Tag: XPoint

Comparing Wear Figures on SSDs

DWPD TBW GB/Day TriangleI have been receiving questions lately from people who are puzzled when companies use different parameters than their competitors use to specify the endurance of their SSDs.  How do you compare one against the other?  Some companies even switch from one parameter to another to define the endurance of different SSDs within their product line.

I have found that Intel uses three different endurance measures for its products: DWPD (drive writes per day), TBW (terabytes written), and GB/day.

There’s not any real difference between any of these measures – each one is one way of stating how many times each of the SSD’s locations can be overwritten before the drive has gone past its warrantied life.

The relationships between these three measures are illustrated in this post’s graphic.  You can click on it to see an expanded version.  It’s all pretty simple.  We’ll spell out the relationships in detail below, but in brief, if you want to compare Continue reading “Comparing Wear Figures on SSDs”

Why 3D XPoint SSDs Will Be Slow

SNIA: Sources of SSD LatencySomething that has been confusing a number of people is the performance of Intel’s 3D XPoint-based SSDs.  Why are they so slow?

Let me back up a little – they’re not really slow.  When Intel compared its standard NAND flash based PCIe SSD to a similar SSD based on 3D XPoint memory, the XPoint model ran 7-8 times faster, which is very impressive.  Intel demonstrated that at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) last August and several times since then.

But Intel and Micron have been boasting since its introduction that 3D XPoint Memory is 1,000 times as fast as NAND flash.  How do you get from a 1,000 times speed advantage down to a speed improvement of only 7-8 times?

That’s what the graphic in this post will explain.  The small rendition above is just Continue reading “Why 3D XPoint SSDs Will Be Slow”