The Silicon Motion SM2262EN SSD Controller Preview: Good And Bad Amplified
by Billy Tallis on August 1, 2018 11:45 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%.
The Silicon Motion SM2262EN takes the lead among flash-based SSDs for mixed random I/O performance, though by a margin that is small enough that it may be due entirely to the capacity advantage over the 1TB 970 EVO. The performance is a clear improvement over the already-great HP EX920.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
Power efficiency for the SM2262EN has improved but is not quite in the top tier for flash-based SSDs. Total power draw is higher than most SSDs, but 3W isn't a problem given the performance.
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The SM2262EN shows very similar performance scaling to other top drives, with slow growth during the early phases of the test while the workload is still read-heavy, but accelerating as the proportion of writes increases. There are several drives that outperform the SM2262EN in the final phase of pure random writes, but the it tends to dominate all the earlier phases.
It is also interesting to note that power consumption barely ticks up for the final phase where the SM2262EN has a respectable spike in performance.
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.
The SM2262EN is outclassed by several other TLC drives on the mixed sequential I/O test, but it is still clearly within high-end performance territory and is an improvement over the SM2262 drives.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The SM2262EN uses less power than its predecessors on this test while offering a modest performance improvement, so its efficiency score is substantially higher. However, several other TLC drives are still ahead, led by the WD Black.
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The performance scaling curve of the SM2262EN is very similar to the SM2262-based HP EX920, except that the EX920 falls behind during the more write-heavy half of the test. The SM2262EN manages to stay well above 1 GB/s throughout the test. The fastest drive run this test on is the Samsung 970 EVO, which doesn't lose performance as quickly as writes are added to the mix, but it ends up performing almost the same as the SM2262EN during the second half of the test.
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Death666Angel - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
I don't read it that way, but okay. :) I don't have a definitve cost breakdown of an SSD. But my best guess is NAND is still the factor #1 and goes up with capacity. #2 would be the controller or the RAM, depending on size of the SSD, which usually correlates with the size of the RAM. But controllers can cost a few dollars or a few tens of dollars, so that is still a relevant number in pricing of an SSD. Samsung and WD price their drives that way. because they can, so far.FunBunny2 - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
well, here's the problem. if you're an economist, then marginal cost is the driver of price in a competitive market. whether that's true for SSD/SSDparts is murky. for the accountant/MBA types, average cost drives price, regardless of market.now, the crunchy aspect of correlating cost to price is the production process. in the 19th century, labor was a significant component of cost and thus price. demand slackens, fire people to keep both costs more or less stable. demand increases, hire for the same effect.
in the 21st century, with SSD/SSDparts, there's virtually no labor in direct production, so marginal cost is near 0; ergo the econ types say to drop price to move more product. the accountant/MBA types recognize that most of average cost, while higher than marginal, is mostly amortization of R&D and capital equipment (all those new fabs AT has been reporting on, recall?). even they understand that the decision is the same as the econ, a very rare event: the only way to make money is to move more product and drive down average cost. but they can only do this is demand increases. and that can only happen if end-user product vendors can 1) more ways to use the parts, and 2) people have more money to buy the end-user product.
1) is largely a substitution exercise; i.e. a zero-sum game among end-user product vendors. there's no growth in aggregate demand for end-user product, thus none for SSD/SSDparts. nobody wins.
2) is a purely macro-economic phenomenon, and thus dependent on the 'middle class' having more moolah to spend on more bling. you can see where this is going? with right-wing governments driving income concentration, aggregate demand eventually collapses. this is exactly what created the Great Recession.
end-user product vendors can't directly move 2), all they can do is encourage their governments to spread the wealth so that aggregate demand can grow, and they can sell more product. on the whole, they haven't shown the smarts to see where their bread is buttered. as labor cost diminishes, just firing bodies gains you less and less until it gains you nothing. growth in highly capitalized production economies of the 21st century doesn't work as it did in the primitive 19th.
greggm2000 - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
What I'd really like to see are SSD tests done on an (user) encrypted drive. Would performance be equivalent to a fully filled drive? I imagine this would be a fairly common use case?Billy Tallis - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Software encryption does technically leak information if it uses TRIM commands or otherwise signals to the drive what data is and isn't valid. It also imposes performance overhead from doing the encryption on the CPU . There aren't many reasons to justify using software full-drive encryption on a SSD when self-encrypting SSDs are so common (Samsung, Crucial MX, etc).Icehawk - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Is Opal effected by this? What performance cost is there? We’ve got whopping laptop at woro with it enabled buy I’d like to push us in a more secure direction. Would probably help our PCI score too.Chaser - Sunday, August 5, 2018 - link
I wish someone would build a review site that includes SSDs that writes reviews based upon a an average PC gamer's performance perspective. I myself have tested the Evo 860, the 970 EVO, Optane 900, the XPG SX8200, and the Patriot Hellfire. Like many other revealing Youtube videos that compare these drives most often the Evo 860 is either faster at loading a game, the same or very slightly slower. While I understand that Anandtech has readers that are looking at higher usage scenarios, I'd venture to say MOST of their readers are in the former category.As it stands today with most similar sites we see chart after chart of benchmarks on multiple pages. We read about accolades on random and sequential performance. Some sites rank the drives from 1-10. But in the end, the user experience differences prove to be negligible for most users and a simple article like that probably would entice site visits to read through the hairsplitting benchmarks.
KAlmquist - Sunday, August 5, 2018 - link
I'll repeat something Billy Tallis stated in a comment and probably should incorporate into the text of the review: “I did run the Heavy and Light tests on this drive with it 80% full and the results were similar to the 100% full case.”When I partition an SSD, I've always left a bit of space unused in order to effectively increase the spare area to 20% or so. That improved performance consistency with older SSD designs. With the SM2262EN, it might still reduce write amplification, but not enough to substantially affect performance.
kensiko - Wednesday, January 9, 2019 - link
I'm hesitating between the AData XPG SX8200 (SM2262) and the pro one (SM2262EN), 50 CAD$ difference. Any opinion ?