Bridging Resolution Springs A Shock

SK hynix is without doubt one of the few vertically built-in producers within the flash-based storage market (together with Samsung, Micron / Essential, Western Digital, and Kioxia). The corporate is well-established within the OEM market. Just a few years again, additionally they began exploring direct end-user products. Inside SSDs (beginning with the Gold S31 and Gold P31) have been the primary out of the door. Late final 12 months, the corporate launched the Beetle X31 portable SSD, its first direct-attached storage product. In February, a complementary product was launched – the Tube T31 Stick SSD.

The Beetle X31 is a conveyable SSD with a Kind-C upstream port and a separate cable. The Tube T31 is a tackle the standard thumb drive with a male Kind-A interface. The dimensions of the Beetle X31 makes the usage of a bridge resolution apparent. Our investigation into the Tube T31 additionally revealed the usage of the identical inside SSD, albeit with a distinct bridge. This evaluation takes an in depth have a look at the Tube T31, together with an evaluation of its internals and analysis of its efficiency consistency, energy consumption, and thermal profile.

Introduction and Product Impressions

USB flash drives have grown each in storage capability and speeds over the previous couple of years. Due to the appearance of 3D NAND and speedy iterations with efficiency enhancements within the USB specs, we are actually seeing ‘stick SSDs’ able to delivering 1GBps+ speeds. This market section has slowly been gaining members because the introduction of the Kingston’s DataTraveler Max in late 2021. Some stick SSD distributors have tried to distinguish themselves by even providing 2TB SKUs.

The high-performance ‘stick SSD’ section is comparatively new, and has been dominated by native UFD controllers (Silicon Motion’s SM2320 in merchandise such because the Kingston DataTraveler Max A and Transcend ESD310C, and the Phison U17 within the OWC Envoy Pro Mini for instance). That is in distinction to early high-performance UFDs such because the Corsair Voyager GTX and the Mushkin Ventura Ultra which employed a SATA SSD controller behind a USB 3.0 bridge. In high-performance eventualities, the bridge resolution is normally averted for UFDs because of thermal constraints. BOM price can also be one other necessary side, as UFDs normally have a tendency / must be priced decrease than moveable SSDs. Components such because the absence of a separate cable assist with that, however a bridge resolution within the PCB may probably offset the financial savings.

The Beetle X31 from SK hynix was a conventional moveable SSD that employed a SK hynix BC711 M.2 2242 NVMe SSD behind an ASMedia ASM2362 USB 3.2 Gen 2 bridge chip. In contrast to different PSSD households with a variety of capability choices, the Beetle X31 was launched with solely two capability choices – 512GB and 1TB. The rationale ended up being the single-chip BC711 inside SSD – the bundle integrates the flash dies, SSD controller, and DRAM for the flash translation layer as nicely. The extremely built-in nature of the BC711 ended up limiting the variety of NAND dies, and therefore the restricted capability choices.

The Tube T31 being reviewed at present additionally is available in the identical two capability factors – 512GB and 1TB, pointing to the possible use of the identical inside SSD. The mixing of the flash dies and the controller in a single bundle alleviates among the BOM considerations, and a bridge-based resolution based mostly on the BC711 finally ends up with the same PCB space to a local UFD controller-based resolution.

The Tube T31 is comparatively cumbersome for a USB flash drive, and is certain to intrude with gadgets / cables linked to neighboring USB ports. Nevertheless, the scale are unavoidable because of the usage of a M.2 2242 inside SSD and its related thermal resolution. Since it is a UFD resolution, the packaging is spartan – simply the consumer handbook and the primary unit in an environment-friendly recyclable field.

The clamshell case design is definitely disassembled by pushing within the plastic tabs holding either side to allow one in all them to pop up and slide off. The circuit boards are shielded by a metallic cladding that’s held along with assistance from three screws, and additional affixed to the boards with thermal pads – one on high of the bridge chip in the primary board, and the opposite throughout the NVMe SSD daughterboard.

