Silicon Motion SM2256 SSD Controller Preview: TLC for Everyone
by Kristian Vättö on June 17, 2015 8:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- TLC
- Silicon Motion
- SM2256
Random Read Performance
For full details of how we conduct our Iometer tests, please refer to this article.
Random read performance has never been Silicon Motion's biggest strength and it actually slightly decreases with the new SM2256 controller, although that's most likely due to the slower TLC NAND.
Power also goes up quite significantly, but compared to other drive it's still relatively low -- just not SM2246EN low.
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Queue depth scaling behavior seems to be similar to the SM2246EN, although at a higher power consumption. The scaling could be a little more aggressive because especially the QD4 and QD8 scores can't match the competition.
Random Write Performance
Random write performance isn't too good as the SMI 2256 turns out to be the slowest of the bunch. I wonder how big of a difference another manufacturer's TLC NAND would make, but we should find that out once the retail drives ship in the next couple of months.
Power efficiency is pretty poor given that performance is low, but power consumption is average.
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It's obvious that TLC NAND limits the performance because there's practically almost no scaling at all with the queue depth. The good news is that low QD performance is pretty decent -- it's the high QD operations that suffer the most from TLC NAND, but those are very rare in typical client workloads.
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watzupken - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
Looking at the state of the Samsung 840, I am still not convinced with TLC based SSDs. With value in mind, SSD is also walking down the path of cheap but unreliable storage solutions from my opinion. E.g. mechanical drives used to last a very long time, but not now even though they are cheap.leexgx - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
the problem with 840 and 840 evo is just that its not refreshing the cells when it should be (the data is still retained even if its slow doing it) SSDs problem with retaining data is an issue towards end of life but that happens on all SSDs (more a concern for commercial use then consumer drives)der - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
Wow great!RU482 - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
IS THAT....A HAIR?i7 - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
Looks like it to me.KAlmquist - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
"OEMs can't price their TLC drives similarly to the MLC ones and expect it to be a good sale."Agreed. If you look at the prices of Samsung's 850 series, it's around $0.90 per GB of nand cells plus a fixed cost of $30. So you can get an MLC model for better performance at $0.45/GB of capacity, or a TLC model with lower performance at $0.30/GB of capacity. If that type of pricing is adopted by other SSD manufacturers, then TLC becomes very tempting; otherwise not so much.
The other thing about the 850 line is that the relatively large cell size associated with 3D Nand appears to have eliminated the problem with data deterioration that we saw on the 840 EVO. So TLC will become more attractive next year when 3D Nand becomes available from other manufacturers.
nwarawa - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
10% my tush. Try 20%+. Considering I can get a good MLC 256GB-class drive like a BX100 right now for around $100, if they can't get a similar TLC drive under $80, I won't even give it a second glace.revanchrist - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
TLC is going to be real cheap. Tigo, a Chinese 3rd-party ssd manufacturer has announced its tlc ssd based on Silicon Motion controller and SK Hynix nand chips last week, available in quantity up to 2TB. They've only disclosed the price of the 240gb model, which is RMB 399, roughly 65 USD. FFS that could translate to 260 USD for a 1TB model OMG.revanchrist - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
The controller is exactly SM2256 and the nand is 16nm 128Gb TLC from SK Hynix.anactoraaron - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
OFF TOPIC: Wow you guys must have had some serious issues with the LG G4 for it to be 2+ weeks past release and still no review.I'm guessing you were about to publish the issues you have had with the device (missed taps/unresponsive screen, slow charging/heat, lag/stutter, etc) and basically not recommend anyone purchase it and you were 'advised' by LG to not publish this until they have had a chance to fix those issues, which according to Android Central will be in the next 3-4 weeks. I just can't recall a review of a flagship device that wasn't out within 2 weeks of release (unless it was a Sony device since they won't comp anything to you guys to review).
I don't see the point of waiting, because even with the issues I personally have (unresponsive screen/lag/stutter) the G4 is still a solid device.
This isn't a knock on you guys - you do probably the most unbiased and thorough reviews. The delay on this review is just starting to smell a bit to me.