Phison S10: Toshiba MLC And TLC Versus Micron L95B MLC

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Phison offered to let us test its S10 controller with three flash types that will ship in 2015: Toshiba's A19 TLC, 15nm MLC and Micron L95B 16nm MLC.

Random Write

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Toshiba A19 TLC takes a large performance hit in the random write category. At QD32, TLC delivers around one-third the random write performance of MLC flash from Toshiba and Micron. The MLC advantage is even greater at 256GB. We expected the 16-package TLC to perform a better than it did, if only because of the increased parallelism. It will be interesting to see what happens when a company uses just eight packages with TLC; performance may drop down to 10,000 random write IOPS.

At a queue depth of one and two, the TLC drives close the gap. TLC-based products will make up the entry-level SSD market, so they'll be used for Web surfing, light gaming and general productivity tasks. Their performance is ample for those activities, and still well beyond what you'd get from a disk drive.

Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews consumer storage.
4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Nuckles_56
    whoa, where did you guys get some 4800GB just for the battery life tests?
    Reply
  • James Mason
    whoa, where did you guys get some 4800GB just for the battery life tests?

    Yeah so many typos I almost thought they actually did get 5 terabyte SSDs somehow.
    Reply
  • Frozen Fractal
    I was arranging a chart while reading this article to see who actually wins. Seems like Toshiba 15nm MLC wins the test, with Micron 16nm MLC close on tail and TLCs wayyyy off :D.

    It is kinda disappointing to see TLCs being outperformed so brutally. I guess increased SLC buffer should mitigate the problem? Samsung already has like this in the EVO 2TB so what do you think Chris?

    Also, does lithography has anything to do with performance? I mean Micron's NANDs are close to Toshiba's MLCs and Micron's cells are just 1nm bigger than Toshiba's MLCs. Can this be co-related somehow?
    Reply
  • WyomingKnott
    It is so cool that they provided these for a head-to-head comparison. Finally, a comparison with all other variables really held even.
    Reply