The inner SSD is a single-sided board, with a skinny thermal pad on the underside used to maintain it glued to the primary board.

The one chip on the SSD carries the ‘SK hynix HNB001T14M’ bundle marking – which is similar because the one within the BC711 M.2 2230 / 2242 OEM NVMe SSD. This makes use of SK hynix’s 128L V6 NAND, and integrates their in-house controller in addition to DRAM.

In contrast to the ASMedia ASM2362 used within the Beetle X31, SK hynix has opted for JMicron’s JMS583 within the Tube T31. The JMicron resolution has been round for greater than 5 years now, and is at the moment on A3 silicon (fourth iteration of the identical design with silicon bug fixes) to enhance and resolve system incompatibility points. This bridge appears to have had a current resurgence out there, evidenced by its use within the Silicon Power PX10 launched earlier this 12 months.

The bridge permits S.M.A.R.T passthrough, as proven within the CrystalDiskInfo screenshot under. TRIM can also be obtainable, despite the fact that it does not discover an express point out.

S.M.A.R.T Passthrough – CrystalDiskInfo
SK hynix Tube T31 1TBKingston DT Max 1TBSilicon Energy MS70 1TBTranscend ESD310C 1TBOWC Envoy Professional Mini 1TBSilicon Energy PX10 1TBKingston DTMAXA/1TB	Kingston DT Max 1TBSilicon Energy MS70 1TBTranscend ESD310C 1TBOWC Envoy Professional Mini 1TBSilicon Energy PX10 1TBKingston DTMAXA/1TBSK hynix Tube T31 1TB

The desk under presents a comparative view of the specs of the completely different storage bridges introduced on this evaluation.

Previous to trying on the benchmark numbers, energy consumption, and thermal resolution effectiveness, an outline of the testbed setup and analysis methodology is supplied.

Testbed Setup and Analysis Methodology

Direct-attached storage gadgets (together with thumb drives) are evaluated utilizing the Quartz Canyon NUC (basically, the Xeon / ECC model of the Ghost Canyon NUC) configured with 2x 16GB DDR4-2667 ECC SODIMMs and a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD – the IM2P33E8 1TB from ADATA.

Probably the most enticing side of the Quartz Canyon NUC is the presence of two PCIe slots (electrically, x16 and x4) for add-in playing cards. Within the absence of a discrete GPU – for which there isn’t a want in a DAS testbed – each slots can be found. The truth is, we additionally added a spare SanDisk Excessive PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the CPU direct-attached M.2 22110 slot within the baseboard so as to keep away from DMI bottlenecks when evaluating Thunderbolt 3 gadgets. This nonetheless permits for 2 add-in playing cards working at x8 (x16 electrical) and x4 (x4 electrical). For the reason that Quartz Canyon NUC does not have a local USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port, Silverstone’s SST-ECU06 add-in card was put in within the x4 slot. All non-Thunderbolt gadgets are examined utilizing the Kind-C port enabled by the SST-ECU06.

The specs of the testbed are summarized within the desk under:

The testbed {hardware} is just one section of the analysis. Over the previous couple of years, the everyday direct-attached storage workloads for reminiscence playing cards have additionally developed. Excessive bit-rate 4K movies at 60fps have turn out to be fairly widespread, and 8K movies are beginning to make an look. Sport set up sizes have additionally grown steadily even in moveable recreation consoles, due to excessive decision textures and art work. Retaining these in thoughts, our analysis scheme for moveable SSDs and UFDs entails a number of workloads that are described intimately within the corresponding sections.

• Artificial workloads utilizing CrystalDiskMark and ATTO
• Actual-world entry traces utilizing PCMark 10’s storage benchmark
• Customized robocopy workloads reflective of typical DAS utilization
• Sequential write stress check

Within the subsequent part, we’ve an summary of the efficiency of the SK hynix Tube T31 in these benchmarks. Previous to offering concluding remarks, we’ve some observations on the stick SSD’s energy consumption numbers and thermal resolution additionally.