Storage

Computex 2014: Memoright Shows XT3 TLC SSD & NF8-830 PCIe SSD
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Computex 2014: Memoright Shows XT3 TLC SSD & NF8-830 PCIe SSD

Memoright is a company that some of you might have heard of as we reviewed one of their drives back in 2011 but they have been out of the retail market for several years now. The reason is that Memoright is an SSD ODM (Original Device Manufacturer) nowadays, which means they design and manufacture SSDs but don’t sell them under their own brand. In other words, Memoright’s clients can buy SSDs from them, rebrand them and sell them to the consumers. The logic of their business model lies in the fact that it’s much easier to deal with a handful of large clients instead of the whole consumer and retail market because you don’t have to worry about distribution or B2C marketing for instance. Memoright’s strength is its technology as they have their own firmware team, so it makes sense to focus the resources on that and let the partners handle the consumer sales. 

Memoright uses only Marvell controllers, which is due to Marvell’s investment made in early 2013. The two companies are in an alliance where Marvell provides the silicon while Memoright focuses on firmware development. 

The first SSD Memoright had to show was their new PCIe 2.0 x2 SSD. The name, NF8-830, is quite awkward but remember that this is not the end-product. Memoright’s clients can (and very likely will) rename the product to suit their branding. The controller is the same Marvell 88SS9183 as found in the Plextor M6e and NAND support includes Toshiba A19nm as well as Micron’s 20nm NAND. The actual drive is M.2 but in the picture it’s in an adapter to fit in a regular PCIe slot. The drive should already be available to Memoright’s clients but due to Memoright’s ODM business model, there is no way for us to know if a company is selling a Memoright drive because there is no branding and Memoright can’t disclose any of its partners.

Memoright’s other PCIe SSD is aimed more towards the enterprise market with the PCIe 2.0 x4/x8 interface and capacity of up to 2TB. I’m not sure what is the controller but the performance figures suggest that this could be just two or four 88SS9183 controllers in RAID 0.

Memoright is one of the few companies that has openly discussed and displayed their TLC drive. The XT3 is scheduled to ship in Q3 and it will use Toshiba’s first generation 19nm TLC NAND along with the Marvell 88SS9189 controller. Memoright wants to transition to Toshiba’s cheaper A19nm TLC NAND but currently the endurance is not good enough for SSDs (from what I heard, it’s only good for 200-300 P/E cycles). Once the process matures and endurance increases, Memoright expects to make the change but it may not be until next year. Memoright is also developing a new TLC SSD based on the Marvell 88SS1074 controller, which is designed for TLC NAND with improved error-correcting mechanisms. 

The XT3 uses a similar SLC buffer as Samsung uses in their 840 EVO to make up for the lower performance of TLC NAND. Memoright couldn’t give me the exact sizes but I would expect the buffer to be a few gigabytes at least, possibly more for larger capacities. 

Memoright’s MLC offering is the X3M, which comes in capacities of up to 1TB. The controller is currently Marvell 88SS9187, although Memoright expects to switch to the newer 88SS9189 controller with better DevSLP support. Toshiba’s first generation 19nm and Micron’s 20nm NANDs are supported and support for A19nm and 16nm will be included in a future firmware. 

Memoright also had a “military-grade” XTS Plus at their suite. The biggest difference to consumer models is support for power loss protection along with higher endurance SLC NAND. I’m not sure if that constitutes as “military-grade” but the added features make the XTS Plus more geared towards the industrial market. 

In addition to SSDs, Memoright had eMMC solutions to show. The TLC eMMC in the picture is still in development but Memoright hopes to have it available during this year. The main use of TLC is in SD cards and USB flash drives but it could find its way to low-end smartphones and tablets as well.

Obviously MLC as well as eMCP solutions are available too. The difference between eMMC and eMCP is that eMCP packs DRAM into the same package, making it an all-in-one kind of solution for storage and memory.

