SSD breakthrough means 300% speed boost, 60% less power usage... even on old drives

[Gumba]

Source: http://www.neowin.net/news/ssd-breakthrough-means-300-speed-boost-60-less-power-usage-even-on-old-drives

 

A breakthrough has been made in SSD technology that could mean drastic performance increases due to the overcoming of one of the major issues in the memory type. Currently, data cannot be directly overwritten onto the NAND chips used in the devices. Files must be written to a clean area of the drive whilst the old area is formatted. This eventually causes fragmented data and lowers the drive's life and performance over time.

 

However, a Japanese team at Chuo University have finally overcome the issue that is as old as the technology itself. Officially unveiled at the 2014 IEEE International Memory Workshop in Taipei, the researchers have written a brand new middleware for the drives that controls how the data is written to and stored on the device. Their new version utilizes what they call a 'logical block address scrambler' which effectively prevents data being written to a new 'page' on the device unless it is absolutely required. Instead, it is placed in a block to be erased and consolidated in the next sweep. This means significantly less behind-the-scenes file copying that results in increased performance from idle, during intensive jobs and a longer lifetime for the drive as SSDs have a finite number of possible write operations.

 

In tests, drives using the technology wrote data 55% less often than drives without and performance increases of up to 300% were noted. This could enable high-end devices to easily reach transfer speeds of 1.5GB/s as current models achieve around 500MB/s typically; 60% less power was also used in the lab tests due to the lack of additional drive writes.

If you are reading this on a computer booting from an SSD and are thinking of splashing out on one of these next-generation models equipped with new NAND chips then perhaps you should wait a moment. The changes made by the team were purely software-based. There is definitely a possibility that existing devices still in support by their manufacturers may get firmware updates in the near future so that they store data in the new manner and  benefit from the increased speed, decreased power consumption and increased expected life of drives equipped with the new NAND controller firmware. 

[P e r s e p h o n e]

I'm with the second guy that posted on the site stating, "Yes, but let's just wait and see how this turns out."

[coen113]

i would like me some of that

[Andi]

Sata 6 Gbit/s is the biggest limiting factor anyway. more than 550mb/s isn't possible with this interface. And you can already buy SSDs with another interface that write 1-2Gb/s

[Torand]

This is the original article:

 

 

 

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20140522/353388/

 

 

 

as seen on the reddit thread:

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/26cec7/ssd_breakthrough_means_300_speed_boost_60_less/chppv56

 

 

 

I hope they can get teamed up with someone like Intel to see how feasible/manufacture-able the technology actually is and eventually/hopefully getting it to market.

[Rheinwasser]

i hope intel will be nice. i want support.

[Humbug]

Will this only affect write speed? Technically this is a feature that could be introduced to our existing SSDs via a firmware update, but vendors will prob want to sell new models.

[tharvey]

I'll believe when Linus puts it to the test..  Until then I will remain skeptical.

[flibberdipper]

I'll just keep the firmware that my SSD came with. Mainly because I can't update it. And I don't want to. Which is why I love and hate Linux.

 

I kinda want @LinusTech and @Slick to talk about this on the WAN show next week.

[toughtrasher]

I'll believe when Linus puts it to the test..  Until then I will remain skeptical.

Linus' words = Truth

[wpirobotbuilder]

This won't be seen in consumer drives for years. If a research group at a university just figured it out, it's going to take manufacturers even longer to engineer a solution that is reliable and workable.

 

If you want SSDs to be faster in the short term, add a gigabyte of DRAM to the drive as a random read/write cache and an internal capacitor to write data to the drive after power is cut. That'll jack up the IOPS.

[Nicktrance]

Sata 6 Gbit/s is the biggest limiting factor anyway. more than 550mb/s isn't possible with this interface. And you can already buy SSDs with another interface that write 1-2Gb/s

 

For everyday use that doesn't really matter nand controllers are still the bottlenecks for random access and there is no mention how this will affect them. Longer lifetime and increased efficiency is always nice though .

[FlamingDefibs]

Wasn't this posted already? Twice?

[deviant88]

Repost? http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/156421-jp-research-team-develops-ssd-middlewear-that-improves-speeds-by-300/

 

 

A week ago i bought a new Kingston SSD 120gb and you say what?

[dougyfresh]

Pretty awesome news. Wish I didn't have an OCZ ssd now though . Why did they have to go out of business D':

[LOST TALE]

OMG, What do I have to do? IM blown!

 

Wait fo rfirmware. on manufacturer website... WHERE

 

I have ADATA XPG900

[mr.squishy]

And now I have a legitimate reason to consider an ssd for my rig that only has SATA 2. AFTER we see how the situation pans out, of course.

[Askew]

Third post of this, 2/3 copy pastes.

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/156423-new-and-old-ssds-may-get-up-to-300-performance-increase-and-up-to-60-less-power-consumption/

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/156421-jp-research-team-develops-ssd-middlewear-that-improves-speeds-by-300/

[xXxYOLOxSWAGxXx_420BlazeIt]

What is the point if its going to be on SATA?

[HexaGuy]

This shows that no matter how powerful your hardware is, it will always be limited and controlled by your software. Software is always behind hardware, no matter in what application. This is particularly prominent in the humanoid robotics sector, where we have the most powerful servos, and so many of them, that we can't control them all efficiently without saying 'Goodbye' to battery life.

[rashdanml]

Guess it's almost time for SATA 3.2 to start becoming available. 

[sevs]

Another link: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/37963/ssds-could-soon-be-300-faster-thanks-to-a-simple-new-trick/index.html

[matin94]

i knew i had seen this somewhere, turns out, its a repost

 

but this one seems to have more interactions with people so, you win i guess

[kuddlesworth9419]

I want this fast.