Intel Z68 Chipset & Smart Response Technology (SSD Caching) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 11, 2011 2:34 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2011—Light Workload
Our new light workload actually has more write operations than read operations. The split is as follows: 372,630 reads and 459,709 writes. The relatively close read/write ratio does better mimic a typical light workload (although even lighter workloads would be far more read centric).
The I/O breakdown is similar to the heavy workload at small IOs, however you'll notice that there are far fewer large IO transfers:
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2011—Light Workload IO Breakdown | ||||
| IO Size | % of Total | |||
| 4KB | 27% | |||
| 16KB | 8% | |||
| 32KB | 6% | |||
| 64KB | 5% | |||
Despite the reduction in large IOs, over 60% of all operations are perfectly sequential. Average queue depth is a lighter 2.2029 IOs.
While the heavy workload was long enough to not show any benefit in performance by running it multiple times, our light workload boasts serious gains if we run it a second time with the cache active. With a light enough workload the SSD 311 as a cache can actually bring hard drive performance up to the level of an Intel X25-M G2, which is exactly what Intel was targeting with Smart Response Technology to begin with. For light users you can get an SSD-like experience at a fraction of the cost and without having to manage data across two drives.
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quang777 - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Does it work with older SSDs that don't support TRIM? Will SRT "cleanup" like TRIM to keep the cache "clean"?cbuck - Thursday, September 22, 2011 - link
For those working w/in the X58 chipset world and who have access to the Marvell 9128 "Hyperduo" SATA III (6GB) chip supported motherboards, what have people seen in terms of stability and speed?Understandably, the X58 chipset is a quickly fading market, but I happened to have a spare i7 920 D0 lying around and picked up a recently released LGA 1366 motherboard to put that CPU to use....
Tastare - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
I'm looking for a functionality/application acting like:1. Smart responce technology (problem: cannot be used when OS is installed on SSD) or
2. Readyboost, but without deleting the cache during reboot.
I want a program/function working like a read and write cache(*) for a the 7200rpm drive (using e.g. 10-30GB of the SSD disk or USB for cache) that "survives" OS restart. Do anyone know if there exist any application with this functionality (Solutions I know: 1. buy a second SSD to use for HD cache, and 2. I could install OS on the 7200 rpm drive and use part of the SSD as cache)?
(*) With cache I mean something like:
- mirror the latest filecs read from the HD, and
- writes data directly to the USB, and later mirror the data to the Hard drive (when it has started up from idle to 7200rpm.)
Background: My system: Windows 7, Z68 motherboard, 120GB SSD + 1GB disk 7200rpm. The slower disk goes into standby (which is fine because I doesn't use it so often), but when data is needed it starts up slowly which is annoying.
bell2366 - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - link
I'm suprised the HD manufacturers have not started fighting back and providing hybrid SSD/HDD's with write through cache etc, 1TB hard disk with 64GB SSD on board would rock.Especially if they take the supercapacitor route for guarenteed writes to SSD NAND on power failures.
I've recently bought one of the new Comay Venus 120GB SSD's and it has these features, not to mention performance that blows OCZ out of the water. Just wish I didn't have to mess around thinking what to keep on SSD and what to keep on HDD, a hybrid would be simplicity itself.
astrojny - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
Any thought on using Intel's Smart Technology with the 1TB Western Digital Raptor that was just released?btkcsd - Saturday, December 13, 2014 - link
Do you know if SRT will work with all processors that are otherwise compatible with the Z68 chipset? I've seen some reports that only true "core" processors are supported, like the i3/i5/i7 while Sandy Bridge based Celerons and Pentiums are not.