 

 

Computex 2014: JMicron Displays JMF670H SATA 6Gbps & JMF811 PCIe SSD Controllers
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Computex 2014: JMicron Displays JMF670H SATA 6Gbps & JMF811 PCIe SSD Controllers

Sorry for the photo quality — I had to run to another meeting so I just took some quick photos with my phone

RIght before Computex, we published a review of JMicron’s JMF667H reference design SSDs. I was positively surprised by the capability of the JMF667H platform and was eagerly looking forward to seeing what JMicron had planned for the future. A visit to their suite revealed plans for several new controllers including both SATA 6Gbps and PCIe solutions.

The JMF670H is the new high-end controller set to replace the JMF667H we reviewed earlier. The JMF670H solves one of the issues I had with the JMF667H by including support for capacities of up to 512GB. The JMF667H was limited to just 256GB, which in my opinion is a bit lacking nowadays, even though it still caters the majority of the market. While I would have liked to see support for 1TB or more, I see the reasoning to focus on the more popular smaller capacities. Adding support for more NAND is actually quite tricky because doubling the capacity means that the controller now needs to keep track of twice as many pages/blocks, which may not be efficient if the NAND mapping table and firmware design in general is not suited for that. 

The JMF670H is still a 4-channel design similar to the JMF667H but brings better NAND support. Micron’s 16nm NAND is supported as well as 3D NAND, though unfortunately there is no support for TLC NAND. Performance seems to be more optimized for the 128Gbit NAND now because as I mentioned in the JMF667H review, the version with 128Gbit 20nm Micron NAND was a bit slow. The numbers in the picture above are with Micron’s 128Gbit 16nm NAND (i.e. L95B), so it seems that the performance is almost on-par with the JMF667H with Toshiba NAND. Mass production will start next month and we should be able to get reference design samples for review around the same time as well.

Next up are the JMF810 and JMF811. These are JMicron’s first PCIe SSD controllers and are scheduled to ship Q4 this year. The difference between the two is that the JMF810 supports both SATA 6Gbps and PCIe 2.0 x2, whereas the JMF811 is purely PCIe 2.0 x4. The silicon is actually the same in both but the JMF811 is sold at a higher price due to its higher performance, which is similar to what SandForce is doing with the SF3700. Having just one silicon tends to be more cost efficient because the risks involved in silicon design and manufacturing outweigh the savings of a smaller die, especially for a fabless company like JMicron. 

Design wise the JMF810/811 moves to eight channels. I think that is a must for a PCIe SSD to take full advantage of the interface because with four channels the bandwidth between the NAND and controller may become a bottleneck. Maximum capacity is limited to 512GB similar to the JMF670 but NAND support includes TLC as well. Performance figures are quire comparable to other PCIe SSDs, although bear in mind that these are design targets at this point — JMicron didn’t have a live demo or anything to show the performance yet. 

I’m fairly excited about the new controllers. JMicron kind of missed the SATA 6Gbps train because their first controllers were just that bad, but with the JMF667H JMicron finally got it right. I’m looking forward to seeing how the JMF670H improves performance over the JMF667H and of course the JMF810/811 will be an interesting case too. I just hope that JMicron is able to deliver the JMF810/811 on time and do it right because it’s crucial to their brand. They have had too many failed releases in the past, so they need to get it right this time to build trust and confidence among the OEMs. With the future of SandForce being uncertain, the SSD controller market needs more competitive players and JMicron has a key role in that.

Computex 2014: Transcend Shows SSD370 with Custom Firmware, SSD & RAM Upgrade Kits for Macs
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Computex 2014: Transcend Shows SSD370 with Custom Firmware, SSD & RAM Upgrade Kits for Macs

Transcend has lately been shifting their focus and the company’s strategy now is to concentrate on providing upgrade kits to Mac users. That was evident at their Computex booth since nearly half of the booth was dedicated to products designed for Macs and their demos. 

First up is the JetDrive, which consists of four models: 420, 500, 520 and 720. All these drives are similar in terms of hardware and performance and the only difference is simply the form factor and connector. The controller is labeled as Transcend but the actual silicon is from Silicon Motion (or SMI as often called within the industry) but Transcend has designed the firmware themselves. The NAND is Micron’s 128Gbit 20nm MLC, which allows capacities of up to 960GB. 

