Computex 2014: Update on SandForce SF3700 & A Live Demo

One of the key things I have been looking forward to at Computex is hearing more about the third generation SandForce controller i.e. the SF3700. I just stopped by at LSI’s suite and finally have some new information to share. First off, LSI said that the controller will be shipping to OEMs in H2’14 but ultimately product releases will depend on the OEMs’ schedules. I believe we might see some products shipping in Q4’14 but I’m afraid that most OEMs won’t have their drives ready until early 2015 (CES?). 

The firmware development is still ongoing and LSI told me that they have just started optimizing the write performance of the firmware. In other words, it’s not even ready for final validation, which means that the OEMs can’t fully validate their products yet because the firmware is not final. That’s why I doubt we’ll see any retail products shipping this year and none of the manufacturers I’ve talked to so far have given me any timing for their SF3700 products. 

Performance wise LSI is focusing on mixed read/write performance. While the PCIe drives shipping today (like the Samsung XP941) provide great read and write performance, they aren’t optimized for workloads that consist of both reads and writes. In other words, the drives are more optimized for benchmarks as those usually test one or the other, whereas real world workloads will always have both. This is an area we definitely need to investigate more — we’ve been doing this for the enterprise for a while but we will likely be bringing it to the client side soon as well. 

LSI showed me a live demo of the SF3700 with 128KB 80/20 read/write configuration. This time there wasn’t any secretive or fishy stuff going on like at CES when Kingston had a live demo of the drive and we were allowed to see Iometer in action along with all the preparations (well, there wasn’t any to be honest, they just clicked start). Based on the graph in the previous picture, SF3700 is clearly the highest performing PCIe SSDs when it comes to 80/20 read/write as the Plextor M6e and Samsung XP941 are only hitting ~250MB/s. Obviously this doesn’t show the big picture and there are a lot of other variables when it comes to testing but the performance is certainly looking promising. 

Furthermore, the SF3700 should bring much improved performance with incompressible data. I wasn’t able to get any details other than that LSI is implementing an option to disable compression so the drives will perform the same regardless of the data type. While I think compression definitely has its advantage (higher performance, more over-provisioning…), I can see this being a big deal for some OEM customers who need their components to perform consistently in all workloads. 

Lastly, the last week’s acquisition. As it’s still so recent news, there aren’t much details to share. LSI did say that the acquisition won’t change the state of SF3700 at all and it will be licensed to OEMs like all previous SandForce controllers but the future after that is still up in the air. 

Computex 2014: Samsung Launches TLC-Based 845DC EVO for The Enterprise

While this is technically not a Computex announcement, Samsung is launching their TLC NAND based 845DC EVO today. This isn’t Samsung’s first TLC based enterprise SSD as a while ago they announced the PM853T but that drive is OEM only and is thus mostly limited to Samsung’s large OEM customers, whereas the 845DC EVO will be available in retail for small and medium data center use. 

Essentially, the 845DC EVO is just the retail version of the PM853T as everything from the NAND to the controller and firmware are similar. Samsung is only disclosing that the drive uses 10nm-class NAND, although I’m fairly certain that it’s the same 19nm process as found inside the 840 EVO. I hate to admit that I don’t know the exact controller inside the drive because PM853T was never sampled to media but I do have samples of the 845DC EVO, so once I get back from Taipei I will open up the drives and see what’s inside.

I don’t have the full data sheet yet but Samsung’s press release mentions that the drive is capable of up to 530MB/s sequential read speeds and 87K IOPS random read, which are quite typical for a SATA 6Gbps drive. The endurance goes all the way to up to 600TB, so while that is not MLC level, it’s still pretty good given that we are dealing with much lower endurance TLC NAND (e.g. the 800GB Micron M500DC does up to 1.9PB) and the drive is more geared towards the read-centric enterprise market (e.g. web servers). 

The pricing is very competitive in the enterprise segment. The 845DC EVO will be available in capacities of 240GB, 480GB and 960GB with MSRPs of $250, $490 and $969 respectively. I’ll be reviewing the drives in detail once I get back, so stay tuned for our in-depth review in a few weeks.

Computex 2014: SanDisk Announces Extreme Pro SSD

Continuing our Computex coverage, SanDisk is launching their new flagship Extreme Pro SSD today here in Taipei. SanDisk is targeting the enthusiast and professional crowd with the drive by promising the most consistent performance in a consumer-class SSD along with an industry-leading warranty of 10 years (!). 

The Extreme Pro supports SanDisk’s nCache Pro technology, which should be similar to SanDisk’s regular nCache technology found in other drives but with more focus on consistency rather than peak performance.

SanDisk isn’t disclosing the controller under the hood but given SanDisk’s history with Marvell, I’m pretty confident that the controller is either Marvell 88SS9187 or 88SS9189. The NAND is SanDisk’s 1Ynm, which in layman terms means SanDisk’s/Toshiba’s second generation 19nm node also known as A19nm.

The Extreme Pro will be available later this month through SanDisk’s retail partners and the MSRPs are $189 for 240GB, $369 for 480GB and $599 for 960GB. We will be meeting with SanDisk here at Computex and are hoping to get more details, so stay tuned for updates!