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Review: Reviewed Provided Firmware
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Welcome to
Myce’s review of the Micron M510DC 480GB SATA Enterprise SSD (hereafter
referred to as the Micron M510DC).
With the M510DC; Micron targets the intensely competitive
‘Read Centric, Low Cost’ market segment. I understand this market segment is
growing rapidly and already accounts for more than 50% of the overall market
for enterprise SSDs. This market comes from the incredible demand for cost
effective storage where data is written infrequently but read very frequently.
For example, Myce’s content is most often written once and then read tens of
thousands of times and it is clear that our storage requirements are very much
read centric. To a large extent the same is true for the likes of Facebook, YouTube,
the BBC, and many other of the world’s most popular content rich websites.
Micron brings 16nm MLC NAND to the fight – how does it perform
and how does it stand up against its competitors? Please read on to find out.
Micron is undeniably a leading player in the storage market.
Their leadership position was recently reinforced when together with Intel they
announced the launch of a new storage technology know as ‘3D XPoint’
(pronounced "cross point", by the way). 3D XPoint promises to be
1,000 times faster and 1,000 times more durable than NAND flash. Earth
shattering stuff within the storage industry and no doubt to the world at large
in due course (my congratulations to anyone holding Micron stock that was
purchased before 28th July – I understand the Chinese would now like to buy it
:o) ).
Micron has also been pioneering with current NAND technology
and with the M510DC they have brought the use of lower cost (more gigabytes per
wafer) 16nm NAND to market, which could give them a price advantage.
Market Positioning and
Specification
Market
Positioning
This is how Micron
positions the Micron M510DC series of drives –
You can see that Micron targets read-centric workloads and
positions their XPERT feature set as an important differentiator. The XPERT
feature set provides architectural enhancements, including data path
protection, adaptive thermal monitoring, and power loss protection, that are
designed to greatly improve SSD performance, drive life, and reliability. The
Micron M510 also supports TCG compliant data encryption.
Here is
confirmation of the applications that Micron see the M510DC being best suited
to.
Specification
Here is Micron's
specification for the Micron M510DC series –
The Micron M510DC uses a proven Marvell controller.
In response
to a recent request I now take this opportunity to show you what an automated
test script, as used in our OakGate test system, looks like –
In the central pane you can see the script that runs the
SNIA tests (these scripts are remarkably easy to develop as the OakGate system
includes SNIA specific Steady State determination exits). On the right hand
side you can see the Performance Graphing functionality, which makes it very
easy to define and generate graphs.
Now let's
head to the next page, to look at Myce’s Enterprise Testing Methodology.....
