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Understanding Apple's Fusion Driveby Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/24/2012 1:36 AM EST
87 Comments
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dagamer34 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkOf course, the idea with algorithms like this is to break them so they get better, right? :D Reply
spacebarbarian - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI dont really see how they would improve upon this, its really just solving the inconvenience of keeping system and frequent apps on the SSD and data on HDD. I'm sure Apple has a great algorithm already for deciding what gets to be on the SSD based on your system usage, though I hope there is an option to put new apps directly on the SSD on install (as I would want when installing games etc on my Windows PC). I hope windows 8 packs similar functionality because to the non-power user its not as trivial as it may seem to me. Reply
stevedemena - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - linkIf the drive is presented as a single volume I don't see how you could request a new app be installed & why should you? Shouldn't the automatic tiering automatically move it to the SSD if warranted? (Used alot) Reply
lyeoh - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - linkWhat I wonder is what happens when one of the drive fails? Say the SSD fails.
If it's was a cache and they did things right, it wouldn't matter if the SSD failed (as long as the system realized the SSD had failed).
Whereas in Apple's case it's not a cache. From the description it seems to me that you will lose data if either of the drives failed.
From what I see SSD failure rates aren't low enough to say that 99% of the time it'll be the spinning disk that fails. Reply
Zink - Friday, October 26, 2012 - linkIt's that same as having a SSD boot drive and a data HDD and managing files yourself. More disks is going to increase the likelihoods of failure. Reply
Site7000 - Monday, October 29, 2012 - linkIt's a primary drive; there's no backup component to it. You back it up like you would any drive. To put it another way, the SSD is for speed, not safety. Reply
Bownce - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - linkAny spanned volume works the same way. Double the capacity; halve the reliability. Whereas mirroring halves the usable capacity while doubling the reliability. Reply
Guspaz - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI would have expected a larger write buffer than 4GB... In fact, I would have expected writes to work much like reads, with all writes going entirely to the SSD and files being moved to the slower HDD later if they weren't frequently accessed. Reply
Paulman - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkWell, once it's been written to the write buffer, I assume the OS will decide whether or not to keep it there or move it to the rotational HD later.
And I don't see why greater than 4GB would be necessary. It truly is intended to just be a scratchpad/clipboard of sorts. As long as it can easily handle typical workloads, then the user shouldn't be able to see any improvement going to a larger buffer. Reply
Freakie - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI would think that media editors would benefit from a larger write-cache. So would anyone transferring a folder larger than 4GB I would think, which tends to happen not-too-infrequently from my experience xP I think a 12GB write-cache would have been pretty decent myself and would cover a lot of file-move scenarios. Reply
orthorim - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI am not sure why file moving is very important? Moving from where to where? Even with a thunderbolt connector, you'd need an external SSD to see a difference. Otherwise either the connector - ie USB 3 - or the external storage would be the bottleneck.
The 4GB write cache is for one edge case, which is that programs like to write lots of little files - file locks, temporary small stuff, whatever. The most recently used algorithm would miss those because they are brand new files - there's no usage data available. So they all go in that 4GB cache first - it's a great solution IMO.
For all other cases, the SSD and HDD dynamically re-arrange their contents. So if you're editing a movie, that movie will be on the SSD, for example. (I was about to bring up the case of a 300MB photoshop file but then realized that easily fits in that 4GB buffer too... whoops... 4GB is quite a bit, only movie editing will really exceed that). Reply
ijmmany - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkfrom what i saw at the launch also playing with in mac Store you can adjust cache accordingly i think up to 12GB write-cache Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkThe more they use for the write buffer the less is available to files and programs I guess. 4GB just for writes should be enough for most people in most cases though, only when you transfer something larger than that would you take a hit to performance. Reply
bsd228 - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link4GB is more than enough - you only need to store the last X seconds of writes and then flush them out. ZFS's ZIL partition for a home filer can be fine even at 2GB.
As for writing everything to SSD and then migrating out slow stuff to HDD, that requires a lot more SSD to work. Veritas's file system vxfs v5 includes dynamic storage tiering (DST) that behaves this way, but you have a target mix of fast/slower storage that is 30/70, not 1/8 or 1/24 like these Apple offerings. There is also a considerable overhead cost to tracking and refreshing file locations with their product. Reply
LeftSide - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI would think that a block based cache drive would offer more fine grained performance. The concept is interesting, I can't wait to see some performance reviews. Reply
Freakie - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkIt still could be block based, could it not? I mean, SRT is block-based yet it caches whole files, not just a few blocks that the file takes up :P If a file is on blocks 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11 then all of those blocks should be accessed an equal number of times, ensuring the entire file and all of it's blocks are transferred. Reply
orthorim - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkAbsolutely not. The opposite is the case. An algorithm that works on the OS level can make much better decisions on what to keep on the SSD and what to move to the HDD.
It could move all my media files onto the HDD, for example - I might watch movies, listen to music and look at my pictures, but the case that I'd edit these *and* the editing would incur a performance penalty is very small. It could keep all system files on the SSD. And so on. The OS has much more information about how your files might get used so it can make much better decisions. Reply
Zink - Friday, October 26, 2012 - linkIt could even keep track of which applications benefit heavily from the SSD and which don't to help make sure a photoshop install that gets used a couple times a month doesn't get pushed off the ssd to make room for big 10GB games that get played many times a week. Reply
CharonPDX - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkSSD caching, Intel's failed Turbo Memory, and the like have all failed, for the reason that they tried to be too tricky, or required too much manual effort.
This seems to hit the sweet spot. Automatic immediate caching for small amounts (a la Turbo Memory,) with large amount automatic repositioning between drives based on usage load.
No manual keeping track, but MUCH more benefit than the existing solutions. In all honesty, this is what I thought both Turbo Memory and SSD caching *WERE* until I read more in to them. This makes a lot more sense. Use the spinning drive as "volume" storage as it should, then when you figure out what smaller amounts of data should be on the higher-speed, move them.
Make new writes of smaller amounts of data go to the SSD, then write to the spinning drive when workload allows. No risk of losing data like a "regular" write-back cache. Reply
MarkLuvsCS - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link"SSD caching, Intel's failed Turbo Memory, and the like have all failed, for the reason that they tried to be too tricky, or required too much manual effort."
I don't understand this at all. Have you ever tried to use Intel's SSD caching debuted on the z68 platform? I'm guessing you probably are just spewing someone's thoughts on the platform without ever trying it.
I have used SSD caching on my z68 platform since I've started putting it together. After about 5-10 mins and a few reboots, SSD caching was up and running and incredibly noticeable. Aside from the brief setup, I've never spent another thought on the matter. It's the easiest solution out there. If the SSD dies randomly, guess what? nothing happens other than me replacing the SSD. My single drive stores everything and maintains cache for anything I load often. Reply
MrSpadge - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkSame here. Except that NVelos solution is just as simple (personally used that one as well). Reply
lowlymarine - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkDon't you think it's a tad bit early to declare Smart Response to have failed, seeing as it's only been available on notebooks and most desktops since the IVB launch earlier this year? In fact, I've seen a lot of cheaper Ultrabooks using SRT. Reply
Klimax - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - linkI don't think he is aware of that. It looks like he's talking about old technology (at least Core 2 or older) Reply
Paulman - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkWow, thanks for posting this, Anand! I guess you're right - it's not SSD caching per se (other than the 4GB write cache). With a 128GB SSD array and the OS directing what files to move/exchange from the rotational HDD onto the SSD portion, this looks like it could be an elegant solution.
Given the option, would us regular desktop users want to move to an intelligently-managed hybrid Hard Drive solution? I run Windows Vista on a 128GB OCZ Vertex 3 with a 1 TB drive as my other applications (and media) storage drive.
