Legit Storage Reviews
Intel X25-M 160GB 34nm MLC G2 SSD Benchmark Review
| Manufacturer: | Intel |
| Product: | SSDSA1MH160G2 |
| Date: | Thu, Jul 23, 2009 - 12:00 AM |
| Written By: | Nathan Kirsch - |
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Inside The 2nd Generation Intel SSDs
Many of you might be asking right about now, "What’s different from the previous X25-M on 50nm and HDDs?" Let's crack our sample open and show you!
Removing the four Philips screws located on the corners of the top cover, the inside of the drive can be accessed. For starters, Intel is now using 16GB flash packages instead of 8GB packages from the original X25-M drive series, which means they are using half as many chips. As a result, the entire back side of the drive is empty and the Intel X25-M 160GB drive features just 10 MLC NAND Flash chips that are all located on the front of the drive. As you can see, the PCB has spots for additional MLC NAND chips, so it is safe to assume that Intel has a 320GB X25-M drive on the road map.
When we remove the PCB from the enclosure, we can flip it over and take a look at the other side of the board and see all the components. The second generation drive has much less black substrate material, while the original drives were covered in it (click here for an image of the original X25-M).
The NAND flash memory Multi-Level Cell (MLC) components are made by Intel and have part number 29F16B08AMD1 etched on the top of them. The drive has ten of these MLC chips.
The first generation drives used an Intel branded controller with the part number PC29AS21AA and the new second generation drivers use an Intel branded controller with the part number PC29AS21BA0. The controller was changed for a number of reasons, but you can bet that performance and added features is the number one reason for going to a new controller. The new controller architecture still employs the same 10 parallel NAND Flash channels used in the original controller but can now support features like TRIM. Legit Reviews asked Intel if TRIM would ever be supported in the first generation Intel SSDs and they stated that "No TRIM support for 50nm Intel SSD drives is planned at this time". They also went on to inform us that Intel will provide TRIM support on its 34nm High-Performance Solid-State Drives via a firmware update in Q4’09. This means that the second generation drives that are on the market today will not support TRIM until the firmware has been updated. Intel has assured us that updating the firmware on this new drive will not wipe out your data which is great news for those that don't want to lose or backup their data each time a new firmware comes out.
The on-board 16MB 166MHz SDRAM chip by Samsung is long gone as it has been replaced by a larger 32MB Micron 133MHz SDRAM. This is an interesting move as the cache size has doubled, but the clock frequency of the cache has decreased by 20%. Intel informed us that improvements to the write combination algorithm and the maintenance of a larger LBA remap table required the move to a larger 32MB SDRAM chip, so this is the reason for the larger cache. We asked Intel about the slower clock frequency but have not received an answer on that question yet.
Just for fun we took a couple of naked pictures with the new Intel X25-M 'G2' drive sitting next to the Kingston SSDNow V series SSD and the Corsair P256 SSD. As you can clearly see, all use different controllers and MLC NAND Flash components.
Next Page - The Test System
| Review Index |
|
Page 1 - 34nm Flash Meets Intel X25-M 2nd Gen SSDs
Page 2 - Inside The 2nd Generation Intel SSDs Page 3 - The Test System Page 4 - HD Tach v3.0.4.0 Page 5 - HD Tune v3.50 Page 6 - HD Tune v3.50 - Random Accesss Page 7 - SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP3 Page 8 - CrystalDiskMark v2.2 Page 9 - ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34 Page 10 - PCMark Vantage Page 11 - AS SSD Benchmark Page 12 - Performance Degradation Testing Page 13 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions |
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