Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On October 19 last year, SK Hynix officially acquired Intel NAND flash memory and SSD business, and the birth of the Solidigm brand is the first big move of SK Hynix after this acquisition. As a start-up brand Solidigm faces great challenges, but with the technology, resources and talents of SK Hynix and Intel at the same time, Solidigm has released enterprise-level SSD and consumer SSD products in less than a year.

The product we want to evaluate this time is the first consumer solid state drive released by Solidigm, the model is Solidigm P41 Plus, the entry level is located, and the platform is PCIe4.0. Can this product bring together the strengths of the two families and bring us different surprises?

Packaging materials

Solidigm P41 Plus packaging style is simple, white is the main color, purple is the emphasis color, the volume is slightly larger than the mainstream solid. Solidigm brand Logo, product model, capacity version and applicable platform are printed on the front of the package.

The back of the Solidigm P41 Plus package is printed with various certification and identification information.

Take apart the outer package, which contains two sets of hard disk body and accessories, namely transparent hard storage box and instruction manual.

The retail version of the Solidigm P41 Plus is a standard 2280 length specification, and the rest of the length will be used for OEM channel sales. The hard disk is designed with one-sided PCB, and the front is a label with product Logo, product model and other information.

The basic information and certification logo of the hard drive are printed on the back of the Solidigm P41 Plus. CTOnews.com gets the 1TB capacity version this time. In addition, the Solidigm P41 Plus also provides 512GB and 2TB versions.

If you take off the label on the front, you can see that there is a NAND flash memory chip and a memory particle on the PCB of the Solidigm P41 Plus, and the space in the middle is empty, indicating that the hard disk has adopted the DRAM-less no buffer design.

In terms of main control, Solidigm P41 Plus adopts SM2269XTF master chip developed in cooperation with Huirong Technology Company of Taiwan, China. The master controller is based on 12nm process technology, with built-in dual-core ARM R8 CPU, 4 16Gb / s PCIe data stream channels and 4 NAND channels, each channel up to 1600MT / s, supporting automatic adjustment of multi-core load.

SM2269XTF adopts DRAM-less structure design, supports host hosting cache technology, is suitable for making small size solid state, and provides better installation compatibility.

On the right is a single storage particle of model 29F08T4A0CQK2222257 with a capacity of 1024GB. The use of NAND flash memory for 144 layers of 3D QLC particles, from Intel. The maximum amount of writing for the 1TB version is 400TBW and the warranty period is 5 years.

It is worth mentioning that the Solidigm P41 Plus does not provide a single hardware part, and the supporting software called Solidigm Synergy is also a must for use. You also need to install the storage driver of Solidigm to get a complete experience, which we will talk about in more detail later.

Performance measurement

Solidigm P41 Plus is positioned as an entry-level consumer solid state. According to the performance parameters provided officially, the 1TB version can reach the sequential read speed of 4125MB/s, the sequential write speed of 2950MB/s, and the highest 225KIOPS and 520KIOPS of 4K random throughput, respectively, and the sequential read speed is still much higher than that of the PCIe3.0 platform.

The hardware platform used in this test is as follows: 12-generation Core i5-12600K processor, MSI Magic Dragon GAMEING Z TRIO RTX3060Ti graphics card, MSI MAG B660 MORTAR DDR4 mortar motherboard, Yingruida Platinum win DDR4 3600MHz 8GB*2 memory strip, all the following tests are based on this platform, the results are for your reference only.

First of all, CTOnews.com carries out three theoretical runs through the AS SSD software, and we test the three file simulation sizes of 1GB, 5GB and 10GB respectively under the empty disk state. as can be seen from the above figure, the sequential reading and writing speed under the 1GB size is 3656MB/s and 2778MB/s respectively, the total score is 4541, and the delay is 0.023 and 0.03 respectively.

Under the simulated size of 5GB file, the scores of continuous read and write, 4K read and write and 4K random read and write are basically the same, and the continuous write speed is a little higher, but the write delay time increases from 0.03ms to 0.145ms, and the total score decreases slightly.