However, all of my games were originally installed on my rotational HD by default. If I want Starcraft 2, for example, to be loaded off my SSD, I have to copy over the main game directory and use a directory junction (Windows' version of a UNIX-style symbolic link to a directory) to point to the new SSD directory in order to "fool" Windows into thinking it's still on my rotational drive. And strangely enough, this process BREAKS when it's time to patch or update my game.
If I had a smart algorithm deciding what files were commonly accessed and pulled those files onto my SSD for me, that would be very effective, I feel.
Can Intel's "Smart Response Technology" already do this? Is Apple's Fusion Drive significantly different? Are there any significant downsides to these methods versus manually maintaining an SSD volume and a rotational HD volume, given that you throw at least a 64GB or 128GB SSD into the setup? Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkMeh, I don't see what benefit it has for enthusiasts... Junction points aren't much of a hassle, I like being in control, and SSD prices are plummeting anyway. I was gonna buy a second 128GB drive soon, to store more games on flash, but I might just jump on a 256GB given the deals I've seen (and with BF looming).
For mainstream users it's definitely an optimal solution tho. Reply
dcollins - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI am an enthusiast (work in IT, built computers for a decade) and I'm with Paulman. Sure, I can keep it mostly organized, but I have better things to do and I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of performance for convenience. I'd rather be getting some work done than messing around with my files. Reply
Freakie - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkWhy don't you just reinstall SC2 on your SSD? o_O Seems kind of silly to have to go through that process again and again when you could do just one things and have it work.
And Intel's SRT is the exact same thing, except it leaves a copy for parity on the drive be default (I believe you can turn that off). Where Intel's SRT differs is it's cache size. Instead of 4GB, you have a max of 64GB which is used to not only cache writes, but to cache frequently used files as well. So instead of having 95% storage and 5% cache, the cache is flexible and configurable up to 64GB. If you have a bigger SSD than 64GB then you just use the rest for storage as you deem fit.
So in your case, you could say, use 10GB for Intel's SRT write-cacheing and your remaining usable space for installing Windows/SC2/Web browser/ect. Or if you want something automated, then make your cache the full 64GB and it will work just like Apple's Fusion and the remaining 60GB you can use to install Windows and any other programs/files you don't want getting bumped off the cache due to inactivity. Reply
Bownce - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - linkBecause his DRM hacks would break? Reply
JTravers - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkWhat would be great is if you could use Fusion Drive on an SSD/HD combo you installed yourself. I have an SSD as my main drive and a HDD as the secondary in the optibay of my Macbook Pro. I would love to have Mountain Lion combine them into one logical unit and manage it for me.
I'm hoping there is an easy way to enable the feature through terminal commands or that someone makes a 3rd party app to do it (see: Trim Enabler). Reply
solipsism - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkYeah, I'm hoping someone finds out what OS X SW is handing this and ports it to other Macs as I also have such a setup.
I have made my entire HDD my user folder using the Advanced Settings options in Sys Prefs so my SSD can be my boot and app drive. I don't even use half of my 80GB X25. Reply
Andhaka - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkhttp://jollyjinx.tumblr.com/post/34638496292/fusio...
Already done. The technology to create a Fusion Drive is built inside OsX iteself. ;)
Cheers Reply
MadMan007 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkThat would be terrible, then you would actually be able to have control over your hardware instead of being pushed into buying a whole new Mac!! Reply
Pessimism - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link+5 to above. You will never see that kind of freedom or flexibility in an Apple product. Reply
MySchizoBuddy - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkyes HP and Dell will totally allow you to do this on their platform
/s Reply
euler007 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkThe eight caddies I just bought from Dell to install RE4 drives I bought from Newegg beg to differ. Reply
doobydoo - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - link'just bought' being the operative words. Reply
Peanutsrevenge - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkThe 4GB is probably about right, thankfully not a lot of writes occur during general use (else our SSDs wouldn't last 5+years), although I would much prefer to be able to set that write buffer.
Then again, if it's frequent data, it should just be getting written to SSD where it stays, skipping the buffer, or so I assume.
Looking forward to it getting torn up and analysed. Though I imagine that'll take a while, you guys have A LOT of work to do over the next month or so.
Now STFU and give us our podcast ;) Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI think you underestimate how many writes current SSD can handle in their lifetime. Reply
rscsrAT - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkAnd what happens if you change the SSD or the HDD? Reply
MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI was wondering what would happen if one volume failed. Are you dead in the water? Ideally, the OS would always be on both drives, that way a drive failure wouldn't sideline you completely. Reply
Freakie - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkYep, if your SSD cops out then you're SOL. Which is why Intel's SRT copies the file instead of swapping it. Otherwise they're pretty much the exact same thing. Reply
ThreeDee912 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkSince it looks like Apple designed "Fusion Drive" to appear as a single drive to work seamlessly with existing software, I'm guessing things like Time Machine backup and Lion Recovery will still work fine. Even if the OS drive failed, a Time Machine drive has a built-in recovery partition so you can still restore your files if either drive fails. Reply
PaulRod - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link"That 4GB write buffer is the only cache-like component to Apple's Fusion Drive. Everything else works as an OS directed pinning algorithm instead of an SSD cache. In other words, Mountain Lion will physically move frequently used files, data and entire applications to the 128GB of NAND Flash storage and move less frequently used items to the hard disk"
That first bit is essentially a hybrid drive like the Seagate Momentus, the rest is exactly like Intel's ssd caching... infact that's all it is with maybe a tweak algorithm. Reply
mavere - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkIntel's SRT is still a caching technology, which is more like the first part of this "Fusion" thing.
I can't think of any consumer products that would automate the transfer of the physical files themselves. Reply
Freakie - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkNope, the first part is write-caching while SRT is mostly file caching (you can write-cache as well, if you like) Reply
epobirs - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI find myself wondering if operating at the file level is any real improvement. The end effect is the same and it shouldn't matter is all or part of an application is cached. If something isn't cached it's because it doesn't get used much. Why waste SSD space on it?
If I use Word a lot but never do a mail merge, it isn't going to affect Word's performance for me if the files for the mail merge function live on the platter drive instead of the SSD.
'OS directed pinning operation' Isn't that what most modern desktop OSes do with frequently launched apps, cache them to RAM for quicker access? Why is that caching but Fusion isn't? Reply
EnzoFX - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI thought the concept wasn't worth it as per the last podcast =P. I want caching to be great, until we have 2TB SSD that are affordable, there will be a benefit to not have to deal with managing two drives. When you install a bunch of stuff, it can be tedious to manage.
Oh, and remember to check if the new 27" can still be used as a monitor as well please! Reply
epobirs - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkTo say that this isn't SSD caching is purely a semantic argument. The only difference is that this works at the file level rather than the sector level. Other than that it is still a continuing popularity contest to determine which items are worthy of a place on the SSD or are just as well off on the platter drive.
The big difference between this and building a PC with SRT enabled is that the Fusion drives comes pre-imaged with the Mac OS and bundled apps on the SSD, so you get the performance boost immediately instead of having teach it over the course of usage what files need to be cached. I expect PC OEMs to do the same as big brand machines start to offer SRT as a factory option. Reply
slashbinslashbash - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkNo, the real difference that makes this not a "cache" is that the files do not live on both the SSD and the HDD. They only live on one or the other. A true "cache" would have all files residing on the HDD, with selected ones also cached to the SSD. (Similar to how a processor's L1/L2/L3 caches simply store the same stuff that's already in RAM.... it doesn't disappear from the RAM when it gets put into the cache.) Reply
epobirs - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkUnless you look under the hood with System Report the user will only be aware of a single drive volume. This to mean screams "SSD CACHE!"
Seriously, this is just building on SRT. Is there any doubt Intel shared their code with Apple to get started? End users get SSD benefits without having to think about what should go where. Where have I heard that pitch before?
