Steve’s passion and energy left an indelible mark on Micron, the Idaho community and the technology industry at large.

Read Steve’s Bio

Read the Press Release

Read on to learn why UBM TechInsights chose the RealSSD C300 as “Most Innovative SSD Technology.”

Taking a closer look at the RealSSD C300
By Tarek Alhajj, Engineering Analyst, UBM TechInsights

UBM TechInsights analyzed the 256GB Micron RealSSD C300 SSD when the device was nominated for an Insight Award for Most Innovative SSD Technology. To better understand what we were analyzing, we decided to review datasheets before diving into any teardown or benchmarking activities. The 256GB Micron RealSSD C300 SSD offers a higher-level performance compared to other commercially available SSDs. This is especially the case with its read speeds, which surpass what SATA-2 (3Gb/s) connectivity can offer. Some of the details of this innovative SSD design, which was the first to feature a SATA-3 (6 Gb/s) controller for next-generation SATA connectivity, will be discussed followed by a summary of results from our benchmarking efforts.

Our analysis of the 256GB Micron RealSSD C300 consisted of a teardown for a board and chip investigation as well as an analysis of the NAND flash arrangement. The single board inside contains the following main components: a controller, NAND flash, and the SDRAM. These devices are all BGA packaged devices which would likely cost more from a manufacturing perspective but will keep parasitic and lead inductance down (as compared to a standard TSOP-48 package). Further, it allows for more efficient use of board space.

Inside the RealSSD C300
The controller is a Marvel 88SS9174, which is a relatively new chip. It provides the RealSSD C300 with next generation SATA-3 connectivity at 6Gb/s to accommodate for its extremely fast read speeds that overwhelm SATA-2 (3 Gb/s). This controller has two ARM9 processor cores that operate in parallel to balance the load on the drive, with one core handling host requests and the other handling requests to read and write to the NAND flash devices. The controller uses the Micron DDR3 SDRAM for caching data to more quickly and efficiently manage traffic.

Marvell Controller	Micron DDR3 SDRAM
Micron NAND Flash	Micron 34nm, 32Gb NAND Die

Each NAND flash package contains four stacked Micron 34 nm 32 Gbit MLC NAND flash die.

There are a total of eight parallel NAND flash channels, where each channel consists of two NAND flash packages, thus giving a grand total of 16 NAND flash packages. Having this many channels for the controller to utilize plays a major role in achieving its high read and write speeds; and based on the results of the read and write tests, the controller is able to manage the traffic to the appropriate channels quickly and efficiently.

This SSD has a clean layout of high-end BGA packaged devices and a highly parallel configuration of NAND flash devices. When we began our investigation of the capabilities of the RealSSD, our test results returned some impressive results.

Testing the RealSSD C300
Testing began with the development of a testing rig to conduct our analysis.  The test rig consisted of an Intel 2 GHz Core 2 Duo PC running Windows XP with an Asus U3S6 PCIe card to provide SATA-3 connectivity. For comparison, the results for the Intel X25-M V2 (2^nd generation) 160 GB SSD are also presented.

After formatting both drives and filling them with various types of data up to 25% of their total capacity, HD Tune, ATTO and IOMeter were used to test the drives.

The RealSSD C300 provided sequential read speeds between 280 MB/s and 380 MB/s and sequential write speeds of 185 MB/s to 195 MB/s, while the X-25M provided 209 MB/s to 255 MB/s and 100 MB/s to 105 MB/s sequential read and write speeds, respectively. The X25-M had a slightly faster access time at about 0.06 ms, as compared to the C300 at about 0.12 ms, but overall, the overwhelmingly fast read and write speeds of the C300 put this SSD well ahead. Our next test involved checking out the Input/Output operations per second (IOPS).

The sequential and random 4 KB read IOPS for the RealSSD C300 were 42182 and 7298 with respective speeds of 162 MB/s and 29 MB/s, while the IOPS for the X25-M were 36102 and 5966 with speeds of 141 MB/s and 23 MB/s. The sequential and random 4 KB write IOPS for the C300 were 26712 and 1830 with speeds of 104 MB/s and 7.2 MB/s, and were 13819 and 8473 for the X25-M with speeds of 54 MB/s and 33 MB/s. The C300 comes out ahead for the most part here, but it is worth noting the X25-M random 4 KB write IOPS performance.

The teardown analysis and test results show that the Micron RealSSD C300 is a very well designed SSD that features industry first SATA-3 connectivity and provides leading-edge performance, especially with respect to its incredibly high read speeds.

We started working with Micron a little more than a year ago to leverage their work in NAND flash and look for ways to use those innovations to enable our own plans for our products. Ultimately it’s really a symbiotic relationship where each company can bring requirements, breakthroughs, goals, napkin sketches, all-the-above, to the table to understand the capabilities and (frankly) the wish lists for NAND in the storage space. Through that relationship, we learned about the work they were doing to extend the lifespan of NAND. This was right up our alley–because what they were proposing was a new NAND flash technology that was going to hit one million write cycles.  They dubbed it Enterprise NAND.

But, before we get to talking too much about Enterprise NAND, let’s talk a little about flash memory in general to provide context to how Violin is using the technology. You’re probably aware that standard flash–both SLC and MLC–has a limited lifetime. If not, here’s a quick overview: NAND has a given number of cycles (times) that it can be written to before it fails. Standard SLC NAND can be written to up to 100,000 times, which is great for certain applications like mobile phones, for example. Standard MLC NAND can be written to up to 10,000 times, and finds a good fit in devices like MP3 players. Ultimately, both of these variations of flash have ideal applications to call home. But there are still some applications that require longer write and erase cycles, such as with Tier Ø computing which is what Violin’s focused on.

As we looked to optimizations that we could make in our hardware, we identified four fundamental approaches to increase the lifespan of flash-based storage:
1.   Improve the efficiency of user writes for the flash media by reducing the write amplification;
2.   Improve wear leveling, which ensures individual “erase” blocks are used evenly throughout the system;
3.   Increase the capacity of the system, enabling the write load to be spread across more storage;
4.   Increase the endurance of the underlying flash devices.

At Violin, we’ve implemented the first three approaches into our system architecture. Micron’s Enterprise NAND brings the fourth element to the table. And together, we believe these techniques will dramatically improve the lifetime of flash-based systems, which need to endure the very strenuous write/erase cycles found in today’s data center operations.

We’re thrilled to see Micron extending the lifecycle of NAND and it’s been exciting to be able to work with Micron on such a cutting-edge approach. In fact, we believe extended-cycling NAND to be one of the most important flash memory innovations for enterprise and storage applications. It significantly accelerates the transition from performance disk drives to solid state storage. Stay tuned to see Violin products designed with Micron’s Enterprise NAND in 2009, ensuring a lifetime of reliable data for such applications such as content delivery, e-mail servers and enterprise file storage.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqaLg95ZlSU

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-HExHr1JWM

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R8ZPRNI8yc

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfQplwVb_TA

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUY5fPXA9qQ