Samsung Solid State Drive White Paper © 2013 Samsung Electronics Co.
Preface This content is designed to help facilitate a general to moderate understanding of SSD technology as well as Samsung’s industry leadership and unique product offerings. Much of the content requires at least a basic understanding of SSDs. Thus, it may help to review the glossary and familiarize yourself with some fundamental SSD terminology before delving into this material. Please keep in mind that many concepts have been simplified for the sake of understanding.
01 Why SSDs Are Awesome An SSD Primer Solid State Drive (SSD) technology has been receiving a lot of attention recently – and for good reason. It represents the first major advancement in primary storage technology in years. Upgrading to an SSD does not provide minor performance enhancements. Rather, an SSD will transform your computing experience with its revolutionary random access speeds, its multi-tasking prowess, and its outstanding durability and reliability.
Let’s continue with an analogy. Imagine you are making a cake and you need to collect all of the ingredients. You have a big house – and a kitchen to match. The flour is in the cabinet on the other side of the room, the eggs and milk are in the refrigerator, but you forgot the sugar downstairs in your car. It can take a considerable amount of time to gather the things you need, since you have to physically walk to the location of each ingredient and bring it to your prep area.
a CD player. What happens when it is bumped around too much? Now think about your digital MP3 player. Comparing those devices, which would you trust most to take on a road trip? Any time the complexity of mechanical parts is involved, there is an increased risk of damage to one of the components. Some things wear out naturally with time, and other things simply cannot take any significant abuse. An SSD can withstand more than 40 times the vibration (20G) than an HDD (0.
02 Understanding SSD System Requirements SATA Interface Basics SATA is the name of the interface standard that allows a storage device, in this case an SSD, to communicate with a host system, in this case a PC or laptop. It facilitates the functioning of all storage features, from basic input/output (or read/write) requests to advanced AHCI-enabled features like Native Command Queuing (NCQ), hot-swapping, power management, and RAID.
mSATA Building upon the foundations of SATA 3.1, mSATA was designed to address the rising trend of continually shrinking Notebook computers. Smaller profile laptops require smaller SSDs, which in turn require smaller connectors. Notebooks that feature the mSATA interface are becoming more popular but still represent a relatively small portion of the overall market. Maximum transfer speeds are equivalent to the standard SATA 3.0 interface.
Maximize SATA Capabilities with AHCI AHCI, Advanced Host Controller Interface, is an open interface championed by Intel to allow the use of advanced SATA features (e.g. NCQ, hot plugging, power management). Basically, it defines a standard method for storage devices from various vendors to communicate with the host system, allowing software engineers to take advantage of specialized functionality.
the PHY into reduced power consumption mode, contributing to the drive’s reputation for having the industry’s lowest idle power consumption. Without HIPM or DIPM, power consumption will increase dramatically, as shown in the graph below via drive “C,” which does not use these power management features. In general, such power management features are enabled by default on laptop systems.
Enhancing SATA Performance with RAID Today’s SSDs are maximizing the performance potential of the current SATA 3.0 interface generation. One way to increase performance beyond standard single drive SATA configurations is to pair 2 or more drives together using SATA’s native RAID support. RAID, which stands for Redundant Array of Independent/Inexpensive Disks, is a type of storage system in which a number of drives (at least 2) are combined into one logical unit.
similar to a single SSD. Its purpose is redundancy. As such, the array will continue to operate as long as at least one drive is still functioning. Capacity is limited to the size of the smallest drive in the array. The primary goal is to reduce downtime in the event of a hardware failure. However, this solution, despite its redundancy, is not a replacement for a good backup regimen, as it cannot protect from data corruption or security breaches.
03 NAND Basics Understanding the Technology Behind Your SSD Although it may all look the same, all NAND is not created equal: SLC, 2-bit MLC, 3-bit MLC (also called TLC), synchronous, asynchronous, ONFI 1.0, ONFI 2.0, Toggle 1.0, Toggle 2.0. To the uninitiated, all of this looks like nonsense. As the SSD market gets more complex, however, so does your buying decision.
advances in semiconductor technology that allowed engineers to squeeze more bits into each cell. Capacities ballooned from megabytes (MBs) to gigabytes (GBs) as manufacturers were able to produce the same NAND bit capacity with less capital investment. A self-reinforcing cycle of increasing demand and decreasing pricing helped manufacturers to continue to meet industry needs without increasing supply costs – benefiting both consumers and device makers. Cost vs.
On top of all of the above advancements, the modern trend towards increasing storage densities has a convenient side benefit – with higher capacities also comes higher performance, because increasing the number of NAND chips in an SSD allows for more parallelization, helping to overcome the inherently slow program times that MLC NAND suffers compared to its SLC predecessor (this same phenomenon also explains why the same or similar NAND flash can deliver very different performance, lifespan, and reliability
Traditional vs. DDR NAND The advent of DDR NAND was a key breakthrough in increasing NAND speed. Traditional NAND, also known as “Single Data Rate (SDR)” NAND, was only capable of processing data on “one edge” of its regulatory signal. ONFI 1.0 and pre-Toggle Samsung and Toshiba NAND belong to this category. The figure below shows a Read operation for illustrative purposes.