I hope it's smart enough not to cache big video files regardless of how often they're played. That would be a horrible waste of SSD space for a type of data that gets little benefit from the medium. Though in a mobile setting it would be advantageous for battery life. Perhaps a control panel for such settings is needed. Reply
spda242 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkWhen I heard of this yesterday I assumed that this was Apple's implementation of Intel's SRT with OSX? Am I wrong assuming that? Regarding this article and comments it looks like this is somewhat different? Reply
epobirs - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkIt's an extension of SRT that takes it a bit farther.
For example, Apple says this isn't caching because the files in the SSD aren't duplicates of the platter drive. They are the sole copies. This means you get more combined space from the two drives. Rather than a 1 TB drive with an invisible 128 GB cache, you have what appears to be a single 1.2 TB volume with two performance levels depending on where data is located. This is the biggest benefit I can see of operating at the file level rather than the sector level as SRT does.
It remains to be seen how much of this is Intel and how much Apple. If it is mostly Intel we should see a version of this for Windows sometime next year as six months is a frequent exclusivity term between Intel and Apple. Intel may make it exclusive to Haswell chip sets to promote those.
It's kind of like the variable throughput of some optical drives. Makers of CD-ROM games for console once had to pay a lot of attention to where a file was on the disc. You wanted code on the fast parts of the disc and video on the slow parts, assuming it wasn't slower than the video playback required. Since the video is linear it doesn't matter how fast it loads so long as the minimum is maintained. But code needed to be on the faster tracks to avoid long pauses between parts of the game.
In general, this is a good thing for users who are easily confused about dealing with multiple drives of differing performance. I really liked the idea of SRT but found it extremely flaky on the two H67 systems where I tried to use it. I gave up and settled for manually managing the placement of different file types on my systems. (It is very easy to make the Windows 7/8 User data directories live anywhere you want so the SSD doesn't get filled with big data files.) Perhaps Microsoft should be like Apple and make Windows more natively aware of the concept rather than leaving it entirely to Intel. Reply
Freakie - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkIntel just needs to add the option to disable the data-parity part to their drivers and then SRT can be exactly the same as "fusion". No need for new CPUs/Chipsets.
My opinion is this is almost purely Intel's tech that Apple decided they liked and then implemented themselves xP Reply
spda242 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkThanks for The explanation!
I have done The same thing as you with my OSX, I have moved moved VMs,steam,iTunes library and other Non-SSD friendly stuff to my HDD with a combination of soft links and moving the iTunes library but for some of my less technical friends this technology will be easier. Reply
jaydee - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkIn the Apple store, the Fusion drive is a $250 upgrade option (over the standard 1TB drive) on the Mac Mini (not available on the base model mind you, just the $800+ models).
So essentially they are charging an additional $250 for a 128GB SSD (probably Toshiba) and enabling some software bit that will decide for you what data gets put on which drive... at a time when consumers can purchase a 128GB Samsung 830 for $80, or 256GB for $160.
I guess we shouldn't be suprised considering they'll sell you a ($25) external DVD drive for $79, and upgrade from ($20) 4GB to ($40) 8GB of RAM for $100. Reply
PeteH - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkApple's doing what they always do, charging extra for convenience. Yes, you could seek out and buy cheaper parts, or manage multiple partitions on your own, but if you don't have the time, technical skill, or desire, Apple will handle it for you (for a price).
I see it as similar to the auto industry. Tasks like changing oil or replacing headlights are simple and cheap to do yourself, but an awful lot of people without the time or the skill (or just because messing around with their car scares them) pay someone else to do it. Reply
spacebarbarian - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkFirst I want to confess that I am not very up to date with NAND hardware, but wouldn't having a dedicated area for caching on the SSD be an issue with write wearing? Unless the SSD controller / OS handles wear leveling these days. Reply
Freakie - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkThe controller usually handles wear leveling :) Reply
epobirs - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkYes butt he time scale for losing a serious portion of the drives is measured in years.
Also, most drives have a reserved area for this purpose. The reserved cells are never available to the user and are switched in as cells wear out. This is why you see drives listed as 120 GB instead of 128 GB or 240 GB instead of 256 GB.
It's a trade-off that means the drive should last and function well long into the life span of the typical system. If you had a machine in continuous use for five or more years you might notice the drive losing capacity. Not an issue for most people. Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkIf I remember correctly, most modern drives would last years even in database use, let alone what a single user could do. The hard drive would probably fail before the wear limits were reached. Reply
derPat - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkThe Fusion drive reminds me the Hierarchical Storage Management of Irix I was using in the good old days ... HSM is still in use but is usually relegated to the big iron.
It would be nice if apple will support multiple tiers of storage. Reply
iwod - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkFor Random Write we have the 4GB sorted most of that. The problem is Random Read. Where do we do Random Read most since these needs to be inside SSD. For others Seq Read Write HDD isn't that much slower at all.
Again, i think the experience will be hard to measure with any benchmarks tools. I am looking forward to Anand's review/ Reply
halbhh2 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkI just suspect this is going to "just work" (as in just work well).
And a mystery to me is why hasn't Seagate gotten it together, after years, to get really great performance from their XT series. I mean, how long does it take to get it right? A few months I bet is enough if you actually try. Reply
epobirs - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkThe problem for Seagate and other HD makers is getting the full value out of the SSD volume meant moving out of their comfort zone and into higher levels of the OS than their usual product. It also meant much higher price points if they were going to incorporate really large amounts of flash memory. This makes them nervous since they have very price sensitive customers in the big PC OEMs.
I'm sure they'll keep at it but they've missed their window and that bird has flown. What is happening now is new computer models are coming with mSATA port/slots to allow a notebook to have an SRT drive along with a high capacity HD. Dell, for example, ow including a 32 GB mSATA cache as standard on several models.
This isn't as sophisticated as what Apple is doing. It remains to be seen if Intel and/or Microsoft will offer the functionality to enable PC OEMs to match the Fusion feature set. Much of it should be trivial, such as pre-loading the SRT cache volume with the OS files and any other favored items, although what you'd really need to do is mirror the appropriate sectors on the hard drive. At least until a file system level version of SRT is offered. Reply
MGSsancho - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkSounds like ZFS to me. Reply
Bob-o - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link:-) Apple certainly could have delivered the same benefits much earlier, had they not rejected ZFS. . . Reply
ThreeDee912 - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - linkAlthough Apple ended up ditching ZFS after running into licensing issues, they started working on the basic underpinnings for a possible new filesystem, and included it in 10.7 Lion, calling it Core Storage.
While Apple's still using Core Storage with the ancient HFS+ filesystem, the new FileVault 2 disk encryption system uses Core Storage to present the encrypted drive as a virtual normal one to the system.
I'm guessing Fusion Drive is also using Core Storage. Reply
orthorim - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - linkThanks for providing some actual information on how this works. I've been googling around for a while, apparently none of the other so-called "tech" publications are interested enough to actually ask... Anandtech stands out, once again. Thanks!!! Reply
piroroadkill - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - linkJust like all the other tiered/caching SSD and small NAND drive systems that have been around for ages.
Still, it is of course a nice idea. But it is in no way a "breakthrough concept". Reply
inplainview - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link"Just like all the other tiered/caching SSD and small NAND drive systems that have been around for ages."
Exactly and where are these systems? While they may not be new, they weren't mainstream. They lived in the domains of the mommies cellar dwellers… While not new Apple at least made it mainstream… This is what they do... Reply
space2001 - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - linkI read recently that the 1TB Fusion drive was supported with Bootcamp, but the 3TB was not... that's a shame since the internal drive is not upgradeable I would have gone with the 3TB Fusion drive. I also want the flexibility of installing Windows via Bootcamp, and see it's not supported on the 3TB drive. The Apple note also indicated that the Apple Disk Utility not be used for Bootcamp partition, and instead to use the Bootcamp utility.
