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• Intel X25-M Mainstream Flash SSD With Firmware Update

  Throughput Testing Do you remember read performance crashing to 42 MB/s with the old firmware? Intel’s engineers did a great job in optimizing the firmware, as the read throughput didn’t decrease significantly any more with the new 8820 firmware. The minimum throughput after the first h2benchw/IOMeter cycle was 109 MB/s, but after just the second cycle the X25-M was able to adjust and maintain a minimum sequential read throughput of 200 MB/s. Although the firmware update cannot prevent minimum write throughput decreasing to only a few megabytes per second, the maximum results stay at a constant 80 MB/s, while the average numbers even keep increasing. Clearly, the firmware adjusts to the workload much more efficiently. I/O Testing There still is a little performance drop, but the 8820 firmware manages to buffer the drop significantly. A decrease from 3,300 to 3,100 I/O operations per second for typical database transactions is certainly acceptable. The extreme performance differences of the 8160 firmware are gone with version 8820, but the fileserver performance keeps increasing. Web server performance doesn’t suffer from the heavily changing torture testing with the new firmware, as the X25-M reaches 11,400 I/O operations per second in the Web server test at all times. Workstation performance, which is based on small to medium block sizes, is different now. Although the first run results in less I/O performance than was the case on the old firmware, the following runs actually are much better. Overall, the new 8820 firmware for the X25-M offers a significant improvement over the old 8160 version, as it manages to maintain performance at a higher level than was possible before. Both throughput and I/O performance are more predictable and closer to the maximum results. Compared to the performance increases caused by driver or firmware updates on graphics cards or for processors and platforms, the improvements here are much more significant. Intel X25-M Mainstream Solid State Drive -... (4 offers) Online shop Price Buy.com $346.82 ElectronicsPLUS $404.99 SuperMediaStore.com $479.99 NextWarehouse.com $610.87 See more products

• Intel X25-M Mainstream Flash SSD (80 GB)

  Throughput Testing Remember the test procedure: the first three runs consist of throughput testing, followed by I/O testing (you'll find the I/O results below), while the last three runs were only about throughput. Clearly, the minimum read throughput crashed from 224.9 MB/s to as little as 42.8 MB/s when we executed the IOMeter benchmark on the X25-M. On the third cycle, the performance dropped even more, and it took until the 6th cycle for throughput to recover. Clearly the X25-M with the initial 8160 firmware takes quite a performance hit. Throughput may still reach the maximum, but it crashed to only 33.9 MB/s minimum during a h2benchw throughput test. While read performance was still okay due to constant high maximum and average results, the sequential write performance results were really horrible. When we only execute one full IOMeter cycle, the sequential write throughput drops from 65-80 MB/s to only 3.1-3.8 MB/s. Although the maximum write throughput recovers a bit, the minimum numbers remain at an extremely low level of only 2.0-3.8 MB/s, which is far less than a conventional hard drive can provide as minimum. Even the average results are disappointing. At this point we have to mention Intel’s 8820 firmware update, which introduces a significant performance over these results. I/O Testing While the throughput numbers suffer significantly with every I/O benchmark cycle, the I/O performance remains at a rather high level in the case of the database benchmark. Still, there is a noticeable drop that recovers a bit in the third run. The results are different for the fileserver benchmark pattern, which reads and writes much larger blocks than the database benchmark. Here, I/O performance increases from 605 to 1,763 I/O operations per second after the first run, and reaches 915 I/O operations per second in the third run. Clearly, the intensive throughput benchmarking seems to have a positive effect on this I/O benchmark pattern. Still, a performance increase of 2.9x followed by a 50% drop isn’t really what you would consider ideal. Web server performance doesn’t suffer much from our torture test cycles, as it is based 100% on reading small random blocks, which flash SSDs can handle very well at all times. Still, I/O performance decreases from 11,154 to 9,000 I/O operations per second, which represents a 20% drop. Workstation performance also decreases, but not dramatically. Let’s look at the results with Intel’s new 8820 firmware now. Intel X25-M Mainstream Solid State Drive -... (4 offers) Online shop Price Buy.com $346.82 ElectronicsPLUS $404.99 SuperMediaStore.com $479.99 NextWarehouse.com $610.87 See more products

• Drives: Intel X25-E 64 GB SSD

  We reviewed Intel’s professional-series SSD, the X25-E, in February 2009, and the conclusion was clear: this product cannot outperform other performance drives when it comes to read throughput, but it delivers higher write throughput than other products, and it is capable of delivering massive I/O performance numbers. The X25-E delivers between 10x and 25x the performance of a single 15,000 RPM enterprise hard drive, while boasting state-of-the-art throughput. The recipe for success lies in Intel’s ten-channel flash controller with integrated cache memory to optimize wear leveling as well as write performance. Intel’s latest firmware updates, which have been available for download on the Intel Web site, do not yet include the professional X25-E drives. The 64 GB version, featuring 50 nm SLC NAND flash memory, is still Intel’s top model. Next-generation devices will switch to an advanced 34 nm process soon (watch for a review any day!). This will double capacities to 128 GB in the enterprise segment and 320 GB in X25-M consumer drives. There’s still some headroom for additional performance increases, but the SATA/300 interface may soon become the next bottleneck. Luckily, SATA/600 is fully specified and ready to go. We wanted to get as many X25-E drives as possible, but we expected to reach more than 2 GB/s bandwidth with far fewer than 24 drives, which the Samsung project used. After having received Intel’s 16 SSDs, we tried several configurations to optimize for maximum throughput and I/O performance. See more products Intel X25-E Extreme 64GB 2.5"... Dell Small Business $899.99 PC Connection $783.86 Other World Computing $759.99 NextWarehouse.com $766.88 ElectronicsPLUS $795.59