So why choose one standard over the other? The latest ONFI NAND chips, because ONFI has alternated between synchronous and asynchronous methods, must be built with backwards compatibility for both synchronous and asynchronous logic. Because Toggle NAND has always been asynchronous, Toggle 2.0 NAND benefits from reduced complexity and, in turn, increased flexibility when it comes to designing smaller chip sizes and bringing next-generation products to market faster.
04 Understanding SSDs A Peek Behind the Curtain While an SSD might look like a simple device on the surface, there is a great deal of complexity behind the scenes. In order to ensure that your SSD stays in prime working condition, the SSD controller must manage complex performance and lifetime optimization algorithms.
Garbage Collection Now that we know a bit about why the SSD needs free blocks to be readily available, we can talk about one of the ways the SSD controller prepares free blocks. One of those processes is called “garbage collection.” This name is a bit misleading, as the process actually involves the collection of good data, not garbage. The concept, however, is rather simple. By nature, because of the nuances we discussed above, SSDs are a bit obsessive about how they organize their valid data.
around old data. Once a block is full of pages that all contain invalid data, that block is considered free and may be erased. The TRIM command is sent to the SSD controller automatically by the OS every time it deletes a file. As it requires OS support, not all users will be able to use native TRIM functionality. On PCs, TRIM is supported in Windows 7 or later. On Macs, TRIM is only supported for Apple’s OEM SSDs and is not supported for Samsung’s (or any other manufacturers’) aftermarket SSDs.
05 Maximize SSD Lifetime and Performance With Over-Provisioning Over-Provisioning (OP), the practice of allocating a specific, permanent amount of free space on an SSD, is a widely-used method for improving both SSD Performance and Endurance. Historically, Samsung has not implemented mandatory OP on any of its SSDs.
which ensures that no single cell is written to more than others. This process also requires data to be copied from one block to another, which further increases the necessity for free blocks to be available. To ensure free blocks are available, Garbage Collection algorithms consolidate good data and erase blocks of invalid data. This process too, however, requires free blocks to use for temporary storage while the invalid blocks are cleared.
06 Protect Your Privacy Security & Encryption Basics In today’s mobile world, security is a major concern for both individuals and businesses. With the 840 and 840 Pro Series SSDs, Samsung is adding peace-of-mind through the implementation of hardware-based AES Full Drive Encryption. Terminology In order to understand the encryption technology built into the latest Samsung SSDs, it is necessary to understand some basic security terminology.
Choosing the Right Option With the introduction of the SSD 840 and 840 Pro Series SSDs, Samsung has added AES hardware-based SED technology to its consumer SSD lineup. Simply enabling the ATA password via the BIOS will automatically render all data on the drive unintelligible without the proper password. Because it is implemented at the hardware level, there is no performance penalty like there is with a software-based FDE implementation.
07 Communicating With Your SSD Understanding SMART Attributes SMART (also written S.M.A.R.T.), which stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology, is an industry standard reliability prediction indicator for both IDE/ATA and SCSI storage drives. When analyzing SMART attributes, it is very important to remember that they vary in meaning and interpretation by manufacturer.
DIPM (Device Initiated Power Management) feature. Thus, with this feature enabled, this attribute excludes any time the device spends in a “sleep” state. With DIPM off, the recorded value will include all three device power states: active, idle, and sleep. ID # 12 Power-On Count The raw value of this attribute reports the cumulative number of power on/off cycles. This includes both sudden power off and normal power off cases.
08 Benchmarking Utilities What You Should Know With the abundance of Benchmarking Utilities available and the varying results they can report, it can be confusing to decide which tests to pay attention to and which to question. Sometimes, two blogs using the same tools present slightly differing results. In fact, there are many variables that can affect test results, including PC configuration and the options set by the user in the utility itself.
maximum random performance is represented by 4KB at QD 32. Random performance is most often reported in Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS), which can be calculated from CDM’s results by dividing the total Bytes per second by the data transfer size (4KB). For example, in the image to the left, if we divide the Random Read speed of 408.7MB/s by 4KB (4,000MB), we get 0.102175MB/s or 102,175 IOPS.
based on what system component the user wishes to stress. The problem with this approach, however, is that most applications are not very storage-centric. Since all SSDs are so fast in everyday tasks, these types of benchmarks are less useful because they will show minimal differences between SSDs.