Would using Parallels or VMWare Fusion (with Fusion drive? that's sure to be an opportunity for marketing!) get around the Bootcamp and 3TB restriction?
Another question: What about the Emergency Restore partition that started with Mountain Lion? Is that still supported with Fusion >drive< ?
Hmm... lots of questions Reply
KPOM - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - linkApple has confirmed that the Boot Camp partition would reside entirely on the HDD. Also, for some reason the 3TB drive is not currently compatible with Boot Camp Assistant.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5446?viewlocale=en_U... Reply
conitor - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - linkEveryone seems to be overlooking the hdd portion of the Fusion drive. How fast does it spin? Is it 5400 or 7200? At some point this part of the drive will be critical to large file transfer performance. Reply
Filiprino - Friday, October 26, 2012 - linkBetter get an SSD and an hybrid HDD drive, just saying.
Hard disk is one more level in the memory hierarchy. It can be managed in the same way system RAM and processor cache are managed. Reply
Oujmik - Friday, October 26, 2012 - linkAnand, do you have any insight into how this drive would handle a 200GB Aperture library? The library appears in the Finder as a single file, but will the fusion drive software be clever enough to know that it can subdivide it to put the bit you're working with on the SSD? This is really the make or break question for the fusion drive for me, if the fusion can make it feel like Aperture is on SSD, but without having to fork out for a massive external SSD then it could be a massive boost for photo work. Reply
liuping - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - linkThe Aperture library is really a package, not a single file (right click on it and select "Open Package Contents" if you want to see the files inside the package.)
It should work very well with a Fusion Drive. Reply
dmbartender123 - Friday, October 26, 2012 - linki've got a sandy bridge mac mini, if i put in a 128gb ssd in the extra hd slot, can I get mountain lion treat it like a fusion drive? Would I even want to? Reply
tangles - Saturday, October 27, 2012 - linkWhoever gets one of these macs with a Fusion drive and is willing to "play"... can the SSD and spindle drive be separated using Disk Utility, so that you have two physical disk icons appear on the desktop?
If so, Apple have sure made my life easier with ZFS and Macs that have single drives!
SSD as HFS for booting and Apps
Spindle for data using ZFS filesystems
I could even create disk0s4 and disk0s5 on the SSD and play with cache/zil.
Fingers crossed. Reply
akamateau - Saturday, October 27, 2012 - linkI that an AMD product? Why doesn't AMD sue APPLE for stealing their brand? Reply
cmdrdredd - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - linkI want to decide what stuff to put on HDD and what I want on my SSD. I don't trust any software to decide for me what deserves to be loaded on the fast drive. Gotta see this benchmarked. Reply
epobirs - Monday, October 29, 2012 - linkAnd you would decide what to put where by what method? Logically, you'd figure out what stuff you access the most and is therefore the stuff that would benefit the most from faster loading.
Surprise! The system does that automatically and saves you the effort. It isn't a deep decision. It's just a matter of the system being better equipped to track file usage than you are and executing on your behalf.
This is the whole point of having automation. Reply
AstonCheng - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - linkI really wonder that if Fusion drive is achieved by Mac OS X or by a chip. Reply
Andhaka - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkOs X via Core Storage API.
and it can be enabled on normal Macs as long as you have ML and a second drive. Even an external USB drive. ;)
Cheers Reply
ijmmany - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkFunnily enough this was something done by myself and a few people who i copied from the internet about a year ago. installing a 128gb SSD and replacing super drive from Mac book pro combining both volumes, I also did the same using a 4GB write buffer. i also have done the same to my gaming computer (windows). this isn't something apple and just thought of, maybe bettered. slightly annoying. Reply
Kev.LoveMac - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkI am really looking forward to seeing the new iMac review. Please also spend some word on the 21'inch iMac. Last year most of the word were given to the 27'inch, hopefully the review will cover a little bit more on its companion. Reply
thetrystero - Sunday, January 06, 2013 - linkCan you only fusion ONE SSD and ONE HDD? I currently have ML running on a 128GB SSD where I also keep my apps, and two 1TB HDD in raid 0 for storage. Can I fusion the SSD and the raid 0 pair? I imagine if this were possible, I'll get benefits of both fusion *and* raid 0. True? Reply
9comp - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - linkGreat post...:)
Yesterday I install Adobe software to my client that bought a new iMac 27" and I'm really surprise from the read/write speed....
I go to the disk utilities and saw 1 Psychical drive of 3 tera. I thought that is a SATA drive, but how it working so fast??
No I understand that is a fusion drive. Apple do it well.
Hagy Reply


text:
Intel's 3rd Generation X25-M SSD Specs Revealedby Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/5/2010 12:04 PM EST
97 Comments
Back to Article
apriest - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkYay!!! Now, how about trim with RAID 0? I'm still waiting for that with my G2 SSDs... Reply
HachavBanav - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkSome facts:
-Any OS uses one (or more) page size for all its io
-A RAID array is build using a mix of a "stripe size" on each of the drives participating in the array
-TRIMing less than a stripe is a very difficult task even for RAID 0
Example with any Windows 7 installed on a RAID 0 array build with 2x HDD and a 64KB stripe
==> The OS cluster size is usually 4KB, so you may (simplified process):
-Write a small file on the first clusters (#0 = 4KB)
-The RAID controller read the first 64KB stripe of the first HDD and rewrite it with 4KB updated
-Write another small file on the 2d clusters (#1 = 4KB)
-The RAID controller read the first 64KB stripe of the first HDD and rewrite it with 4KB updated
-Delete the first file will send a TRIM command to #0
==> Now, if the SSD TRIM this #0, what would be the 4KB values read from the first 64KB stripe for my 3rd small file to be written ?
This implies that the controller should:
-be able to read a dedicated special value for a TRIMmed sector
-be able to ignore writing those sectors while updating a RAID 0/1 stripe
-be able to compute parity on those sectors
==> And please keep in mind that TRIMing is not a mandatory feature, it just helps the SSD Garbage collector in its erase work...most SSD has some reserved FREE space that makes this TRIM feature as an obsolete one Reply
apriest - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkIt's Intel... they're smart... :-)
Seriously, nice explanation of the complexity of trim on RAID. Reply
MrBrownSound - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkI'm Running two individual X25-M's G2 versions separately; no raid 0 :( . I really am looking forward to trim adaptation in all the popular Operating Systems. Reply
JHX - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkAnand, for your next SSD tests, please do some full-disk encryption test and see how it affects performance.
I have an Intel G2, and using TrueCrypt full disk encryption, I only get 40-45% of the read and write performance.
Is that something you've looked into? Reply
DesktopMan - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkI'm also a little disappointed encryption hasn't been tested at all. SSDs make a lot of sense in laptops, and it's in those setups you're likely to see full disk encryption.
SandForce has built in encryption but I haven't seen anything about that anywhere. Reply
eanazag - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkOCZ's pro models which cost about twice as much as the regular Vertex 2 drives support it with their own software. Sandforce's implementation is not OPAL spec. Reply
eanazag - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkBitlocker will give you 60+% performance. Hardware encrypted drives perform at full speed. The encryption runs all the time. Only the authentication gets turned on or off for supporting it. Reply
JHX - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkNope, I tried Bitlocker, their claims are wrong. The SSD takes just as big of a performance hit as it does with TrueCrypt. Reply
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkWon't encryption be processor limited as opposed to depending on the SSD?
Maybe you should try using Westmere (Core i5) as they have hardware encryption support and will be much faster. (I think Windows 7 Bitlocker has support for it? Not sure.)
