Super Talent SSD: 16GB of Solid State Goodness
by Gary Key on May 7, 2007 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Super Talent SSD16GB25/25M Features
The external design of the Super Talent 16GB SSD is offered in either a hard plastic suitable for a commercial rating or high-strength aluminum design for industrial usage. The hard plastic design is capable of operating temperatures from 0C to 70C with the metal casing featuring a temperature range from -40C to 85C. The drive is based on the industry standard 2.5" form factor with measurements of 69.9mm x 100.2mm x 9.5mm. The drive utilizes a standard SATA interface for both power and data transfer capabilities.
Hard Disk Test Comparison and Features
The Super Talent SSD16GB25/25M features a capacity of 16GB with capacity in the 2.5" form factor family ranging from 4GB to 64GB. The 16GB drive sells for approximately $575 at this time. The drive is marketed into the commercial and industrial sectors with an emphasis placed on use in such products as ATM, factory automation machines, measuring products, point of sale devices, ticket-vending machines, parking systems, and general industrial equipment that requires a storage device with a high degree of tolerance to environmental conditions.
The SSD16GB25/25M features a read seek time of less than 1ms, a maximum read/write speed of up to 28 MB/sec, a sustained transfer rate of 25 MB/sec, and an estimated write/erase cycle of approximately 100,000 cycles. This equates into a 1,000,000 hour MTBF rating and indicates a 10 year life expectancy based upon normal usage patterns. Super Talent has developed a set of proprietary wear leveling algorithms along with built in EDD/EDC functions to ensure excellent data integrity over the course of the drive's lifespan.
Looking at the specifications, it should become immediately apparent that we should not expect class leading performance in all applications. The Super Talent drive has no cache, and the maximum read/write speeds are clearly lower than the best hard drives currently available. It's also worth noting that the relatively low read/write speeds and lack of cache make the question of SATA interface a moot point. While the drive can of course function with a chipset that supports SATA 3.0Gbps connections, it will only utilize the 1.5Gbps standard, and actual transfer rates are still significantly lower than the maximum 150 MB per second SATA is capable of transmitting.
The Super Talent drive is truly silent as indicated by the acoustics test, features a very low power envelope with load requirements being five times less than the Seagate Momentus drive, and excellent thermals considering our room temperature base was 24C. The drive is designed to withstand 1500G of shock and 16G of vibration under operating conditions.
The external design of the Super Talent 16GB SSD is offered in either a hard plastic suitable for a commercial rating or high-strength aluminum design for industrial usage. The hard plastic design is capable of operating temperatures from 0C to 70C with the metal casing featuring a temperature range from -40C to 85C. The drive is based on the industry standard 2.5" form factor with measurements of 69.9mm x 100.2mm x 9.5mm. The drive utilizes a standard SATA interface for both power and data transfer capabilities.
Hard Disk Test Comparison and Features
| Drive Specifications | |||
| Super Talent Flash Drive 16GB SSD16GB25/25M | Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160GB ST9160823ASG | Western Digital Raptor 150GB WD1500ADFD | |
| Manufacturer's Stated Capacity | 16 GB | 160 GB | 150 GB |
| Operating System Stated Capacity | 15.5 GB | 149.04 GB | 139.73 GB |
| Interface | SATA | SATA 3Gb/s | SATA 1.5Gb/s |
| Rotational Speed | n/a | 7,200 RPM | 10,000 RPM |
| Cache Size | n/a | 8 MB | 16 MB |
| Average Latency | n/a | 4.17 ms (nominal) | 2.99 ms (nominal) |
| Read Seek Time | 1 ms | 11 ms | 4.6 ms |
| Number of Heads | n/a | 4 | 4 |
| Number of Platters | n/a | 2 | 2 |
| Power Draw Idle / Load | .16W / .48W | .87W / 2.42W | 9.19W / 10.02W |
| Acoustics Idle / Load | 0 dB(A) / 0 dB(A) | 27 dB(A) / 32 dB(A) | 35 dB(A) / 48 dB(A) |
| Thermals Idle / Load | 24C / 25C | 27C / 31C | 47C / 58C |
| Write/Erase Cycles | 100,000 Estimated | - | - |
| Command Queuing | n/a | Native Command Queuing | Native Command Queuing |
| Warranty | OEM Specific | 5 Year - Retail or OEM | 5 Year - Retail or OEM |
The Super Talent SSD16GB25/25M features a capacity of 16GB with capacity in the 2.5" form factor family ranging from 4GB to 64GB. The 16GB drive sells for approximately $575 at this time. The drive is marketed into the commercial and industrial sectors with an emphasis placed on use in such products as ATM, factory automation machines, measuring products, point of sale devices, ticket-vending machines, parking systems, and general industrial equipment that requires a storage device with a high degree of tolerance to environmental conditions.
The SSD16GB25/25M features a read seek time of less than 1ms, a maximum read/write speed of up to 28 MB/sec, a sustained transfer rate of 25 MB/sec, and an estimated write/erase cycle of approximately 100,000 cycles. This equates into a 1,000,000 hour MTBF rating and indicates a 10 year life expectancy based upon normal usage patterns. Super Talent has developed a set of proprietary wear leveling algorithms along with built in EDD/EDC functions to ensure excellent data integrity over the course of the drive's lifespan.
