Intro
We're looking at SSDs for a few reasons
- They can provide roughly 2-2.5x the read bandwidth (and sometimes nearly that much for writes, too) of disks.
- They have much lower write latency (RAMCloud may be attractive without battery backups/Agigatech stuff/etc, if we use synchronous flash writes to get durability.
- We don't need huge capacity, so the cost is reasonable (~$1.6/GB)
Controllers
There appear to be half a dozen different manufacturers of SSD controllers (Marvell, Intel, JMicron, Samsung, Indilinx, Toshiba).
Troublingly, some controllers or associated firmwares appear to be considerably less reliable than others (judging from consumer reviews on, e.g., NewEgg.com). E.g. the Indilinx and JMicron ones seem especially suspect.
Controller Manufacturer |
SSDs |
|---|---|
Marvell 88SS9174 |
Intel 510 series, Plextor M2, Crucial M4 |
Intel |
All Intel SSDs aside from the 510 series |
Samsung |
Apparently Samsung drives, only |
Toshiba |
Only consumer drive appears to be Kingston SNVP325 series (though also used by OEMS, e.g. Apple) |
Indilinx |
Tons of random consumer drives (e.g. OCZ) |
JMicron |
Tons of random consumer drives (e.g. Kingston, OCZ) |
Evaluation
We looked at 4 drives with chips from Marvell, Intel, Samsung, and Toshiba:
SSD |
Sizes |
Controller (purported) |
Part Numbers |
|---|---|---|---|
Intel 320 Series |
80GB, 120GB |
Intel PC29AS21BA0 |
SSDSA2CW080G3B5, SSDSA2CW120GG3B5 |
Samsung 470 Series |
64GB, 128GB |
Samsung S3C29MAX01 |
MZ-5PA064, MZ-5PA128 |
Crucial M4 |
64GB, 128GB |
Marvell 88SS9174 |
CT064M4SSD2, CT128M4SSD2 |
Kingston V-series V+ (SNVP325-S2) |
64GB, 128GB |
Toshiba T6UG1XBG |
SNVP325-S2B/64GB, SNVP325-S2B/128GB |