The desktop Core i5 6xx and mobile Core i5 (except 450 and 430) and i7 980X have AES-ni support. Reply
apriest - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkI'm using TrueCrypt 7.0a with a Core i5-520 (hardware AES support) on an Intel 80GB G2 and I don't notice a measurable drop in performance. If I have time later, I'll benchmark it with hardware AES support enabled and disabled to see what the real numbers are. Reply
JHX - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkEncryption wears on the SSD a lot more in general. Reply
iamkyle - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkSo what's going on with 64GB @ 2PM? :P Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - link:-P Reply
AkumaX - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - link:-P Reply
Perisphetic - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - link600GB?!?!?!?!
A chill went down Seagate's, WD's & Hitachi's backs...
Seriously, death to the mechanical dinosaurs of yesteryear. They should go the way of the VHS. Reply
aegisofrime - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkSadly they will probably cost a thousand at launch. Oh well. Hopefully this brings the 80GB ones into the realm of mass affordability at least. Reply
therealnickdanger - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkCurrent pricing seems to be under $2-3/GB for most drives of the best variety(SF, Indilix, Intel). If this means "roughly twice the capacity at the same price", like Anand says, then we're talking $1-$1.50/GB once prices stabilize. Simple math means a possible price between $600 and $900 for the 600GB drive.
Let's say it comes out an MSRP of $999 just for the hell of it... it won't take long for the price to drop. Considering that the Intel refresh won't support SATA-6Gbps (judging by the performance specs), I can't say I would want one anyway. The next batch of SSDs from OCZ, Corsair, Mushkin, G.Skill, Patriot, etc. will likely all support SATA-6Gbps and blow the doors off Intel just as the current Crucial RealSSD C300 does for roughly the same cost/GB.
Intel would have to be really competetive on price for its refresh to compete against the coming lineup of new controllers from other manufacturers and it doesn't look like Intel has upped their write speeds much...
Ah, but then it occurs to me that Intel's process advantage would allow them to sell higher capacity drives for less... so I guess what I'm saying after all this is that I can't wait to see an SSD wrap-up next February! :)
Plus, did anyone else notice the fact that the Intel refresh drives use 2x the load power?? Reply
Iketh - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkthe sequential read speeds are clearly limited by 3Gbps sata as implied by the article Reply
therealnickdanger - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - link... exactly my point?
The G3 Intel SSDs, the refresh, are still SATA-3Gbps. As I stated above, I think this will put Intel at a disadvantage as more next-gen SSDs using SATA-6Gbps roll out about the same time. Reply
Iketh - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - link"The SATA implementation has been updated to support ATA8-ACS so it's possible we may see official 6Gbps support once Intel has a chipset with native support."
My whole point is the argument about not having 6Gbps atm really doesn't matter, both from the above statement and jonup's point below Reply
therealnickdanger - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkThe sentence before that seems to imply that he was talking about the new motherboards, not the SSDs:
"Despite the Q1 release of Intel's 6-series chipsets, Intel is listing the new X25-M as being 3Gbps SATA only."
Hey, I hope they are 6Gbps, but even so, why release official numbers that are so slow? (by comparison, of course) Reply
jonup - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkBut that will not have an effect on the average user. 250MB/s sequential is more then enough unless you bench freak. I think the weakest point of the G2 and the G1 for that matter was the sequential write and it appears the G3 is addressing the issue. I also believe that the G3 will be superior in random writes at the time of the lunch. As for the sequential read, anyone that is not satisfied with 250MB/s is more than likely running a RAID array so the cost per GB will be more important than the max sequential read per hard drive. At least these are my 2 cents. Reply
therealnickdanger - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkMost people won't notice, you're right, but some people do. But that's not really the point, is it? Why should anyone settle for the low end or middle of the road?
Ever use multiple 50Mbps 1080p streams in Premeire Pro while mixing multi-track audio? Throughput is king. The more I can get, the happier I'll be, especially in a single-drive scenario for when I'm mobile. Reply
erple2 - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkSo you have multiple 50Mbps streams? To saturate 250MBps, you'd need roughly 40 of those running simultaneously. Maybe that's a realistic scenario. Audio doesn't use nearly as much bandwidth as that. Even a 96KHz 24bit audio stream is only about 300 KB/s. Mixing 100 of those together is only roughly 30 MB/s. I suppose that limits your total number of multiple 50Mbps streams to only 32 video streams (with leftover bandwidth).
I suppose you also have the writing to take care of, so you could halve the above numbers (50 audio tracks plus 16 video streams). Is that too few? I don't work in the music or video processing business, but based on what you threw out there, and some simple math, the 250 MB/s is more than adequate for the scenario.
I suppose that's why we have people filling up 93 Octane Gas for their cars that don't require it - they don't mind throwing their money away.
<shrug> Reply
eanazag - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkI noticed the power doubling but figure that is the max power for the largest drive (600 GB). I assume the power for the smaller drives should be about the same as original G2's. Reply
OneArmedScissorB - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkThe speed went up, and so did the power use. It's been the same case with many SSDs.
Flash chips use hardly anything. The amount of flash chips may not actually be higher for the 600GB drive, but even when it's less, like the current 40GB drives, the change in power use is negligible.
What bothers me is that everyone is still marketing SSDs as "more power efficient," but some of them actually use more than HDDs because they're pretty much brute forcing it.
Where are the SSDs for laptops that actually increase battery life? That would have been possible even before SSDs started blowing HDDs out of the water in sequential speeds. Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkNot really. They can have all the capacity they want, but as long as the cost/gigabytes is still prohibitively high mechanical hard drives will remain. Reply
B3an - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkDont be stupid. You can now get 3TB HDD's. And you can bet these 600GB's SSD's are still going to cost more than any 2TB or 3TB HDD.
I want HDD's to die already but it wont happen any time soon. Reply
nitrousoxide - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkThat's true. For $900 we can get four 2TB HDDs to build a superfast RAID 0 array :) Reply
jwilliams4200 - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkAnand:
I would expect the write lifespan to be directly proportional to the SSD capacity.
For example, if you had said 7.5, 15, 30, 60 TB lifespans for the 80, 160, 300, 600GB SSDs, then it would make perfect sense to me.
But this "30TB - 60TB" spec for "80/160/300/600GB" SSDs is hard to believe.
Can you clarify the relationship between lifespan and capacity with Intel? Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkI believe it's not just lifespan but over provisioning that matters as well, the latter we don't have any indication of at this point.
Take care,
Anand Reply
jwilliams4200 - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkTrue, but for that to make sense, the SMALLER capacity SSDs would need to have a higher over-provisioning percentage than the larger SSDs. Just looking at the capacities (300 instead of 320, 600 instead of 640), it seems likely that the larger SSDs have higher percentage over-provisioning.
But as you say, there is no clear indication from Intel. Reply
Jack.FX - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkX25-M 80GB can handle only 7.5TB writes??? Well, that means, that my SSD should be dead already. I've already 9.5 TB host writes, SSD seems to work fine, media wearout indicator is at 96%. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkThat's the minimum lifespan, you can obviously exceed it :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
-=Hulk=- - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - link4KB Random Writes (Drive Lifespan)
-> 4KB writes! Reply
Jack.FX - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkCan you explain why random writes lifespan should be any different from "normal" writes lifespan?
Anyway, my SSD is heavily fragmented, because I turned NTFS compression on. 80 GB is a little bit too small and 160GB cost a little bit too much for me. Therefore most of writes on my SSD are random. I also encrypted whole SSD with Truecrypt (that disables TRIM). Still, performance is quite good. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkRandom 4KB writes will have much higher write amplification than larger block sequential writes. Higher write amplification means that more flash memory gets written compared to the actual user data that is written. More flash memory being written means a shorter lifetime. Reply
Alexander Morou - Saturday, February 26, 2011 - linkI contacted Intel about this same question. The 7.5TB write threshold refers to the writes per cell. So the 9.5 TB host writes for the entire drive is of little concern, unless you've written to every cell with 7.5 TB of data, then you'd have a problem, but until then, it's nothing to worry about. Reply
XZerg - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkWhat the heck!?!?!? This is pretty much in line with a mechanical drives - what is the power advantage now? Except for idle consumption:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-moment... Reply
Nihility - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkDon't forget that SSDs complete writes and reads faster than HDDs. Their peek power consumption is for less time so total power consumption should be reduced for most applications. Reply
GTVic - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkThe power consumption should be listed per GB so we can compare. But if the max. capacity is increasing by nearly 4x then doubling the max. power required may not be too bad.
