Saturated IOPS Performance – 4KB, 8KB Random, 128K Sequential
I'm carrying over the IOPS vs. % Read charts from my P3608 review. The former IOPS vs. Latency plots also used in that review has been superseded by the far superior Percentile method (on the next page). With sweeps of R/W in 10% increments and all Queue Depths covered, there's a lot of data on each chart, so here I have listed the charts sequentially but matched the scales of each pair for easier A/B comparison.
Note that since we are plotting a Read/Write percentage spread, we no longer need to include other specific workloads (OLTP, Database, etc), as those workloads are included as a part of the below charts. For reference, here is the IO distribution of typical purpose-specific workloads:
- Database / OLTP: 8KB 67/33 (or 70/30)
- Email Server: 8KB 50/50
- File Server: 80/20 of the following:
- 10% 512B, 5% 1KB, 5% 2KB *
- 60% 4KB, 2% 8KB, 4% 16KB, 4% 32KB, 10% 64KB
- Web Server: 100/0 (read only) of the following:
- 22% 512B, 15% 1KB, 8% 2KB *
- 23% 4KB, 15% 8KB, 2% 16KB, 6% 32KB, 7% 64KB, 1% 128KB, 1% 512KB
* We have discontinued the File Server and Web Server tests currently used by many other sites, as they employ legacy workloads that are 16 years old (yes, in the year 2000) and are simply no longer representative of modern technology. Specifically, modern enterprise SSDs are no longer optimized for <4KB random, yet the outdated Web Server workload applies nearly half (45%) of its workload at those 'wrong' sizes. While it makes for an interesting spread in the results showing artificial penalties with SSDs optimized for 4KB, those results are just no longer meaningful in modern day enterprise use.
Before diving into the results, here are Intel's stated 4K/8K random specs:
Specs will be marked on these charts with an 'X' in the color corresponding to the appropriate QD for that test (1 or 128 in the case of Intel specs).
4KB Random
8KB Random
For 4K and 8K random, the P3520 met or exceeded its product specification. Being a budget part, it is certainly no Micron 9100 MAX, but the results remain respectable for this market segment.
Before moving onto sequentials, here are Intel's stated 128K sequential specs:
Specs will be marked on these charts with an 'X' in the color corresponding to the appropriate QD for that test (1 or 128 in the case of Intel specs).
128KB Sequential
Again, performance met or exceeded specification.
$0.50/GB is considered good?
$0.50/GB is considered good? Was this article written in 2005?
For pci-e ssds, that is
For pci-e ssds, that is considered good.
Yeah, for SATA SSDs anything
Yeah, for SATA SSDs anything <0.25/GB is pretty good, this is about twice that but you're also getting around twice the speeds.
Too expensive for me personally, but not unreasonable IMO.
Intel enterprise SSDs didn’t
Intel enterprise SSDs didn't launch until 2008, and did so at >$10/GB (>20x the cost).
That’s good progress, so they
That’s good progress, so they should begin to be viable around 2024
SSD market share has doubled
SSD market share has doubled for the past two years. It's expected to surpass HDD a lot sooner than 2024.
in 2005 SSDs would be more
in 2005 SSDs would be more like $50/GB 🙂
For that terrible 0.7 DWPD/5
For that terrible 0.7 DWPD/5 years, I would take 750 over this thing any day, performance wise it’s not even close to P3700/750.
Performance is no comparison,
Performance is no comparison, obviously. The point of this drive is cost, which is a fraction of all parts you mentioned.
Allyn, thank you, I really
Allyn, thank you, I really like the depth of your reviews, I’m actually learning stuff!
I do not find any mention of
I do not find any mention of capacitor for power loss writes. It’s a feature on which I place great importance.
Intel has among the highest,
Intel has among the highest, if not *the* highest power loss testing / qualification / reliability in the industry. It wasn't mentioned specifically because at this point it's just a given for their products. Here's a blurb from one of their product briefings:
They also bombard their drives with radiation (from an accelerator) until they hang, restart them, and ensure no data was corrupted. Their testing is pretty crazy, and that's why their products typically run higher in cost compared to others, but you get what you pay for.
Many think inflight data
Many think inflight data protection only as a safety issue, but it is also a significant performance issue. Without inflight data protection, use of inflight data must be turned off in the OS (it may be called something like write cache) to avoid data corruption in case of power failure, which in turn significantly lowers write speed.
So the point of inflight data protection or the lack of it should be hammered home in every review until it gets the warranted attention.
There are lots of layers of
There are lots of layers of what would/could be considered 'in-flight'. Even with all caching disabled, the mere fact that writes are queued could be considered so, as they are technically buffered by the kernel. To strip all the way down to zero buffering would reduce the performance of *most* SSDs to painful levels, as you'd have to limit to QD=1 and disable all OS buffers.
This protection, as defined by SSD makers, is a guarantee that the data that has been received by the controller at the point of power loss will be retained and available at next power up. Host / OS-side buffers will naturally not be included here.
Very excited about P3520
Very excited about P3520 especially in U.2 2.5″ format. This kind of pricing should really increase the viability (economically speaking) of big top-of-rack all flash arrays.
Not sure if you mentioned in the review but has Intel made any mention of dual-port U.2 version?
No mention of dual port for
No mention of dual port for this one, but I'd guess once 3D rolls out to other models in their lineup, it will include dual port.
So, let me make sure I
So, let me make sure I understand. This SSD is not tested against any other product, yet receives an editors choice. I smell something.
What you smell is no other
What you smell is no other products competing at this low of a cost/GB. Other companies are welcome to sample us their competing products (we ask them often).
It was pretty well-explained
It was pretty well-explained why…
what about raid 0 on 4 of
what about raid 0 on 4 of these
We are thinking of using the
We are thinking of using the P3520 or P3500 in Supermicro 48 bay nvme server. P3500 might be quicker but probably these will already move the bottleneck to the interface… Will have a look if you benchmarked the p3500 before…
Going to try out three of the
Going to try out three of the 1.2TB P3520’s for the hot tier in a three node hyperconverged environment. It’d be interesting to know what sort of benchmark would be relevant for comparison purposes on that kind of platform, since the workload mix could look like practically anything.
Yes it would, trying to set
Yes it would, trying to set up benchmarks simulating that kind of environment is not simple. Let us know how it goes as it could be very interesting.