http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/ Engadget Comments for JMicron NAND flash controller could lead to significantly lower SSD prices http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 8:33AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 8:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 9:01AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 9:06AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 9:33AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/(I know intel updated their firmware, but it's not 100% effective I think I read.)

The problem with SSD's is that you have to check what controller (generation) is used, and the thing is that most shops/boxes don't supply that info, so you need to research before buying, which most consumers find annoying upto a point of just giving up, or worse they just buy on chance and then are forever sour about SSD's if they end up with a 1st generation buggy controller in theirs.]]>May 31st 2009 10:02AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
Although this new one promises to be a vast improvement, the CURRENT JMICRON CONTROLLER IS HORRIBLE! I am not talking about a little less performance others, I am talking about 100X slower random write performance, and very poor performance in most metrics. So bad that the majority of reviewers like Anandtech, Bit-Tech, Pcperspective, etc recommend that you don't even consider buying one!

I'm not an expert, but I have done a lot of research. Here are some tips on SSDs that I have learned:

1) NEVER buy an SSD without seeing a review of the exact model from websites like those I mentioned above. SSD performance differs drastically among manufacturers and even within manufacturers different product lines and generations. Even SSDs with the same controller can have somewhat different performance characteristics due to firmware tuning.

2) The controller situation is actually pretty easy to follow. There are only four main companies producing them:

# JMicron - strongly advised to avoid. Many drives using their current controller use two of them in internal RAID 0 which helps a bit, but doesn't solve the primary problem of terrible write performance.

# Indilinx - Their current controllers are very good and competitive with Intel and Samsung. A very popular and highly-rated drive using their controller is the OCZ Vertex which is by far the best performing drive the money. This drive shows none of the rapid slow-down effect of the Intel drives. (although that will probably be fixes soon).

# Samsung - They used to be the only game in town. Their first generation controllers are still far better than any JMicron, but their new controller --- in drives like OCZ's Summit series and Corsair P256 -- is blazingly fast and obliterates older Samsung-based drives.! The sequenital write performance blows away Intels X25-M, although Intel has the advantage with random writes. An overall excellent new chip that readily outperforms Indilinx in most situations.]]>May 31st 2009 1:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
# Intel's controller in their X25-M is very good, offering incredibly the industry fastest MLC read speeds and most importantly the fastest random write performance by far. (sequential write performance has been sacrificed for the more-important-to-most-non-server-situations random write performance). The problem is that Intel's controller is only available on Intel's own drives for now, which are very expensive compared to alternatives. Intel's X25M goes for $315 (80GB) or $620 (160GB) where as OCZ's Vertex goes for $220 (60GB), $375 (120GB) or $830 (250GB).

The only problem is that Intel's MLC drive apparently has an issue that causes it to rapidly lose performance after multiple re-writes of the same sector. Although all SSDs experience a slight slow-down as their drives fill up, other drives do not experience the dramatic Intel problem. Most expect this to be fixed with new firmware. Additionally, future SSD firmware from all manufacturers are supposed to use new drive instructions that will essentially completely eliminate the slowdown that well-used SSDs experience.]]>May 31st 2009 2:03PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/]]>May 31st 2009 6:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
My Samsung SLC drive is a smooth operator. Even though the flat out max read and write are "only" 100 and 80 MB/s, respectively, it stays fast no pretty much matter what you throw at it. There is little slowdown when the block sizes get smaller or the IO queue starts to stack up. My subjective experience is the MLC (I have the slower 64GB version, the 128GB and 256Gb are faster to write) drive isn't quite as good under pressure, but given a clear run at something it burns rubber of course.

The benchmarks would indicate that the new MLC is a clean win, but for the 64GB version at any rate I don't think it's cut and dry like that.]]>May 31st 2009 8:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
Second, the 'Intel slowdown' is, while reproducible on a test bench, nearly impossible to encounter by chance in the wild. Don't worry about it. The SATA TRIM command will be a good thing, as there is a very real performance hit as cells are used, but it's not a huge deal for consumer use. Here's some good coverage of normal aging on the current top contenders:
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/16979]]>Jun 1st 2009 1:33AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 8:42AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/ʔ
ʔ]]>May 31st 2009 9:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 9:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 9:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 8:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 8:51AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 10:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 3:00PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 8:53AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 9:29AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/]]>May 31st 2009 9:55AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/Note that I haven't tried windows7 so I can't say it also does the wake up/rev up of all drives for stupid reasons, but since vista is based on XP and w7 based on vista (and XP) I fear the worse.
It's anyway odd that HD makers didn't incorporate deeper intelligence into drives to try to fix flaws in OS's I think.]]>May 31st 2009 9:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
Unless you're talking about something else.]]>May 31st 2009 12:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/Anyway a drive that went idle and after a while spun down needs to first rev up again, which takes time, in that time windows happily messes up the multitasking and stalls everything.
That is one of the things that annoy me a lot about windows and which attracts me to the concept of SSD's since they don't spin down, but a system with just SSD's either has way too little space or becomes so expensive only a handful of people could afford it.
]]>May 31st 2009 6:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
Although he was obviously joking about himself there so it wouldn't have mattered.]]>May 31st 2009 10:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
From Wikipedia: (NOR allows random-access for reading, NAND allows only page access)

This means that not only do you get all of the disadvantages of flash (wear spanned across the blocks after RW operations,) but you forgo the benefits of flash itself, massively faster Read Write operations

Using NAND in this way just doesn't seem worth the risk

]]>May 31st 2009 10:11AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
Cheerz]]>May 31st 2009 10:34AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 2:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
NOR is random access for reads, but to be honest, that's not an issue. Reads are so fast on NAND that reading an entire page (8K) is really quick. Besides, most OSes gather up disk accesses into increments of 2K, 4K or 8K anyway.

NOR is slow to write, because it isn't random access on writes.

The biggest value of NOR is that it is reliable enough that you usually don't need to do wear-leveling.

NOR is a specialty market now. It may all but disappear within 5 years.]]>May 31st 2009 9:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
]]>May 31st 2009 10:41AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 11:25AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3531

It's long, it's relatively tedious, but you will know more than almost everyone at Engadget if you read it.]]>May 31st 2009 11:33AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 12:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
Thanks for the link. ]]>May 31st 2009 3:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 10:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
I have an older OCZ SSD that was completely unusable on my nVIDIA 780i chipset, but dropped it into my laptop, and it flies.

I will certainly steer clear of anything that says "jmicron controller" in the future.]]>May 31st 2009 12:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 4:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/
So it'll be great if prices drop further, though JMicron itself sucks.
]]>May 31st 2009 4:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/May 31st 2009 6:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/31/jmicron-nand-flash-controller-could-lead-to-significantly-lower/Jun 1st 2009 4:50PM