SandForce Announces Next-Gen SSDs, SF-2000 Capable of 500MB/s and 60K IOPS
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 7, 2010 9:30 AM ESTPerformance: Welcome to the 500 Club
Let’s talk peak performance specs. I must preface this with a warning, all of the numbers you’re about to see are SandForce’s estimates and projections for how the SF-2000 series will perform. Next week you’ll see some basic functionality and performance testing but as far as I know, these numbers haven’t been reached yet. SandForce is confident that it will hit them once drives start shipping, but until then take what you are about to see with a grain of salt.
Random read and write performance goes up significantly over the SF-1200/1500. We are at 40K IOPS today, and SandForce is promising 60K IOPS with the SF-2000. Note that this is not only higher than anything shipping today, it’s even higher than what we recently found out about Intel’s 3rd generation X25-M/X25-E SSDs.
Now the shocker. Thanks to 6Gbps and ONFI 2/Toggle support, the SF-2000 will support up to 500MB/s sequential read and write speeds. On an 8 channel device that’s actually only 62.5MB/s per channel but the combined bandwidth is just ridiculous for a single drive. At full speed you could copy 1GB of data from a SF-2000 drive to another SF-2000 drive in 2 seconds. If SandForce can actually deliver this sort of performance I will be blown away.
Let’s talk about reality for a second. SandForce quotes standard iometer numbers, which are usually quite optimistic for SandForce's controllers. I’d expect real world performance to be a bit below these figures but not by a lot for many workloads.
In the SF-1200/1500 series, SandForce used enterprise features to differentiate the two controllers. You got some improved reliability and a giant capacitor with the SF-1500 designs, but you didn’t really get any added performance. With the SF-2000 series, we will see more differentiation between the enterprise and consumer parts. SandForce indicated that the consumer version of the SF-2000 would have a different level of performance. I get the impression that the specifics of the consumer drive haven’t been determined yet. I’ve already started campaigning to see a full spec version in the consumer market but it’s still far too early to tell what will be shipped. If the 3rd generation X25-M is really only capable of 270MB/s reads and 170MB/s writes, I’m not sure if there will be the motivation to deliver a 500/500MBps part into the enthusiast market.
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IceDread - Friday, October 8, 2010 - link
Hehe oh yes.Looks like they beat intel's new controller as well, impressive!
Chloiber - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
I want to see some benches first before I believe ANYTHING.Same with SF1200. 275MB/s seq. writes on paper but in reality you are down to 100-140MB/s.
Same for the IOPS.
So yeah - unless I see some real benches...
bunnyfubbles - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Agreed, however even if we get real world speed improvements proportional to the best case "on-paper" specs then we're looking at well over 400/MB read and 200MB/sec write real world speeds, which would be amazing for a single drive without resorting to a RAID controller.Intel really seems to be falling by the wayside when we compare these projected specs to what Intel is claiming with their G3 drives, which don't look too threatening to current Sandforce drives let alone this future beast. Hopefully this means some competitive pricing that finally starts to truly drive down SSD prices.
Chloiber - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
These specs are controller specs, not SSD specs - remember that.These specs are, what the controller can handle - Flash NOT included. So I would really be impressed if we see those specs on a MLC-based SSD for us consumers.
mino - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Playing the "steady as she goes" song seems a very sensible path for Intel considering the Rock'n'Roll stuff others play.While Intel really wants to be major player LONG-TERM, they need not hurry.
Alas they had their share of mess with buggy FW upgrades not so long ago. I do not see them being overly aggressive anytime soon.
Jaybus - Saturday, October 16, 2010 - link
It isn't all about the controller. Intel will have, at least for a while, a huge lead in price/performance because they are going to 25 nm flash. They will get nearly double the capacity of current 34 nm flash for the same price. Others will also move to 25 nm flash, eventually, but meanwhile, Intel will have an advantage. Also, Intel's controllers have proven to be really good in the real world, and the new one is expected to be on par with SF-1200.I'm sure SF-2000 will be the better performer, but if I a 300 GB Intel drive is the same price as a 160 GB SF-2000 drive, then the SF-2000 drive better be twice as fast. It remains to be seen, but if the SF-2000 isn't WAY, WAY faster, then I'll take twice the capacity for the same price any day.
mailman65er - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
So yeah - unless I see some real benches...Totally agreed. And the more "application-specific" the benchmark is, the better. There is so much data 'manipulation' going on inside these modern SSD controllers that you almost need to run "your own" workloads to gauge actual performance.
Guspaz - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Intel's revealed specs on the G3's performance were so underwhelming that it wouldn't take much to destroy them when it comes to performance. SandForce's previous generation parts are already faster than the G3 on paper in terms of sequential transfer rates. Even if they don't surpass that in practice, they're not that far off, so it wouldn't take much of a performance increase from SandForce's next-gen parts to surpass that.rundll - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Intel's 3G's SSDs overall performance should be way over SandForce's actual generations SSDs simply thanks to superior IOPS (read/write 50000/40000).Now, if Intel's 25nm production technology produces significantly cheaper SSDs, could Intel's SSD remain somewhat competitive choice in every day desktop use with its pretty decent speed. Especially if SandForce is putting a hefty pricetag to its new controller.
We'll see.
jonup - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Keep in mind that Intel sells a complete drives not just the controller. They can affort to make their profits not only from the controller but from the entire product. Other SSD manufacturer pay the profit margin of the controller manufacturer as well as the falsh manufacturer and therefore at the end of the day the cost of their final product is highe than Intel's. Intel can affort to sale their products at a significantly lower price than its compatitor and still maintain higher profitability than Sandforce (controller manufacturer) and OCZ, Corsair (drive manufacturers).I believe that Intel position its G3 to capture larger market instead of trying to acheave king of the hill performance. If the supply for SSD begins to match the demand prices of SSDs might start shooting down (as we have been promised for a while now) and Intel will be the big winner. As I've said before, Intel's performance is enough for the needs of the mainsteam PC user that is currently using fast HDDs due to the high cost of SSDs.