Under the simulated size of 10GB file, the continuous read-write speed and 4K read-write speed are still the same, but the 4K random write speed decreases by about 250MB/s, the write delay further increases to 0.295ms, and the total score picks up slightly. Generally speaking, in the empty disk state, this hard disk has a good ability to continuously read and write large files and 4K read and write. It is expected that the 4K random write speed drops with the increase of the file, and the write delay changes obviously, but in the normal range.

The maximum random read and write refers to the data throughput of thousands of times in a second (in KIOPS). The larger the number, the better. At this time, it will be carried out with more threads and deep queues, so it will very test the ultimate capacity of SSDs. This data has little impact on daily use, but it is of reference significance for consumers for professional purposes.

We change the test unit to IOPS and run 1GB again, and the 4K random throughput of the third line is 228KIOPS and 541KIOPS, respectively. This score is very close to the official claimed theoretical speed, and the write throughput is even nearly 20,000 points higher, in line with propaganda expectations. In the limit state, the total score of AS SSD returned to 4500 + again, and the performance tended to be stable.

Considering that the AS SSD Benchmark algorithm will lead to low scores, we re-tested through another professional hard disk test tool CrystalDiskMark. Under the simulated size of the 1GB file, Solidigm P41 Plus ran to the sequential reading speed of 4171MB/s and the sequential writing speed of 2968MB/s. This group of results are almost consistent with the official theoretical publicity data. It can also be seen that the Solidigm P41 Plus is indeed an entry-level consumer, and peak speed is not its strength.

Compared with the performance of the empty disk, we should be more concerned about the performance of the full disk. After all, the hard disk itself is used to hold things, especially for users with large storage needs. Whether there is a performance loss after a full disk or near full disk is much more important than empty disk performance. So we wrote the Solidigm P41 Plus to the 793GB file, and CDM showed that it occupied 83% of the capacity. Once again, we measured the sequential read / write speed of 4109MB/s and 2962MB/s, which can be said to be no slow down.

We all know that 4K refers to the random reading of small 4KiB Q1T1 files, and the corresponding delay is the average response time of accessing the hard disk during the test. Generally speaking, the higher the 4K score, the lower the delay score. This test is very close to the scenario of copying folders containing multiple files in your daily use. Through the CDM test, its 4K random read speed is 84, and the latency is 48, which is naturally far away from the flagship solid state, but this performance is not bad.

Seven reads and three writes refers to the mixed read and write test with 4096 bytes in Q1T1 low queue depth. Generally speaking, when you start the software from the hard disk or open the game to load or load the map, most of the ultra-small files around 4KiB are used, and there are both read and write, the proportion of read operations is more, and the two working states of the hard disk are carried out at the same time. So this test is very suitable for consumers' daily use scenarios, and it just so happens that Solidigm P41 Plus advertises that the experience is optimized for low-queue depth to meet daily work and entertainment needs.

We can call up this test combination from the original CDM version 8.0 or later. Just look at the last data in the fourth row of the third column in the figure. The higher the value, the better. Solidigm P41 Plus has a score of 106. what exactly is the concept? The most well-known OEM solid-state Samsung PM9A1, which is used in high-end omnipotent books and game books, has a seven-reading and three-writing score of 104-105 in its 1TB version, so the daily performance of the Solidigm P41 Plus is not bad at all.

As a comprehensive PC testing software, PC Mark 8 also contains a very detailed storage performance test project for the hard disk. The test results include scores, bandwidth and sub-scores of 10 items from game testing, office software and professional software, covering all aspects of the evaluation, very complete, can provide good reference value. The comprehensive score of Solidigm P41 Plus in this test is 5076, and the comprehensive score of reading and writing is 662MB/s.

PC Mark 10 provides two test types, namely, full system disk and data disk. According to the characteristics of Solidigm P41 Plus, we choose the system disk type that processes files frequently. The comprehensive score of Solidigm P41 Plus in this test is 3116, the bandwidth is 500.33MB/s, and the average access time is 54us.

