SK hynix is among the main DRAM and NAND flash reminiscence producers, however for years they’ve had little to no presence within the retail client SSD market and have targeted totally on the OEM market. That began to alter final 12 months once they launched their Gold S31 SATA SSDs, however that wasn’t actually sufficient to ascertain SK hynix as an necessary model for client SSDs. At CES in January, they previewed NVMe SSDs: the Gold P31 and Platinum P31.
When SK hynix PR reached out earlier this month to supply a evaluation pattern of the Gold P31 at quick discover prematurely of final week’s launch, I used to be anticipating a reasonably easy evaluation. Rushed evaluation embargo durations are sometimes an indication that the seller does not need you to spend an excessive amount of time digging into the main points of the product, so I did not anticipate the Gold P31 to face out in any means from the group of different PCIe Gen3 NVMe SSDs already available on the market. I used to be anticipating that essentially the most fascinating aspect of the Gold P31 could be the truth that SK hynix really managed to be first to market with 128L NAND, after years of making an attempt to run forward of the competitors when it comes to 3D NAND layer depend however with little success in following by means of in a well timed trend.
The 128L 3D NAND is a crucial accomplishment, however it seems to have huge penalties for extra than simply price. The Gold P31 turned in essentially the most shocking set of benchmark outcomes I’ve seen, with energy effectivity scores that appeared nearly too good to be true (extra on this later). SK hynix will not share fairly as a lot technical details about these drives as we might prefer to have, however they’ve shared sufficient to substantiate that the Gold P31 doesn’t match the mould for a typical high-end client NVMe SSD.
The Gold P31 affords efficiency that’s aggressive with most different high-end client SSDs, however it achieves that efficiency with a really completely different technique. For years, the usual system for this product phase has been the usage of TLC NAND with SLC caching, a controller with 4 lanes of PCIe 3.0 (and beginning to transfer towards PCIe 4.0), DRAM in a ratio of 1 GB per 1TB of flash, and an eight-channel interface between the SSD controller and the NAND flash itself. It’s that final piece that the Gold P31 adjustments, through the use of simply 4 channels.
NAND Interface Speeds Matter Again
The SK hynix Gold P31 hits high-end efficiency targets with half the channels through the use of a a lot larger IO pace for these channels than we’re used to. This NAND interface pace hasn’t been an necessary issue lately as a result of an eight channel SSD can saturate a PCIe Three x4 host reference to pretty pedestrian NAND interface speeds like 533MT/s. So though NAND producers and SSD controllers have been shifting towards larger interface speeds, it has hardly mattered and has been a lot much less fascinating than speaking about enhancements in latency, energy and density.
For the 64-layer 3D NAND era, NAND interface speeds had been usually within the 533-667MT/s vary. The extraordinarily well-liked Phison E12 controller helps as much as 667MT/s, however SSDs utilizing Toshiba (now Kioxia) 64L BiCS3 TLC at 533MT/s had no bother providing good efficiency—normally solely marginally slower than Silicon Motion’s SM2262(EN) that helps as much as 800MT/s. Now that the NAND market has moved to 96 layers and past, most NAND producers can help speeds of 1.2GT/s (1200MT/s) or larger—however these speeds aren’t a given. Just like DRAM, NAND chips can come in numerous pace grades, and never all SSD controllers can deal with these speeds but. SK hynix designs their very own SSD controllers, and so they up to date their controller design to match the capabilities of their 128L NAND, operating at 1.2GT/s. This gives loads of headroom for a 4-channel SSD to saturate a PCIe 3.Zero x4 hyperlink.
(Side be aware: The Sony…
