Intel SSD 520 Review: Cherryville Brings Reliability to SandForce
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 6, 2012 11:00 AM ESTPerformance Over Time & TRIM
SandForce's controllers have always behaved poorly if you pushed them into their worst case scenario. Should you fill a SF-2281 based drive completely with incompressible data then continue to write to the drive with more incompressible data (overwriting some of what you've already written) to fill up the spare area you'll back the controller into a corner that it can't get out of, even with TRIM. It's not a terribly realistic situation since anyone using an SF-2281 SSD as a boot drive will at least have Windows (or some other easily compressible OS) installed, and it's fairly likely that you'll have other things stored on your SSD in addition to large movies/photos. Regardless, it's a corner case that we do have to pay attention to.
I was curious to see if Intel's firmware did anything differently than the standard SandForce build used by other partners. To find out I took an Intel SSD 520 (240GB) and a Kingston HyperX (SF-2281 240GB) and filled both drives with incompressible data. I then ran a 60 minute 4KB random write torture test (QD32), once again, with incompressible data. Normally I'd use HDTach to chart performance over time however HDTach measures performance with highly compressible data so we wouldn't get a good representation of performance here. Instead I ran AS-SSD to get a good idea for incompressible sequential performance in this worst case state. Afterwards, I TRIMed the drives and ran AS-SSD again to see if TRIM could recover the drive's performance.
| Intel SSD 520 - Resiliency - AS SSD Sequential Write Speed - 6Gbps | |||||
| Clean | After Torture | After TRIM | |||
| Intel SSD 520 240GB | 284.5 MB/s | 162.9 MB/s | 162.9 MB/s | ||
| Kingston HyperX 240GB | 289.3 MB/s | 162.5 MB/s | 162.5 MB/s | ||
Surprisingly enough, Cherryville doesn't actually perform any differently than the stock SandForce firmware in this case. SandForce definitely improved the worst case scenario performance with the SF-2281 compared to the first generation controller, and it also improved performance compared to earlier builds of the 2281 firmware, but Intel appears to have not done anything above and beyond here. Based on these results I'd be willing to bet that Intel doesn't have source code access to the SF-2281 firmware otherwise it would've worked on a solution to this corner case. Performance in this worst case scenario isn't terrible but the fact that it's irrecoverable even after a TRIM is what's most troubling. Again, I don't see most end users backing themselves into this corner but it's worth pointing out.
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AnnoD - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link
Well I'm sorry, but... As positive as the conclusion is, to me this all sounds like Intel has found a way of hampering the competition. (I almost put "a new way" in that sentence instead, but I don't want to fire of wars...) How ethical is all this really? Is Intel putting effort into bugfixing itself, having SandForce doing the same work but with less manpower? Or are they actually not allowing to fix what Intel fixed for a while? I think this should not be so easily overlooked!quanstro - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link
i'm not sure how one could say that intel is morally obligated to give competitors the results of a year's testing. or that the competition has lost anything. if intel had not done the validation work, competitors would have exactly the same benefit from intel. would that also be stifling the competition?spazoid - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link
Do you expect Intel to give their findings and bug fixes away for free? Why would they do that? Do you have ANY examples of that happening outside of the open source community?Sunrise089 - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link
Yeah, I sure wish I had one fewer drive to chose from, especially if that one was the most reliable! All in the name of "fairness." ;)DanSmith - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 - link
Well thats how business works. Guessing you own a drive with a buggy SF controller from a competitor. Intel spent a year funded testing and bug fixing a controller they bought the rights to use so they get the benifit. Bet you OCZ have a similar deal but dont have the man power (or desire) to so thoroughly test.I know my time (and my companies downtime) is worth much more than the extra % for an SSD from a similar ilk as the x-25 and 320 series. As a sysadmin the thought of ever putting low cost consumer SSDs in production systems would keep me awake at night!
I will be getting a few of these to evaluate for sure.
Morg. - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 - link
You're (like anandtech) overrating Intel's edge w/ their firmware.At best they've got a few more resolved firmware issues than the default SF firmware.
Who cares ?
And most of all, who cares about a late and expensive third gen drive when the biggest issue with its direct competitors is that *some* of them cause problems.
Overall the 520 is a failure as a product and a resounding marketing success, as all of Intel's sponsored reviewers have an easy "real" story to tell. (like we had a 2281 that failed, put in the Intel one and boom it worked ... never tried another 2281, never tried another controller ... but who cares, let's buy overpriced intel)
seapeople - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 - link
Yes, it's a huge failure for a product to not only equal the fastest drives on the market today in performance, but to do so while besting them all in reliability and stability.Where's my sarcasm font?
MrSpadge - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link
Since it's ~50% higher on the Intel drive and the BSOD issues seem related to power management, I suspect Intel turned part of the power management off.MrS
coder543 - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 - link
yet somehow they aren't terribly power inefficient.Hauk - Monday, February 6, 2012 - link
Intel can you fix my OCZ Vertex 3 drives? They don't see to be as reliable as my old G2's..