
Make no mistake about it, the RealSSD P320h is an absolute monster when it comes to random 4 KB reads. Topping out at over 500,000 IOPS, it easily beats the best from OZC and Intel. Micron did caution us that the P320h is optimized for large queue depths and likely wouldn't perform as well with fewer outstanding I/O requests (an admission applicable to any SSD, really). In our testing, we see that at queue depths of 16 and less, Intel's SSD 910 hangs right with the P320h, as its 32 channels simply go underutilized. At a queue depth of 32 and higher, though, Micron's P320h leaves its competition gasping for air. Presented with a workload truly able to push its unique architecture, the P320h rewards you greatly.

Random 4 KB writes, while still very impressive, don't impart as much shock value as read performance did. The RealSSD P320h can't keep up with OCZ's Z-Drive R4, though it easily dispatches Intel's SSD 910 at high queue depths. At low queue depths, the P320h doesn't perform as well. The Intel and OCZ offerings both establish a comfortable edge.

The P320h's average response time is excellent, beating the Z-Drive R4 by a hair.

Our maximum response time test shows the P320h flexing its muscles yet again. This is one of the clearest examples of the benefits afforded by bypassing the SATA/SAS interface entirely. Of course, arming the device with SLC NAND doesn't hurt, either. In fact, the P320h's maximum response time is only slightly higher than the SSD 910's average.
- Meet Micron's P320h PCI Express-Based SSD
- Micron's 32-Channel Controller Simplifies PCIe-Based SSDs
- Micron's Firmware And Monitoring Software
- Test Setup, Benchmarks, And Methodology
- Measuring Write Endurance: SLC Wins Again
- 4 KB Random Performance
- Enterprise Workload Performance
- Sequential Performance
- Enterprise Video Streaming Performance
- Power Consumption
- Micron's RealSSD P320h: The Future Of Enterprise-Class SSDs?
Such an apples to oranges comparison...
It using SLC and geared towards enterprise market...
IMO it understandable price...
Such an apples to oranges comparison...
Kinda surprised something like this didn't come out first as it makes more sense....
really ? Increasingly, performance is basically dependent on extracting parallelism. Whether in storage or in CPU performance.
Desktop/Mainstream users just dont do so much in parallel that they can fully use all the hardware.
I see a purpose for 16 core processors. How are we going to otherwise be able to run Crysis 6?
Use a 5000 core GPU ?
????????!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the review, love to see this kind of advancement and a peak into the future new hardware brings with it, even if it isn't directly applicable to me at this point in time.
Can you put two of them in RAID0 ??
Signed,
Bonkers
It using SLC and geared towards enterprise market...
IMO it understandable price...
Eh, depending on how far in the future we're talking about, neither of those statements is iron-clad. In the case of a 16-core processor, it's pretty much guaranteed that we will eventually see one in the consumer space, at mainstream prices. Whether the extra cores on that CPU will offer any compelling benefit to the mainstream consumer is an open question, but at least those cores do offer meaningful performance benefits to hardcore multi-taskers.
Similarly, current consumer-grade SSDs offer very nearly instantaneous responsiveness already -- unless the user attempts to perform multiple disk-intensive tasks simultaneously. But who knows what the future holds? You could make a case that current enterprise-grade SSDs (or something similar to them) are far more likely to make a meaningful mark on the consumer market years from now than 16-core processors, because the benefits of CPU parallelism are limited in principle. By contrast, the benefit of storage speed is only limited by the speed of the components that rely on it; storage speed applies both to singular and parallel tasks.
That said, I agree with your sentiment if not with the particulars of your argument: my gut reaction to the article was that although 3.2 GB/sec is a very impressive number, I already feel like I'm flying at the ~0.5 GB/sec (at best) that I get out of my Intel 330. From the consumer perspective, performance comparisons between different SSDs almost always seem to me materially irrelevant, so it's hard to get too excited about the performance of an enterprise-grade SSD, even in the abstract.
Still, this is a worthy review of an interesting product. Appreciate the insight.
1989... 1MB of memory chips (card extra) was $100 wholesale !
We sold them by the boat load for Amiga computers.
And yes, that is 1 MegaByte...
an 8MB card retailed for $1,800 (and that's in 1989 Dollars).
I am glad you find it useful, it is something that I have always cared about and tested because I have been burned in the past.