Apparently SSDs are not very good at idling so that may be an area where improvements can be made. Surprisingly they are not as cool as many people assume although I have yet to find a clear article on the subject.
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_c... Reply
Cat - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkIn the article you say that the upcoming enterprise drive will be the first to use MLC, but in the chart comparing E-class drives, the 50 nm product is listed as using MLC. Reply
Assimilator87 - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkWhat's the deal with Intel using MLC instead of SLC for the next gen X25-E? I got all excited when Intel first announced the enterprise refresh, but now it's just disappointing. I probably won't ever buy the E drive, but I still wanted to see it blaze through the benches =( Reply
Randomblame - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkAs usual the early adopters have been screwed. By the time mature useful ssds come out the first gen devices will be dead as evidenced by jack.FXs post. That's the price you pay for bleeding edge performance and bragging rights. My 3 striped cuda 7200.12s are still running strong and fast enough for now. This new generation may be the one to finally push me over to the ssd side though. I'm still waiting for that $1 per GB ratio though. A 160gb 3rd gen intel drive for $160 or less would STILL be hard for me to justify but it would be mighty tempting. Reply
ytoledano1 - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkFunny... I'm never an early adapter and this time I'm so glad I am. That 30GB SSD I bought a while back put me back a few, but the improvement in DB query time is 10-50 folds compared to a 10K RPM raptor. When have we seen this kind of improvement in GPUs, CPUs, RAM? Maybe in the 90s... Reply
MadAd - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkI dont mind being 'screwed', I knew this when I bought it. Its made for speed not longevity and thats what I paid for.
And instead of pushing all the high use stuff like caches onto mechanicals as many suggested, Ive put them all on the SSD instead and still ive only got 1.8TB of host writes used up.
My philosophy is by the time its starting to get full and fail, SSD technology will far exceed todays standards and Ill be looking to upgrade anyway. Have fun with the cudas! Reply
PsychoPif - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkWhat needs to happen for SDD is a nice drop in price. It's already faster and more convenient than HDD. It's the fact the it cost 20 times more that slows it adoption. Reply
iwodo - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkThis G3 spec is at best just similar to Sandforce 1222 controller. Which will properly be even cheaper then Intel's controller.
2nd things is the use of very large capacitor for DRAM cache which will bring the cost of SSD up.
So unless Intel aggressively prices these SSD Reply
Chloiber - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkFaster Sequential Write
Faster Sequential Read
Faster Random Read
Faster Random Write
Yeah right. Reply
iwodo - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkFaster Sequential Write
Faster Sequential Read
Faster Random Read
Faster Random Write
Faster then What? IT IS AT BEST SIMILAR TO Sandforce!
It doesn't matter if it is faster then Gen 2, The current King of Performance is Sandforce!
Yeah Right. Reply
Chloiber - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkFaster than Sandforce - in EVERY discipline. I'm talking about real world performance, not completely unrealistic ATTO bench results. Reply
PC911mickster - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkGreat read Anand!
Thanks! Reply
No1uNo - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkThe numbers provided are quite intriguing and suggest that the -M drive might actually be a better enterprise drive in many situations. You'd mentioned that "Intel tests 4KB random write performance differently on enterprise vs. consumer drivers so you can't directly compare the numbers between the X25-M and X25-E." This may be true, but presumably you can compare across generations:
The X25-M and X25-E have similar performance in tests presented here - 4k random read used disk = 35.8 vs. 35.4 MB/s for the X25-M and X25-E respectively. The G3 drive is quoted as offering almost 5x that of the X25-M whereas the X25-E performance only improves by about 50%.
Taken together with the identical sequential and random read speeds and the nearly identical sequential writes (170 vs 200 MB/s), database operations and web servers would seem much better served by the X25-M. Somehow I find that conclusion unbelievable. I just can't believe that the difference in random writes would be enough to tip the balance. I must be missing something.
On the subject of specs, I notice that the Corsair Force is faster or identical in all benchmarks vs. the X25-E but on the AnandTech Storage Bench, the X25-E wins. There is clearly more to the benchmarking story. Reply
Mathieu Bourgie - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkA 0.075W power consumption at idle is fantastic, but the 6W at load is a deception, although it makes sense, since it's memory and the more of it there's it, the more power it requires.
Seeing as density is doubled from the second generation to the third generation, it makes sense that the power consumption at load doubles. Then again, most of the time, in my case anyway, the drive will be idle, so this might not be such a bad thing after all.
I'm considering a SSD for my next laptop (Buying sometime next year probably, waiting on AMD/Intel new platforms) and battery life is very important to me, so I'd love to see some battery life testing on a laptop, comparing a 5,400/7,200 rpm HDD, G2 and G3 SSD if possible, when those SSDs come out. Reply
chrysrobyn - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkWhy would doubling the non-volatile memory necessarily involve a significant power increase? We're not talking about DRAM which needs to get refreshed every few hundred microseconds, nor are we talking about SRAM which has 6 transistors leaking 100% of the time, in use or not. This is all Flash, which will retain state even if you turn the devices off. Doubling the capacity involves increasing the amount of peripheral logic and drivers and such, but that is by no means the dominant factor in active power. Shrinking lithography will decrease the length of wires between features, and smaller devices themselves have less capacitive load, so maintaining one size should even decrease power even acknowledging that smaller transistors may have more off current. Reply
Makaveli - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkI was expecting this drive to be 6 Gbps and just run at 3 Gbps until intel released their chipset. So this means we will see the refresh of these drives supporting it, not a huge deal but unexpected. I also would have thought write speeds would have been slightly higher tho still not that important for an OS drive.
So it looks like pricing and capacity will be there big advantage with this gen.
Being a current 160GB G2 owner I really don't see a need to upgrade to one unless I have some give me a good price for my used drive.
My usage pattern is also not the same as Jack FX. I've owned my drive since dec 08 and only have like 820GB's of host writes so I think this drive will easily outlast any hard drive that i've owned.
So pro's
Great pricing
increased durability
No 6 Gbps Sata
Writes speeds could have been faster Reply
bigboxes - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkAs SSDs increase in storage capabilities they further encroach on traditional HDDs place in IT. Anand, how much longer until SSDs are affordable for file storage and practicality (>1TB)? Also, what is the lifespan of data on an SSD? Is there any degredation or data loss over time? Reply
Makaveli - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkOwned the drive since December 2009 Reply
linuxpro7477 - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkI've owned both the Intel X-25M and the SandForce-1222 (Patriot Inferno and Corsair Force series). My experience is the SandForce has some VERY serious bugs, and even if it somehow works properly for you, it's still noticeably slower than the Intel X-25M in actual desktop usage. Sequential transfer speeds are only meaningful when you're transferring huge files. For 98% of your average computer usage for an average user, small (4k) random read/writes are going to have a MUCH bigger impact on "speed" that you can see.
And the bugs I mentioned are very big ones. When I put the SandForce drives in my computer, I was getting BSODs and random crashes constantly. That was on a brand-new Intel server mobo with dual Core i7's, not some cheap MSI board. SandForce doesn't want to admit that there are some major problems with their firmware, and as a result, the vast majority of people buying those drives are now having to deal with problems that make the drive unusable and being given no more info than "a new firmware should be available soon." Pfffft.... for $350, I expect better than that. Haven't had a single problem with my Intel X-25M, not to mention the improvement in performance over the SF-1222 drives. And the cost is much better as well. Again, the Intel X-25M G2 has been, for me at least, SIGNIFICANTLY and noticeably faster than the SandForce drives in every scenario other than copying a HUGE file (such as a DVD iso) to another SSD.