The best approach is always to look at a variety of test results together, as one particular test in isolation can never show the whole picture of a drive’s performance profile. Samsung’s Approach Benchmarking tools are a great way to show off the raw performance capabilities of an SSD, but they do not, and cannot, truly represent a real world usage scenario. Samsung’s SSDs do not utilize compression, but many benchmarking tests rely on heavily compressible data.
09 Why Integration Matters What Samsung’s Vertical Integration Means to You The three most crucial components of any SSD are the NAND flash memory, the controller, and the firmware. The first does the critical task of storing your precious data; the second two work together to accomplish the complex and equally essential tasks of managing data storage and maintaining the performance and lifespan of the SSD.
Integration Matters Having full control over the NAND, controller and firmware has major implications both for performance and reliability. Samsung has intimate knowledge of every nuance of these components and can tweak them along each step in the development process to ensure that they work perfectly together.
10 The Samsung Advantage Why You Should Choose a Samsung SSD In such a crowded SSD market, it can be confusing to figure out which brand to trust or which drive to buy. Many vendors use the same components, repackaged under competing brand names, and feature extensive lineups that can be difficult to navigate. Samsung is unique in the SSD industry, as it represents one of the only fully-integrated SSD manufacturers.
to offer excellent performance throughout its useful lifespan. With its simple upgrade solution and sustained, industryleading performance, the Samsung SSD 840 is the single best upgrade you can make to your PC. Unrivaled Performance For users seeking the most extreme performance available, Samsung offers the 840 Pro SSD. Featuring the industry’s fastest Random Performance (up to 100,000 IOPS), users can expect up to about 15 times increase in performance over a typical SATA HDD.
10 The Samsung Advantage Why a Samsung SSD is Best for Business With the SSD marketplace becoming increasingly crowded, it can be difficult to decide which vendor to trust with your business’ precious data. With 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, a unique, fully-integrated design approach, and industry-leading performance and reliability, Samsung is the brand to choose for business PC upgrades.
drive health and prepare for replacement before a catastrophic drive failure, saving countless hours of frustration and significant repair expenses. Trust Samsung Samsung has a long track record of excellence in the memory industry.
11 Samsung Data Migration Software The simplest way to get your new SSD up and running Migrate Your Data in 3 Steps One of the biggest pain points for new users when upgrading from their Hard Disk Drive (HDD) to their new Solid State Drive (SSD) is the process of moving over all of their existing files and programs. Samsung’s Data Migration software was designed with novice users in mind to simplify this tedious process.
automatically moved to your new SSD. The process time will vary depending on how much data is being copied, and whether you’re transferring over SATA or USB, but it will generally complete in less than 1 hour. New Feature of SDM 2.0 – Custom Cloning In most cases, PC users use 500GB, 1TB and even more capacity of HDDs while SSD is less than that.
12 Samsung Magician Software OS Optimization Feature Overview Introduction With Magician 4.0, Samsung is introducing a host of improvements designed to enhance user experience and to make Magician’s features more user-friendly and accessible to novices. The totally redesigned User Interface (UI) features simple, graphical indictors to show SSD health status and Total Bytes Written (TBW) at a glance. Users can now determine SATA and AHCI compatibility and status without consulting their user’s manuals.
the fastest possible performance. Features like “Hibernation Mode,” “Virtual Memory,” and “indexing,” which require extra writes to the SSD in order to function, are enabled for added speed. The “Maximum Capacity” profile disables features that require a large amount of extra storage space to function, including “Hibernation Mode,” “Virtual Memory,” and “Automatic Backup,” all of which reserve rather large portions of SSD storage.
frequently perform data searches on their PCs (e.g. business PC users working with Microsoft Outlook or regularly searching for documents) may benefit from turning this feature ON via the “Advanced” tab in Magician to ensure optimal system responsiveness. User who do not frequently search for data on their PCs may turn this feature OFF. Because it generates a significant amount of random read/write activity, this feature is turned OFF for “Maximum Reliability” mode to reduce SSD writes.
mode. By default, Magician chooses “High Performance” mode for all configuration profiles because SSDs consume considerably less power than their HDD counterparts and because Samsung SSDs support the DIPM feature discussed above, thus offsetting any extra energy consumption. System Restore Options Windows’ default Drive backup and recovery functionality may be used to backup the system, making it possible to restore the system to its original state if problems arise.
Contributions Brand Product Marketing Team Sung-Hee Lee, Director Woody Yang, Senior Manager Justin Erfort, Assistant Manager Kyung-Min Lee, Assistant Manager Flash Software Development Team Sungchul Kim, Principal Engineer Jisoo Kim, Senior Engineer Jong Tae Park, Senior Engineer Pilsung Kang, Senior Engineer Application Engineering Group JB-JongBaek Chang, Principal Engineer Jeff Kim, Senior Engineer Flash Memory Planning Team Eric Hong-seok Chang, Senior Engineer Controller Development Team Myeongeun
www.samsung.
