Samsung is touting upwards of 70-90% better performance over their previous-generation....I love as everything becomes faster and faster. Being a Walmart forklift lift driver on the third shift I dream about one day to owning a Alder Lake and all Samsung SSD desktop. Greetings from the man on the street!
> Most enterprise drives are designed for sustained workloads and don't use caching.
That's not true. Enterprise drives are usually separated into read-oriented, mixed-workload, and write-oriented. The number of bits per cell (and pricing!) follows from that, although I don't know if even the write-oriented drives use pseudo-SLC. If they don't, then they might indeed still have a write cache.
Is there a significant difference in one or more of the following, between multi-layer NAND that is pretending to be SLC and actual SLC:
1) latency 2) longevity 3) throughput 4) complexity of error correction 5) speed penalty due to error correction 6) speed penalty due to free capacity (e.g. slowdown at greater than 80% percent of space filled) 7) disappearance (i.e. changes into multi-layer allocation if drive reaches a certain capacity)
I remember the Mac Portable. The original used actual static RAM and the revision used pseudo-static RAM. The pseudo-static RAM was not better in any metric except for price. Its battery life hit was higher as it was not static RAM. All of the Mac publications noted the difference in their coverage.
So, I wonder if this 'SLC cache' stuff is actually SLC or has the industry decided to stop differentiating between things that are not the same (i.e. static RAM and pseudostatic RAM).
You raise some good points. I think true SLC hasn't been made in quite a while, at least for these sorts of applications. You can still find low-density SLC chips for embedded applications.
Pseudo-SLC should do pretty much everything needed, which is why they do it. That it has a more capable front end on it is pretty much beside the point.
> multi-layer NAND that is pretending to be SLC
I think you mean "multi-bit" NAND that is pretending to be SLC. The number of layers is orthogonal to the number of bits being stored per cell.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
12 Comments
Back to Article
shabby - Thursday, December 23, 2021 - link
A bit on the slow side? The new consumer adata drives do 14/12 and 14/10gb writes.Wrs - Thursday, December 23, 2021 - link
Many enterprise TLC/MLC drives slow the writes to increase write endurance. For write heavy there's OptaneSamus - Thursday, December 23, 2021 - link
I was thinking the same thing but enterprise drives are always slower, even more so than OEM drives. Retail enthusiast drives always get mer hrspwrs.shabby - Thursday, December 23, 2021 - link
But does more expensive mean more better? ;)Tom Sunday - Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - link
Samsung is touting upwards of 70-90% better performance over their previous-generation....I love as everything becomes faster and faster. Being a Walmart forklift lift driver on the third shift I dream about one day to owning a Alder Lake and all Samsung SSD desktop. Greetings from the man on the street!ArcadeEngineer - Friday, December 24, 2021 - link
Those are figures for SLC cache. Most enterprise drives are designed for sustained workloads and don't use caching.mode_13h - Sunday, January 2, 2022 - link
> Most enterprise drives are designed for sustained workloads and don't use caching.That's not true. Enterprise drives are usually separated into read-oriented, mixed-workload, and write-oriented. The number of bits per cell (and pricing!) follows from that, although I don't know if even the write-oriented drives use pseudo-SLC. If they don't, then they might indeed still have a write cache.
haukionkannel - Friday, December 24, 2021 - link
We need U2 to consumer motherboards too. I have a lot of empty 3.5" slots waiting for big and fast SSD storages...mode_13h - Sunday, January 2, 2022 - link
You can get M.2 -> U.2 adapter cables. After your M.2 slots are full, then I think you'll need a PCIe card like this:https://www.sybausa.com/index.php?route=product/pr...
Oxford Guy - Monday, December 27, 2021 - link
'the drive’s SLC cache'Isn't that pseudo-SLC?
Is there a significant difference in one or more of the following, between multi-layer NAND that is pretending to be SLC and actual SLC:
1) latency
2) longevity
3) throughput
4) complexity of error correction
5) speed penalty due to error correction
6) speed penalty due to free capacity (e.g. slowdown at greater than 80% percent of space filled)
7) disappearance (i.e. changes into multi-layer allocation if drive reaches a certain capacity)
I remember the Mac Portable. The original used actual static RAM and the revision used pseudo-static RAM. The pseudo-static RAM was not better in any metric except for price. Its battery life hit was higher as it was not static RAM. All of the Mac publications noted the difference in their coverage.
So, I wonder if this 'SLC cache' stuff is actually SLC or has the industry decided to stop differentiating between things that are not the same (i.e. static RAM and pseudostatic RAM).
Oxford Guy - Monday, December 27, 2021 - link
Samsung is notorious for marketing TLC and QLC as 'MLC'.Calling something SLC that isn't actually SLC may not be as obviously bad but it's part of the same problem.
mode_13h - Sunday, January 2, 2022 - link
You raise some good points. I think true SLC hasn't been made in quite a while, at least for these sorts of applications. You can still find low-density SLC chips for embedded applications.Pseudo-SLC should do pretty much everything needed, which is why they do it. That it has a more capable front end on it is pretty much beside the point.
> multi-layer NAND that is pretending to be SLC
I think you mean "multi-bit" NAND that is pretending to be SLC. The number of layers is orthogonal to the number of bits being stored per cell.