Samsung – Silverton Consulting

Bar chart depicting IOPS/GB-NAND, #1 is Datacore Parallel Server with ~266 IOPS/GB-NAND,

SPC-1 IOPS performance per GB-NAND – chart of the month

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Ray in IOPS, SAS, SATA, SPC-1, SSD storage, Storage performance

The above is an updated chart from last months SCI newsletter StorInt™ SPC Performance Report depicting the top 10 SPC-1 submissions IOPS™ per GB-NAND. We have been searching for a while now how to depict storage system effectiveness when using SSD or other flash storage. We have used IOPS/SSD in the past but IOPS/GB-NAND looks better.

Calculating IOPS/GB-NAND

SPC-1 does not report this metric but it can be calculated by dividing IOPS by NAND storage capacity. One can find out NAND storage capacity by looking over SPC-1 full disclosure reports (FDR), totaling up the NAND storage in the configuration in all the SSDs and flash devices. This is total NAND capacity, not Total ASU (used storage) Capacity. GB-NAND reflects just what’s indicated for SSD/flash device capacity in the configuration section. This is not necessarily the device’s physical NAND capacity when over provisioned, but at least it’s available in the FDR.

DataCore Parallel Server IOPS/GB-NAND explained

The DataCore Parallel Server generated over 5M IOPS (IO’s/second) under an SPC-1 (OLTP-like) workload. And with their 54-480GB SSDs, totaling ~25.9TB of NAND capacity, it gives them just under 200 IOPS/GB-NAND. The chart in the original report was incorrect. There we used 36-480GB SSDs or ~17.3TB of NAND to compute IOPS/GB-NAND, which gave them just under 300 IOPS/GB-NAND in the report, which was incorrect. (The full report has been since corrected and is available for re-download for subscribers to our newsletter).

The 480GB (Samsung SM863 MZ-7KM480E)SSDs were all SATA attached. Samsung lists these SSDs as V-NAND, MLC drives, rated at 97K random Reads and 26K random writes. At over 5M IOPS, it should be running close to 100% of the SSDs rated performance. However, DataCore’s Parallel Server included 2 controllers with a total of 3TB of DRAM cache, which was then SAS connected to 4 DELL MD1220 storage arrays, each with 512GB of DRAM cache, so their total configuration had about 5TB of DRAM in it, most of which would have been used as a IO cache.

The SPC-1 submission only used 11.8TB (Total ASU capacity) of storage. All the DRAM cache help to explain how they attained 5M IOPS. Having a multi-tiered cache like DataCore-MD1220 configuration, doesn’t insure that all the cache is effectively used but even without cache tiering logic, there might not be much of an overlap between the MD1220 and Parallel Server caches. It would be more interesting to see how busy the SSDs were during this SPC-1 run.

How random the SPC-1 workload is, is subject to much speculation in the industry. Suffice it to say it’s not 100% random, but what is. Non-random OLTP workloads would tend to favor larger caches.

SPC is coming out with a new version of their benchmark with supplementary information which may shed more light on device busyness.

All SPC-1 benchmark submissions are available at storageperformance.org.

Want more?

The August 2016 and our other SPC Performance reports have much more information on SPC-1 and SPC-2 performance. Moreover, there’s a lot more performance information, covering email and other (OLTP and throughput intensive) block storage workloads, in our SAN Storage Buying Guide, available for purchase on our website. More information on file and block protocol/interface performance is included in SCI’s SAN-NAS Buying Guide, also available from our website .

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The complete SPC performance report went out in SCI’s August 2016 Storage Intelligence e-newsletter. A copy of the report will be posted on our SCI dispatches (posts) page over the next quarter or so (if all goes well). However, you can get the latest storage performance analysis now and subscribe to future free SCI Storage Intelligence e-newsletters, by just using the signup form in the sidebar or you can subscribe here.

3D NAND, how high can it go?