Don't buy into the marketing hype behind the sequential transfer rates that are advertised for the SandForce drives. Do some actual benchmarking on your own and you'll find that the SandForce only reaches those benchmarks in very specific situations which you will rarely, if ever, see on your actual desktop. SandForce's claims about higher speed are a joke to the point of being borderline fraudulent, and the online reviews regarding those drives have opened my eyes as to which reviewers out there can be trusted, and who is just copying and pasting marketing press releases and calling it a review.
Anand earned my respect with some of his coverage on the SandForce drives. This was one of the few sites to point out some of the MAJOR problems with the SandForce controller and to actually look beyond the empty promises of 285MB/s sequential transfer rates. People need to understand the difference between large sequential I/O and small random I/O, and how that impacts desktop performance. If more people knew that less than 2% of your average desktop use will involve large sequential transfers, it might help consumers make more educated purchases.
Also, just picked up some Intel X-25E 64GB drives for some servers at work, and the results have been incredible so far. SLC Nand, FTW!! Performance is on-par with ramdisk for every scenario I've tested: high-load DB handling 3,000 transactions per second, a Zenoss Core install monitoring 5,000 devices (so again, TONS of tiny reads/writes), and our corporate email gateway which is doing a ton of filtering (spamassassin, pyzor, razor, clamav, etc) and handling about 500-1000 messages per second. Those are just a few scenarios where using SSD has given us dramatic performance improvements over HDD, by a signficant order of magnitude. We finally have non-volatile ramdisk!! Reply
Finally - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - link...and how's the pay @ the Intel marketing division? Reply
greenguy - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linklinuxpro has a point. I've checked the newegg ratings for Intel SSDs versus the competition, and Intel has the opposition beat for reliability (e.g. number of low egg ratings). Maybe things have changed since I last looked though. I have some x25-V and I love them.
And also, most typical computer use is reading lots of small files, not transferring video back and forth (which is usually stored on HDD because of $/GB anyway). Reply
Jim1900 - Thursday, October 07, 2010 - linkI have been holding off on a Sandforce drive for that very reason. It looks like it will be Intel for me, though I will wait to see how the G3 version works. I have SSDs on my laptop and 5 other PCs where I don't want to deal with disk crashes. But on my main PC, I still use a platter. Reply
haukionkannel - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkI am not seeing any fast drop down in price untill other manufactures comes with their smaller node models. Intel can collect some money by being the first in this smaller node SSD techology. In longer run allso us consumers will profit for this ofcource, because the production cost will come down with higher dencity.
But year 2011 or 2012 may be the year when SSD really may make it's breakthrough. Tha capasity is so big that it is usefull also for storage and not just a boot drive, for the prize. Reply
Axz - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkCan someone explain why a reduction of 9nm (~ 25%) in process would reflect in double capacity for the same price?
Thank you. Reply
atkoj - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkBecause the components are 2D not linear.
32*32 = 1024
25*25 = 625
Double(ish) Reply
mianmian - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkThe cost is roughly proportional to area density:
75% * 75% = 56% Reply
Iketh - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkthe same reason 640x480 resolution is four times the resolution of 320x240... at a quick glance, you'd think it's double
the same reason why 1080p is double the resolution of 720p
you have 2 dimensions of space, not 1 Reply
chrysrobyn - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkWhat is the square area of a device that is 34nm on a side?
What is the square area of a device that is 25nm on a side?
What is the ratio of the area of the two devices?
Multiply all the above answers by a common area and compare the device counts.
Extra credit: Convincing marketing that rounding is not the same as truncating.
Extra credit: Comparing the size of the minimum lithography feature with the size of the minimum printed transistor. Reply
Ninjahedge - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkWhile I do not see myself getting a 600 SSD anytime soon, the possibility of their arrival means that the workables at 250 and lower will now be coming within reach.
I still think that this technology is still rather nascent and needs to stabilize, but as they get the hand of it, you will see buisnesses START to buy this and once that happens you will see the pricing models begin to change....
The thing is, what is the best split for installation? Obviously, games that do heavy data loads would not see much from being installed on an SSD (first load time, that's it), but what proggies benefit the most from the boku buckeroos? Is there any way to split the load? Reply
Chloiber - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkBy the way - there is a mistake in the second table. Ephraimbased E-models use SLC, not MLC. Reply
ajp_anton - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkAre you sure the G2 doesn't store any data in the cache? My X25-V loses the last written data if I pull the plug. To me that "safe cache" doesn't mean that the cache itself is new, but that it's actually safe this time.
Or maybe the data is just cached somewhere else, but the same thing happened on both AMD and Intel chipsets with both XP and 7, and the mechanical HDDs in the same computer doesn't have this problem (smaller 8MB caches?). Reply
Sivar - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkYour OS is likely caching writes.
Any data cached in RAM will be lost if power is lost before the data is committed to the SSD.
Reason: Even with very large amounts of cache memory on hard drives or SSD's, adding an operating system cache will improve performance. In addition to simply having more data cached, the OS also "knows" more about the data, and how you are using it. To a hard drive, its all just a blob of bytes.
You can turn off unsafe caching by disabling "Advanced Performance" for that drive in your Windows control panel. Reply
Sivar - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkHow long will Intel SSD's last?
"Intel went one step further and delivered 5x what the OEMs requested. Thus Intel will guarantee that you can write 100GB of data to one of its MLC SSDs every day, for the next five years, and your data will remain intact"
5 years is about 1,825 days. 1,825 * 100GB/day = 182,500GB total
That's just over 178 TB. Even the new, unreleased SSD figures of 30TB - 60TB doesn't even come close.
In fact, using these figures, my 160GB G2 can only be filled up about 96 times before it dies. Reply
nitrousoxide - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkSo finally comes the 25nm NANDs! It is a great breakthrough from the 34nm SSDs `cuz if Intel prices it aggresively, we finally get a SSD with around 1$/GB and we will be able to enjoy a 40GB boot-drive at very low price-as cheap as a 500GB HDD we use today. But still I would not get this SSD `cuz my laptop has only one HDD bay. And the premium I have to pay for the 300GB or 600GB model is still too high. And I still can't get a decent capacity from one that I can afford. 0.5$/GB, namely the next generation SSD would be a good choice because with only 160$ I can upgrade to a 320G SSD, that's finally enough for daily use.
Seagate's Momentus XT SSH (Solid State Hybrids) would be a great choice during this transition period. It's priced at USD 130 and has 500GB Capacity. Though we can get a 1TB HDD at much lower price, the performance boost it provides is considerable. I've read many tests on Momentus XT and it receives really good comments! I'm not sure how Seagate got such high performance boost with only 4GB Reading Cache so it is really amazing when I see it overrun even the fastest HDD, the WD Velociraptor (well, the Seagate 15000rpm Cheetahs aren't for PCs or laptops lol). Hope the seagate engineers can add a bigger Reading-Writing Cache to make it behave more like an SSD! And I would definitely choose the SSH as the upgrade for my turtle-speed 5400rpm HDD before I can afford an SSD. Reply
zing99 - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkI may be making a mistake, BUT let's suppose the maximum 4KB random write speed is 150MB/sec. That means you can write a GB (1024MB) in 6.83 seconds. In 6991 secs (116 mins), you can write out 1 TB. The minimum lifespan of the older drive is 7.5TB, so that means you can use up the life span of the drive in 870 minutes, or roughly 14 hours and 30 minutes. So if you were running a continuous security web cam, or buffering video, or doing some type of application that writes all the time the drive would last less than one day. And these newest versions would only last 2 or 3 days.
