shipping for Amazon Prime members). The SM951 isn’t listed on Amazon yet, but the 128GB and 256GB versions will be up early next week once stock arrives to the US. 

Since RamCity is located in Australia, the shipping costs to US and other parts of the world are ~$18 with today’s exchange rate. The pricing is comparable to the XP941 and overall pretty fair when taking the performance gains into account. As the SM951 is an OEM part, there’s no official warranty on behalf of Samsung, but RamCity is giving the drive a three-year warranty.

Currently the 512GB model is out of stock, but RamCity should be receiving another 150 units next week and you’re also able to pre-order one today. The 128GB and 256GB units are both in stock and available immediately. I’ll also be getting the ‘vanilla’ versions that RamCity sells in for review as our initial sample has a Lenovo-specific firmware in it and I want to ensure that our scores represent an actual product that’s available for purchase.

Additionally, you will likely need an M.2 to PCIe adapter because M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slots are rather rare (most I’ve seen have been PCIe 2.0 x2). There are various adapters available online, but personally I’ve been using Lycom’s DT-120 and can vouch for it as it hasn’t given me any trouble. 

All in all, there are many PCIe SSD coming during this summer and some will undoubtedly be able to challenge the SM951, but for now it’s one of the only PCIe SSDs available. Intel’s SSD 750 is a serious contender especially for very intensive IO workloads, but if you’re looking for 256GB or smaller drive the SM951 is the best option.