The 420 is a standard 2.5″ drive but it’s designed for Macs in the sense that it includes a toolbox for OS X that can enable TRIM along with an aluminum USB 3.0 enclosure for the old hard drive. The 500, 520 and 720 are for MacBook Airs and Retina MacBook Pros that use a unique form factor and connector (supported models can be found here). There is also a USB 3.0 adapter included for the old SSD like the one in the picture above. All models are available at up to 960GB and come with a 5-year warranty

Next up is the JetDrive Lite. It’s also designed for Macs and offers an alternative way to increase the internal storage by utilizing the SD card slot. The JetDrive Lite is designed so that it doesn’t stick out of the SD card slot like normal SD cards do, so it can comfortably be used as permanent storage. Performance is also fairly good at least for sequential IO but I wouldn’t hold my breath for SSD-like IOPS. Once again four different models are available: 130, 330, 350 and 360 with the difference being the Mac model that the card is designed for. The supported models can be found here and all models except the 330 are available in both 64GB and 128GB capacities (the 330 is limited to just 64GB).  

Transcend also offers RAM for nearly all Macs made within the last decade or so, including some rarer models such as the eMac.

The SSD370 is based on the same custom Transcend-SMI controller and firmware with Micron’s 128Gbit 20nm NAND but it is aimed for the PC market as the retail package doesn’t include any enclosures or other accessories that the JetDrive 420 does. I’m trying to get a sample of the drive as I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing what Transcend’s firmware team has been able to add to the drive compared to the stock SMI solution.

Some of Transcend’s OEM customers are already employing the SSD370 in server environments. While the drive is mostly designed for the mainstream market, Transcend believes that it’s also suitable as an entry-level enterprise drive.

The SSD370 (or equivalent to it) is also available in M.2 form factor in various lengths. Maximum capacities range from 256GB to 512GB depending on the length and the controller is the same Transcend-SMI solution.

The CFast 2.0 memory cards are designed for high-end video cameras and DSLRs that are capable of recording 4K video. Good quality 4K video, especially uncompressed one, may easily require hundreds of megabytes of throughput per second, so the cards utilize SATA 6Gbps bus to ensure SSD-class performance.

This year a visit to a memory OEM almost guaranteed a sneak peak of DDR4. While Transcend isn’t one of Intel’s official launch partners, they have a full lineup of DDR4 ready, although it’s mainly geared towards the enterprise market.

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The Intel SSD DC P3700 Review Part 2: NVMe on Client Workloads

Last week we reviewed Intel’s first NVMe drive: the DC P3700. Based on a modified version of the controller in Intel’s SSD DC S3700/S3500, the P3700 moves to an 18-channel design, drops internal latencies and sheds SATA for a native PCIe interface. The result is an extremely high performance enterprise SSD that delivers a combination of high bandwidth and very low latencies, across a wide span of queue depths.

Although Intel’s SSD DC P3700 is clearly targeted at the enterprise, the drive will be priced quite aggressively at $3/GB. Furthermore, Intel will be using the same controller and firmware architecture in two other, lower cost derivatives (P3500/P3600). In light of Intel’s positioning of the P3xxx family, a number of you asked for us to run the drive through our standard client SSD workload. We didn’t have the time to do that before Computex, but it was the first thing I did upon my return. If you aren’t familiar with the P3700 I’d recommend reading the initial review, but otherwise let’s look at how it performs as a client drive.

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The Intel SSD DC P3700 Review Part 2: NVMe on Client Workloads

Last week we reviewed Intel’s first NVMe drive: the DC P3700. Based on a modified version of the controller in Intel’s SSD DC S3700/S3500, the P3700 moves to an 18-channel design, drops internal latencies and sheds SATA for a native PCIe interface. The result is an extremely high performance enterprise SSD that delivers a combination of high bandwidth and very low latencies, across a wide span of queue depths.

Although Intel’s SSD DC P3700 is clearly targeted at the enterprise, the drive will be priced quite aggressively at $3/GB. Furthermore, Intel will be using the same controller and firmware architecture in two other, lower cost derivatives (P3500/P3600). In light of Intel’s positioning of the P3xxx family, a number of you asked for us to run the drive through our standard client SSD workload. We didn’t have the time to do that before Computex, but it was the first thing I did upon my return. If you aren’t familiar with the P3700 I’d recommend reading the initial review, but otherwise let’s look at how it performs as a client drive.