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Ray in Data density, SSD storage, Strategic Inflection Points

I was at the Flash Memory Summit a couple of weeks ago and a presenter (from Hynix, I think) got up and talked about how 3D NAND was going to be the way forward for all NAND technology. I always thought we were talking about a handful of layers. But on the slide he had what looked to be a skyscraper block with 20-40 layers of NAND.

Currently shipping 3D NAND

It seems all the major NAND fabs are shipping 30+ layer 3D NAND. Samsung last year said they were shipping 32-layer 3D (V-)NAND, Toshiba announced earlier this year that they had 48-layer 3D NAND. Hynix is shipping 36-layer 3D NAND. Micron-Intel is also shipping 32-layer 3D NAND. Am I missing anyone?

Samsung also said that they will be shipping a 32GB, 48-layer V-NAND chip later this year. Apparently, Samsung is also working on 64-layer V-NAND in their labs and are getting good results. In an article on Samsung’s website they mentioned the possibility of 100 layers of NAND in a 3D stack.

The other NAND fabs are also probably looking at adding layers to their 3D NAND but aren’t talking as much about it.

Earlier this year on a GreyBeards on Storage Podcast we talked with Jim Handy, Director at Objective Analysis on what was going on in NAND fabrication. Talking with Jim was fascinating but one thing he said was that with 3D NAND, building a hole with the right depth, width and straight enough was a key challenge. At the time I was thinking a couple of layers deep. Boy was I wrong.

How high/deep can 3D NAND go?

On the podcast, Jim said he thought that 3D NAND would run out of gas around 2023. Given current press releases, it seems NAND fabs are adding ~16 layers a year to their 3D-NAND.

So if 32 to 48 layers is todays 3D-NAND and we can keep adding 16 layers/year through 2023 that’s 8 years *16 layers or an additional 128 layers to the 32 to 48 layers currently shipping. With that rate we should get to 160 to 176 layer 3D NAND chips. And if 48 layers is 32GB then we maybe we could see ~+100GB 3D NAND chips.

This of course means that there is no loss in capacity as we increase layers. Also that the industry can continue to add 16 layers/year to 3D-NAND chips.

I suppose there’s one other proviso, that nothing else comes along that is less expensive to fabricate while still providing ever increasing capacity of lightening fast, non-volatile storage (see a recent post on 3D XPoint NVM technology).

Photo Credit(s):

Disk capacity growing out-of-sight

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Ray in Data, Data density, Data growth, Information economy, Storage drive

A head assembly on a Seagate disk drive by Robert Scoble (cc) (from flickr)

Last week, Hitachi Global Storage Division(acquired by Western Digital, closing in 4Q2011) and Seagate announced some higher capacity disk drives for desk top applications over the past week.

Most of us in the industry have become somewhat jaded with respect to new capacity offerings. But last weeks announcements may give one pause.

Hitachi announced that they are shipping over 1TB/disk platter using 3.5″ platters shipping with 569Gb/sqin technology. In the past 4-6 platter disk drives were available in shipped disk drives using full height, 3.5″ drives. Given the platter capacity available now, 4-6TB drives are certainly feasible or just around the corner. Both Seagate and Samsung beat HGST to 1TB platter capacities which they announced in May of this year and began shipping in drives in June.

Speaking of 4TB drives, Seagate announced a new 4TB desktop external disk drive. I couldn’t locate any information about the number of platters, or Gb/sqin of their technology, but 4 platters are certainly feasible and as a result, a 4TB disk drive is available today.

I don’t know about you, but 4TB disk drives for a desktop seem about as much as I could ever use. But when looking seriously at my desktop environment my CAGR for storage (revealed as fully compressed TAR files) is ~61% year over year. At that rate, I will need a 4TB drive for backup purposes in about 7 years and if I assume a 2X compression rate then a 4TB desktop drive will be needed in ~3.5 years, (darn music, movies, photos, …). And we are not heavy digital media consumers, others that shoot and edit their own video probably use orders of magnitude more storage.

Hard to believe, but given current trends inevitable, a 4TB disk drive will become a necessity for us within the next 4 years.

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