The Toshiba RC100 SSD Review: Tiny Drive In A Big Market
by Billy Tallis on June 14, 2018 9:00 AM ESTMixed Random Performance
Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%.
Mixed workloads are often the toughest for DRAMless SSDs, and with this mixed random I/O test covering 64GB of the drive, the Toshiba RC100's Host Memory Buffer is of little use. The RC100 is substantially slower than other NVMe drives on this test.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
Power efficiency from the RC100 during the mixed random I/O test is also poor, but it's not a significant outlier compared from the competition. Total power consumption is half a Watt lower than any of the other NVMe drives.
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The performance and power consumption of the Toshiba RC100 are remarkably constant across the varying workload of this test. There's no sign of improved performance as the fraction of writes increases, which gives most SSDs the opportunity to perform more write combining.
Mixed Sequential Performance
Our test of mixed sequential reads and writes differs from the mixed random I/O test by performing 128kB sequential accesses rather than 4kB accesses at random locations, and the sequential test is conducted at queue depth 1. The range of mixes tested is the same, and the timing and limits on data transfers are also the same as above.
On the mixed sequential I/O test, the Toshiba RC100 is a decent performer with an average that exceeds what any SATA SSD is capable of. HMB is a bit of help here because the sequential access pattern is very cache-friendly even though the test spans a wider range of data than the cache can track.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The Toshiba RC100's power efficiency on the mixed sequential I/O test is great with or without HMB. The RC100 is clearly much slower than the high-end drives, but its power consumption is reduced proportionally.
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The performance and power consumption of the Toshiba RC100 are not quite as flat on the mixed sequential test as for the mixed random I/O test. The RC100 gets a bit faster as the workload shifts toward writes, and HMB becomes more beneficial with increasing write volume.
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Mikewind Dale - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
Interesting review. Thanks.I'm hoping that smaller, 11" and 13" laptops will start offering M.2 2242 instead of eMMC. I've been wary of purchasing a smaller laptop because I'm afraid that if the NAND ever reaches its lifespan, the laptop will be dead, with no way to replace the storage. An M.2 2242 would solve that problem.
PeachNCream - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
Boot options in the BIOS may allow you to select USB or SD as an option in the event that a modern eMMC system suffers from a soldered on drive failure. In that case, it's still possible to boot from an OS and use the computer. In that case, I'd go for some sort of lightweight Linux OS for performance reasons, but even a full distro works okay on USB 3.0 and up. SD is a slower option, but you may not want your OS drive to protrude from the side of the computer. Admittedly, that's a sort of cumbersome solution to keeping a low-budget PC alive when replacement costs aren't usually that high.peevee - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
"but this is only on platforms with properly working PCIe power management, which doesn't include most desktops"Billy, could you please elaborate on this?
artifex - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
Yeah, I'd also like to hear more about this.Billy Tallis - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
I've never encountered a desktop motherboard that had PCIe ASPM on by default, so at most it's a feature for power users and OEMs that actually care about power management. I've seen numerous motherboards that didn't even have the option of enabling PCIe ASPM, but the trend from more recent products seems to be toward exposing the necessary controls. Among boards that do let you fully enable ASPM, it's still possible for using it to expose bugs with peripherals that breaks things—sometimes the peripheral in question is a SSD. The only way I'm able to get low-power idle measurements out of PCIe SSDs on the current testbed is to tell Linux to ignore what the motherboard firmware says and force PCIe ASPM on, but this doesn't work for everything. Without some pretty sensitive power measurement equipment, it's almost impossible for an ordinary desktop user to know if their PCIe SSD is actually achieving the <10mW idle power that most drives advertise.peevee - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
So by "properly working" you mean "on by default in BIOS"? Or there are actual implementation bugs in some Intel or AMD CPUs or chipsets?Billy Tallis - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
Implementation bugs seem to be primarily a problem with peripheral devices (including peripherals integrated on the motherboard), which is why motherboard manufacturers are often justified in having ASPM off by default or entirely unavailable.AdditionalPylons - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
That's very interesting. And thanks Billy for a nice review! I too appreciate you doing something different. There will unfortunately always be someone angry on the Internet.Kwarkon - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
L1.2 is a special PCIe link state that requires hardware CLREQ signal. When L1.2 is active all communication on PCIe is down thus both host and NVME device do not have to listen for data.Desktops don't have this signal ( it is grounded), so even if you tell the SSD (NVME admin commands) that L1.2 support is enabled it will still not be able to negotiate it.
In most cases m.2 NVME require certain PCIe link state to get lowest power for their Power State.
The PS x are just states that if all conditions are met than the SSD will get its power down to somewhere around stated value.
You can always check tech specs of the NVME. If in fact low power is supported than the lowest power will be stated as "deep sleep L1.2 " or similar.
Death666Angel - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link
Prices in Germany do not line up one bit with the last chart. :D The HP EX920 1TB is 335€ and the ADATA SX8200 960GB is 290€. The SBX just has a weird amazon.de reseller who sells the 512GB version for 200€. The 970 Evo 1TB is 330€ and the Intel 760p 1TB is 352€. And for completeness, the WD Black 1TB is 365€. Even when accounting for exchange rates and VAT, the relative prices are nowhere near the US ones. :)