Re: Intel's X25-M SSD

A fantastic review on this issue appeared in July:
http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=106
And then the same tests on a RiData SSD show that they are the same drive with the same characteristics:
http://www.alternativerecursion.info/?p=276

Most blamed it on MLC being "slow" to write compared to SLC.  Technically, it is slower, but not by a whole lot -- we're talking a low level difference of tens of microseconds.  A 250ms latency indicates an issue with the controller chip.  SLC and MLC share similar overall performance characteristics at the millisecond level.  The truth is that MLC designs were low cost designs without a lot of investment in the controller chip.  The SLC designs were higher cost designs that focused early on on making smarter and more expensive controllers.  SLC will always have an advantage, but it isn't going to be by several orders of magnitude like it was before Intel's drive appeared.  Its going to be by factors of ~2 to 4 on random writes in the long run.  However, for all flash based SSD devices, there are design tradeoffs to make.  Maximizing writes sacrifices reads, maximizing random access performance reduces streaming performance and capacity.  We'll have a variety of devices with varying characteristics optimal for different tasks.