Looking at the specifications, it should become immediately apparent that we should not expect class leading performance in all applications. The Super Talent drive has no cache, and the maximum read/write speeds are clearly lower than the best hard drives currently available. It's also worth noting that the relatively low read/write speeds and lack of cache make the question of SATA interface a moot point. While the drive can of course function with a chipset that supports SATA 3.0Gbps connections, it will only utilize the 1.5Gbps standard, and actual transfer rates are still significantly lower than the maximum 150 MB per second SATA is capable of transmitting.
The Super Talent drive is truly silent as indicated by the acoustics test, features a very low power envelope with load requirements being five times less than the Seagate Momentus drive, and excellent thermals considering our room temperature base was 24C. The drive is designed to withstand 1500G of shock and 16G of vibration under operating conditions.
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Samus - Monday, May 7, 2007 - link
Simply awesome, thanks for the review Gary. This is exciting technology for sure. Only took them 20 years to make it cost effective and reasonably good storage.redbone75 - Monday, May 7, 2007 - link
I would say SSD's have a few more years to go before they become cost effective, in the home consumer market, anyway. That market will be very small until the price/GB becomes more reasonable.Lonyo - Monday, May 7, 2007 - link
Is there any chance for comparison of some 1.8" drives in the future?Since 1.8" mechanical drives are somewhat slower than 2.5 or 3.5" mechanical drives, and 1.8" laptops are looking at things like low power consumption, it would be nice to see, assuming you can get hold of some 1.8" drives of both types.
Reflex - Monday, May 7, 2007 - link
These drives are great in an embedded or manufacturing environment. Typically they are not written to frequently so you will never hit the write limitations. As a desktop PC drive however that write limitation could be hit very quickly, within a year even. Furthermore, having worked with these drives extensively in embedded environments, I will point out that when the write limitation is hit, you can no longer read the device either. Since there is no real warning, you simply suddenly lose access to all data on that drive.Solid state storage is the future, but not in the form of today's flash. The write limitation is severe, and very problematic. There are competing technologies that hopefully will show up sooner rather than later.
falc0ne - Monday, May 7, 2007 - link
"The SSD16GB25/25M features a read seek time of less than 1ms, a maximum read/write speed of up to 28 MB/sec, a sustained transfer rate of 25 MB/sec, and an estimated write/erase cycle of approximately 100,000 cycles. This equates into a 1,000,000 hour MTBF rating and indicates a 10 year life expectancy based upon normal usage patterns. Super Talent has developed a set of proprietary wear leveling algorithms along with built in EDD/EDC functions to ensure excellent data integrity over the course of the drive's lifespan."This passage tells a completely different story..
mongo lloyd - Monday, May 7, 2007 - link
Dan at Dansdata.com has said the exact same things as Reflex here for quite a while, and I tend to believe him more than SuperTalent's PR department.Also, as Reflex points out, NAND flash has usually way more than 100,000 write/erase cycles. 1 million cycle is not too uncommon.
Regular CompactFlash memory (previously NOR flash, nowadays NAND flash) can take up to the same order of magnitude of write/erase cycles, and we all know memory cards for digital cameras have quite a finite life. And that's without putting a paging file on them.
PandaBear - Thursday, May 10, 2007 - link
It depends on what kind of Nand. MLC usually can barely hit 100k for good ones (i.e. Toshiba and SanDisk) while 5k for bad ones (i.e. some batch of Samsung that got rejected and they have to dump in the spot market).For a camera, you will have to wear out your camera's shutter before you can wear out the card, but for HD, you better have very good wear leveling and good nand before even attempting).
Gary Key - Monday, May 7, 2007 - link
The manufacturer's are taking a conservative path with the write/erase cycles per sector and it has been difficult to nail them down on it. The latest information I have from SanDisk as an example is that the non-recoverable error rate is 1 error per 10 to the 20th bits read on their current drives but they have not committed to active duty cycles or power-on hours in arriving at that calculation. The majority of the SSD suppliers are focused on MTBF ratings at this time. We will have further details in our consumer article as I expect Samsung to open up on the subject.PandaBear - Thursday, May 10, 2007 - link
Nand don't wear out by sitting around, they wear out by erase/program permanently or read disturb (recoverable just by a rewrite). So MTBF is meaningless. You have to do a lot of reading continuously in order to wear out by read. Actually there are algorithms that protect such cases already by refreshing it, so no harm is done.It is the write that really kills the sector, and Samsung did not mention its erase/program for a reason: they failed their own spec that many reputable clients rejected their order (i.e Sandisk rejected their order from Samsung MLC, and Apple uses excessive recovery algorithm to tolerate them on the audio playback, those Taiwanese cheap flash that you get for free with super slow performance or die after 2 weeks, well, you know what you will get when you open up the case).
For their SSD, they may use SLC instead for the performance and reliability reason. It costs 20% more in spot market, but manufacturing cost is much higher (almost 2x when you think about it), so it will cost more.
Reflex - Monday, May 7, 2007 - link
First off, 100,000 is a VERY VERY low write rating for flash, typical drives nowadays have 250k+ write cycles.Secondly, as pointed out by the article, the intended market is industrial and embedded, which as I stated originally, is an environment where the drives are rarely written to. Typically you have a bootable image in those environments, and it is write protected in some fashion, or requires a very small number of writes.
And finally, if you think 100k write cycles is a lot, watch the drive light on the front of your PC someday. Every flash is a minimum of one write or read operation. Calculate how many times that flashes in ten minutes of 'typical' use. Then extrapolate. You'll understand what I mean.