Previewing Maxiotek's MK8115 SSD Controller: Can DRAM-less Drives Make The Cut?
by Billy Tallis on May 9, 2017 8:00 AM ESTATTO
ATTO's Disk Benchmark is a quick and easy freeware tool to measure drive performance across various transfer sizes.
Both MK8115 drives have horrible performance on 512-byte transfers, far lower than anything else we've tested in recent memory. Reads are more than 100 times slower for 512B than 1kB transfers, and for writes the difference is a factor of 24. Most filesystems use 4kB or larger block sizes, but 512B accesses are still common enough that this is a fairly severe bug that needs to be dealt with in future firmware.
Beyond 512B transfers, the TLC drive's write speed scales up quicker than the MLC drive, but its read speeds struggle a bit. For 128kB and larger transfers, both drives are operating at full speed and performing similarly to each other and most SATA drives.
AS-SSD
AS-SSD is another quick and free benchmark tool. It uses incompressible data for all of its tests, making it an easy way to keep an eye on which drives are relying on transparent data compression. The short duration of the test makes it a decent indicator of peak drive performance.
The MK8115 controller does make use of some compression, but its peak sequential read and writes speeds are not reliant upon the data being compressible. The MK8115 drives give AS-SSD performance that is typical for drives that are large enough to saturate the SATA link.
Idle Power Consumption
Since the ATSB tests based on real-world usage cut idle times short to 25ms, their power consumption scores paint an inaccurate picture of the relative suitability of drives for mobile use. During real-world client use, a solid state drive will spend far more time idle than actively processing commands. Our testbed doesn't support the deepest DevSlp power saving mode that SATA drives can implement, but we can measure the power usage in the intermediate slumber state where both the host and device ends of the SATA link enter a low-power state and the drive is free to engage its internal power savings measures.
We also report the drive's idle power consumption while the SATA link is active and not in any power saving state. Drives are required to be able to wake from the slumber state in under 10 milliseconds, but that still leaves plenty of room for them to add latency to a burst of I/O. Because of this, many desktops default to either not using SATA Aggressive Link Power Management (ALPM) at all or to only enable it partially without making use of the device-initiated power management (DIPM) capability. Additionally, SATA Hot-Swap is incompatible with the use of DIPM, so our SSD testbed usually has DIPM turned off during performance testing.
Idle power of the MK8115 is significantly improved over the JMF670H, but still lagging slightly behind the Phison-based PNY CS2211 and nowhere near the best SATA SSDs. Samsung and Marvell use more advanced lithography nodes for their controllers, and the smaller competitors on lagging fabrication processes can't beat them.
The active idle power consumption of the MK8115 drives is decent: it's clearly better than for the Silicon Motion drives or the OCZ VX500, but not quite as good as the Samsung and Marvell drives, nor the unusually efficient PNY CS2211.
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romrunning - Tuesday, May 9, 2017 - link
Here's an example of performance regression - the Intel 600p versus any other Intel PCIe SSD (like the Intel 750 or P3700). Clear performance drop.Don't confuse it with price differences or target buyer - you only asked for an example of performance regression.
MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, May 9, 2017 - link
The 600p isn't even targeted at the same market segment. That's like saying that every single SSD released since the Intel P4800X is a performance regression because it can't come close to those random IOPS. I'm talking about a performance regression within the same price segment.CheapSushi - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - link
The Intel 600P is TLC NAND and the Intel 750 is MLC NAND.... maybe you don't know the difference? TLC is inherently slower than MLC; 3 bits per cell vs 2 bits per cell.MajGenRelativity - Thursday, May 11, 2017 - link
A. I know the difference. B. MLC vs TLC isn't even the point. C. My point still stands because the 600p is not targeted at the high end.satai - Tuesday, May 9, 2017 - link
There are some cheap models and there some awesome models (Intel 750 and Intel Enterprise models, Samsung 960s, Optanes...). Pick yourself.MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, May 9, 2017 - link
The Intel Optane enterprise drive certainly is awesome, but I find it's price a bit hard to sell an average consumer on.melgross - Tuesday, May 9, 2017 - link
Well, all new technologies cost the most at first, and much less later. Performance is the opposite. The worst at first, and much better later.Next year, the price of Optane will be half of what it is now, but for a 512GB board, rather than the 375GB board it is now. Still expensive, sure. But you just have to learn to be patient.
WinterCharm - Tuesday, May 9, 2017 - link
On the bright side, Optane should be a lot cheaper to produce in the long run. While it's terrible as an accelerator, it's fantastic as a standalone drive. Prices will come down over time.CheapSushi - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - link
Is the average consumer one that even reads about these things? The average consumer just goes to Best Buy and a salesman tells them what to get. Anyone who reads AnandTech and/or actually read the reviews about Optane aren't average consumers anyway.MajGenRelativity - Thursday, May 11, 2017 - link
True, but I doubt most of us still have the money for a $1,500 375GB SSD