In terms of temperature, the hard disk temperature of Solidigm P41 Plus is 38 degrees when standby, 42-48 degrees when reading and writing, and 65 degrees when running limit load.

As mentioned earlier in Solidigm Synergy, Solidigm P41 Plus is not a single hardware, and Solidigm Synergy management software and Solidigm drivers are an unavailable part of the complete experience, because the SLC caching mechanism that involves the core experience requires software to be more efficient.

When we download Solidigm Synergy management software from the official website, we find that the page automatically jumps to Intel's official website, and the actual name of the tool is Solidigm Storage Tool.

Solidigm Storage Tool's main interface provides basic information about all hard drives in the current system, including model number, firmware version, driver supplier, etc., and displays the estimated life health, operating temperature and available capacity of the hard drive in real time.

Solidigm Storage Tool provides many functions, such as you can query and download the firmware files of your hard drive.

Through scanning, quickly and comprehensively diagnose whether there is a problem with the hard drive.

After removing the partition, safely erase the hard drive.

However, the two most important functions are performance boosters and host-managed caching. The performance booster can clear the cache occupied in the solid state, thereby improving the real-time performance of the hard drive.

The host managed cache is used to optimize the SLC cache. Traditional SLC cache will decide whether to occupy the cache according to the new and old degree of the written data, and the newly written data will definitely enter and occupy the cache. The logic of host hosting cache is to remember the files and programs most commonly used by users and intelligently save them in the cache so as to improve the efficiency of use. In other words, whether it is recently written data or not, as long as the file or program is accessed frequently, it will be selected into the cache pool and will be called on demand.

Then the most important function of this host hosting cache is to improve the consistency of hard disk performance. For example, in the previous test, there was a small difference in read and write speed between an empty disk and an 80% dirty disk. What happens if we disable this performance hosting? The biggest impact is the 4K random throughput under multi-threaded deep queues. After being disabled, the maximum read throughput becomes 218KIOPS, which is 10,000 less, and the maximum write throughput is 401KIOPS, 140,000 less.

In CDM, the maximum throughput of RND4K Q64T4 is also tested, with scores of 228KIOPS and 529KIOPS when host-hosted cache is turned on, and 226KIOPS and 435KIOPS when host-managed cache is disabled.

For another example, enable / disable the hosting cache. The 4K random write speed of the fourth line is 764 and 664, respectively, with a difference of 15%. It is recommended that you try to enable the hosting cache to use Solidigm P41 Plus.

So is the SLC simulation cache space of Solidigm P41 Plus fixed? Let's verify it through HD Ture Pro, a testing tool. In the mixed data mode of read + write, a 200GB-sized data packet is generated and read and written once respectively. The result is very interesting. The sequential read speed has been maintained at the high level of 3000MB/s, and even improved after reading 80GB. The sequential write speed floats up and down in 2700MB/s at first, then falls out of the cache after writing to 130GB, and the speed drops sharply to 250MB/s. Of course, this is the case of empty disk, let's move on.

In the case of 80% dirty disk, the mixed data mode of read + write is used again to generate a 50GB-sized data packet and read and write once respectively. Finally, the Solidigm P41 Plus has a sequential write speed fluctuation around 23GB, and the speed falls out slowly around 46GB, and the sequential read speed fluctuates more when it is around 33GB.

Summary throughout the market similar to the Solidigm P41 Plus positioning of QLC particles, non-slow design solid state is not many. So obviously, Solidigm P41 Plus is a test, because it is very risky for startups to be flagship, and it is important for new brands that entry-level QLC can quickly capture the market with high performance-to-price ratio.

In order to dispel some concerns of consumers about QLC solid state, Solidigm handed over its own answer paper, through the combination of software and hardware, micro-innovation SLC cache mechanism, so that solid state to adapt to the low queue depth, ordinary consumers' habit of handling files during daily use, and improve the efficiency of use. At the same time, optimize to enhance performance consistency and stability, so that the speed is no longer a "roller coaster". Whether this method can be recognized or not needs to be tested by the market, but at least consumers have one more choice, right?

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