However, I read some other research suggesting that most people afraid of wearing out their SSD's needn't be. That they were often rated for over 100,000 cycles or data write at bare minimum. Looking at it this way, a 250GB SSD would take 6 seconds to fill each GB at 170 MB/sec. So 1506 secs or 25 minutes to complete one full write cycle. So 2,509,804 mins or 41,830 hours, or 4.77 years of writing continuously, 24 hours a day. Other estimates put the write cycles upwards towards a million, giving the drive 47 years of 24 hour a day writing. In fact one such article explains another similar drive would last 57 years at it's top speed of 90MB/sec.. Or something roughly like this. It's on the "SSD Myths and Legends" site - http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.ht...
Everything I've read before this, seems to indicate at least 100,000 cycles if not more. So I'm confused as to why they are hinting such a low life span on these drives. I'm likely misunderstanding this. Either that or it's a likely a typo. At least I hope so. Reply
Mr Perfect - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkIt would be extremely difficult to find enough data to continuously write 150MB every second. That security camera would likely feed less then a MB a second to the drive. Reply
Makaveli - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkNot that your math is off but SSD's are used for their low seek times and speed with random read and writes.
What benefit would you get with having one sitting in a box recording video feeds all day?
The price alone for an SSD would not make that suitable choice for that example which would require a vast amount of storage, archiving Video feeds will not be small. Reply
noblemo - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkYour point is valid that most users are better off recording video to hard disk drives. However, SSDs would be great for capturing and editing raw high definition video at 100-200 MB/s. Later the video can be transferred to hard disks for archiving, and the empty SSDs used again. It is conceivable that an application like this would eventually exhaust the life span of the SSDs, but the cost:benefit is justified for a professional production company. Reply
zing99 - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - linktrue noblemo. Thankfully, the other article I read seems to think the SSD's can write much longer even if they are writing at their maximum speed 24/7. In fact it thinks they will last many years. Reply
zing99 - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link@Makaveli, If you read the article in the link I posted, you'd know that the video feed was only ONE example that would entail a lot of writing to the drive. I have no use for writing video to the drive, but there are tons of other applications that write lots of data. So I think you actually missed the point here. Of course the advantage of the SSD is seek times/random read etc. But the amount of data quoted in this article for the life span is really very small. So low I hink it must be a typo. Just making a mirror image of another HD or moving 200GB back and forth in a server would wear that out. Again, my point was that the longevity is usually thought to be far higher than what this article states. What I said had NOTHING to do with the desire to write video to the drive.
DoktorSleepless - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkIt's really hard to get a sense of the type of performance you can get from ssds in the real world even when using pcmark vantage, especially for games. I would love to see more real gaming tests like was done here.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2614/14 Reply
iwodo - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkI posted the questions in forum, and asked, and with Anand's articles, come to the basic conclusion is, we have reach the optimum speed gain with SSD.
i.e the bottleneck no longer lies within SSD, it is the CPU who could not decode and operate fast enough , or OS and software are not totally optimized for SSD. At least that is with the case of Sandforce. Reply
Pegleg7 - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkWhat exactly does "data retention" mean in the article? The duration the drive will store data from the point it is completely unpowered?
I'm assuming "longevity" corresponds to how many times the drive can be rewritten. Reply
TinyTeeth - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkThe specs that matter for loading applications, game levels etc. and booting the OS (as opposed to copying large files) fast are random IOPS right? And really nothing else? Reply
Pjotr - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - link6.0W max power usage means it passes all common hard drives today. Will this be a problem in future generations of SSDs, that power becomes an issue. Laptops? Reply
Makaveli - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - link6 watts does seem alot, but I believe someone else already touched on this a few pages back. Since the SSD is so much faster than a Hard drive it will not stay at full load as long as a hard drive would. So the shorten amount of time to complete task should balance out the slight higher load over the previous gen. Reply
Guspaz - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkYou're going to have to do better than 170MB/s sustained writes. Current generation drives (and even previous-generation drives) beat that handily; I expect Intel's *next* generation drives to be at least as good as the first-gen Indilinx drives! Reply
AnnihilatorX - Wednesday, October 06, 2010 - linkSpam above, don't click the link thinking it's an article about SSD trim lol Reply
PeanutGallery - Friday, October 08, 2010 - linkI'm planning to buy a 13 inch MacBook Pro soon, and maybe install one of the new Intel SSDs when they come out.
Will I be able to use the hardware encryption the SSD? How? Does the usage of BootCamp affect the answer? Reply
zing99 - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - linkYou'ld get a lot more out of it just by purly running windows 7 and having the file system be native ntfs. Macbooks are also fairly slow. So when you go to do bootcamp etc, you don't get that great of an end product. Also they have slow core2duo. An i7 based pc tower would be best. If it must be mobile, then an i7 based laptop. You can do that in mac, but they charge double with no real benefits. At least not for me. And I do a lot of stuff, video editing included on pc. Long waits for video to encode is something I don't enjoy on macs. But if you must.. you must :-) Reply
o2eazy - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - linkAnd I'm new to this is that I just been reading the comprehensive article on the reasons why SSD Drives slow down, ever since Windows NT 4 I have allocated the swap file to a separate hard drive to increase performance, it seems that within SSD drive it would be best to have all temporary and swap files on my traditional platter drive rather than using up original speed capabilities of the SSD drive. My question is how do I install so that this happens during setup as if my understanding is correct once the data has been written to the SSD drive the damage has been done so changing these things afterwards and would be less effective than doing it during setup. I'm currently running Windows 7 ultimate 64-bit on Intel x48 chipset with a Reply
CharonPDX - Thursday, December 02, 2010 - linkSpammity spam! Reply
Calle2003 - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - linkAny release date out yet? Reply
athanasios917 - Saturday, January 22, 2011 - linkthey can take the old hdd platters,and start melting the metals from it to make a terminator that breaks into ssd plants,and destroys intel to save hdds Reply
Cyborg1024 - Wednesday, February 02, 2011 - linkIntel's SSD's are better at wear leveling and least likely to fail prematurely. Random access is top notch, after reading many reviews on multiple sites about OCZ and other brand issues. Sandforce controllers tend to be over-rated and sequential r/w speeds is not the biggest factor in OS drives. I can vouch that a 4yr old processor is booting in 20 seconds usable with Win 7 pro on an 80 GB X2 drive. Thats compared with about 1.5min on a 7200RPM Seagate. There is alot of great benchmarks online that show the Intel G2 series drives still perform extremely well and are the most reliable with a 1.1 wear leveling ratio. If you drive is wasting writes thats lost lifespan and to me reliability is the number one factor. You can check reviews on NewEgg too and see how many DOA's or Dead in a week drives people are dealing with. Ofcourse properly aligning the drives to 4K sector size is critical as well for the SSD's. Make sure if you image one using Acronis or other app that you check alignment. I had to use Paragon Alignment Tool to correct mine. Also on the Intels its important to schedule drive optimizations to take advantage of TRIM. If you do that your SSD should stay lightning fast. For the average Joe an SSD is going to make a much more meaningful difference than a processor upgrade. The hard drive is still the biggest bottleneck on everyone's systems. My older system boots and responds faster than my quad core now. Now about those G3 drives, anyone have an official release date on inside scoop. My thought is Intel may be having issues working with the new 25nm size and reduced writes. Makes you wonder if its worth shrinking the die anymore using the existing tech. Personally I wouldnt mind having a 3.5" 1TB using the current tech since its proven to be a workhorse. Ofcourse the price on such a beast would be way out of my paygrade but maybe in a couple years that will be feasable. For now its SSD for boot drive and good old platter drive for media and data files. Either way I wouldnt stop running your full backups! Reply
Edgemil - Friday, February 11, 2011 - linkDoes anyone know what the drive´s lifespan were on the Intel G1 drive?
Would be nice to see the G1 stats in the comparison table as well. Reply

subset: commoncrawl