Asynchronous vs. Synchronous NAND Flash SSD Performance

[profJim]

Buyer Beware: Asynchronous vs. Synchronous NAND Flash SSD Performance

Check out NAND Flash Faces Off - Synchronous vs. Asynchronous | [H]ard|OCP for a fascinating article that deals with real world performance differences with newer solid state drives when the drives are filled with 25 - 75% of data.

Bottom line, there is a modest price premium for the better performing synchronous drives, where the slightly less expensive asynchronous drives will often have only 50% - 66% of the performance of the synchronous NAND drives.

A web search using Asynchronous vs. Synchronous NAND Flash provides additional information.

The OCZ Technology Agility 3 240GB SSD Review :: TweakTown USA Edition review compares the OCZ Agility3 asynchronous ssd with the OCZ Vertex3 synchronous ssd and reports on the significant real world performance differences. Their conclusion on the last page of the review says it all. The TweakTown article was published one month before the HardOCP article.

The bottom line:
asynchronous drives = inferior performance.
synchronous drives = superior performance.

2012-03-24 update:

The following link was posted by Wazza300 in another thread on 2012-03-11:

cool site listing all the ssd synchronous and asynchronous types plus reviews ect,
esential read for anyone thinking of buying an ssd

SSD Reviews Thread @ StorageReviews.com

The 6 page thread has detailed SSD controller and NAND information for a large number of current models.


2012-04-01 update:

from NAND SSD Data Base thread at XtremeSystems, post #1:

I thought it might be useful to build a data base of NAND types as it affects speed, endurance and data integrity. It’s hard to come across manufactures product specs sheets, but if you find one and want to add details to the data base it can be found here:
SSD NAND Google Docs Spreadsheet

Thanks to Acebmxer for providing these links in post #4

[profJim]

Link added in post #1 to the TweakTown review of the asynchronous OCZ Agility3 ssd and its noticeably worse performance compared with the synchronous OCZ Vertex3 ssd. These real world performance differences apply to many/most other ssd brands that use the less expensive asynchronous NAND.

[profJim]

Link added in post #1 to a 6 page thread at StorageReview.com that has detailed SSD controller and NAND information for a large number of current SSD models.

[Acebmxer]

Hey Profjim found this over at XS thought you might want to have a look at it or update first post with link.

NAND Data Base

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...lLTdNQVE#gid=0

[profJim]

Check out Corsair Force Series 3 180GB Solid State Drive Review :: TweakTown USA Edition where an asynchronous SSD with the newest Sandforce controller still has inferior performance when the drive is 25%, 50% and 75% full.

From the review's conclusion, the Corsair Force Series GT synchronous ssd is only $20 more expensive than the Corsair Force Series 3 asynchronous ssd.


from Corsair Force Series 3 180GB Solid State Drive Review - PCMark Vantage - Drives with Data Testing (page 9)

note: the 4 drives with scores less than 40,000 for the 25%, 50% and 75% fill tests are all asynchronous SSD's.

[profJim]

SSD's with toggle NAND

Toggle NAND has been available in consumer ssd's for a while now.
All the ssd reviews that I've seen have shown that toggle NAND performance is excellent.
My next ssd purchase will probably have toggle NAND.
Right now, the Samsung 830 is at the top of my short list.

[wazza300]

samsung 830 and sandisk extreme use toggle nand,performance increases by the amount of memory chips they use on each ssd,the bigger the capacity usually they use more chips which increases performance in toggle nand

[nleksan]

Toggle-NAND, at least that which is made by Samsung (and used in the 830 series), is by far the best that I've used. Honestly, regardless of what I have done to my 830 256GB (has had 23TB written to it in 4mo to "stress test" it), I have yet to see ONE SINGLE benchmark in which it DID NOT BEAT the manufacturer's advertised speeds! With 90% full, it will still read at ~495MB/s and write at ~405MB/s sequentially!

I have owned the Force GT, M3 Pro, M4, M5 Pro, and a number of OCZ (fail) drives, and I haven't kept any of them longer than a month. The Samsung I've had since May, and I will continue to buy the 830 256GB drives until I have to fight someone to the death for the last available one! Haha, maybe not literally, but they are just THAT GOOD!

[parsec]

So you wouldn't think that any of the latest models of SSDs would use asynchronous NAND anymore, right? Well think again.

The OCZ Agility 4 SSD uses asynchronous NAND, this model first introduced in the early Fall, 2012. To their credit, they include that fact in the product specs.

A new... player in the SSD market, Monster Cable... or I should say, Monster Digital, has a line of SSDs available (SSDs have truly become a commodity item.) The marketing genius's at Monster Digital have set their product apart from the others with a new feature unheard of before in SSD history, NCQASYNC!

Hmm, somehow that looks familiar, let's see... how about NCQ and ASYNC. NCQ, or Native Command Queuing, is a major feature of the AHCI standard, and is supported on virtually ALL SSDs since their introduction. A SSD without it would not be worth consideration. Then we have ASYNC, meaning asynchronous NAND. Unless of course these SSDs are not SATA, but instead use the USB interface, which is asynchronous. No, they are SATA III.

Newegg.com - Monster Digital Daytona SSDDB-0240-A 2.5" 240GB SATA III with NCQASYNC MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

I wonder how many poor chumps will be taken in by NCQASYNC, as some remarkable feature, when it is only pure marketing BS.

[profJim]

It will be interesting to see how well it performs in real world "steady state" or data fill tests.
Will its performance be similar to current asynchronous NAND ssd's where the specs look great but the performance suffers when the ssd is filled with 25% - 75% of it's capacity.

Check out prices at Newegg Sata III SSDs: 240GB, 250GB and 256GB

MonsterDigital SSD website: Monster Digital 240 GB Daytona Series 2.5-Inch SATA 6 GB/s Solid State Drive 858019003433
Check out the specs between the mainstream Daytona model and the enterprise class Le Mans model.
Both models use LSI SandForce controller chips.

After reading the marketing hype on their website, I'm going to give the Daytona model a nickname: Hyped Device Dud, aka HDD.