| Marvell SSD Controller: Da-Vinci 88SS8014-BHP2 |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Storage | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Thursday, 14 January 2010 | |
Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2 Da-Vinci SSD ControllerAfter the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show concluded, Benchmark Reviews was fortunate enough to test a few Solid State Drive samples built from the Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2 Da-Vinci SATA controller chip. Introduced with the LiteOn 32GB Strong-Page LA-32M1S and LA-64M1S MLC SSDs, the Marvell 88SS8014 chip is the latest addition to Solid State Drive control processors. Designed to offer quick transactions in traditional SSD fashion, this Marvell controller also packs plenty of features for the entry-level value segment. As of January 2010 several major companies offer Flash NAND SSD controllers. with many more in development. The most popular consumer controllers are: Indilinx IDX110M00-FC "Barefoot", Intel PC29AS21AA0, JMicron JMF612, Samsung S3C29RBB01-YK40, Toshiba T6UG1XBG and SandForce SF-1500. PLDS (Plextor/LiteOn) and others hope to add the Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2 controller onto this list very soon.
In most respects, the new Marvell SSD circuit board follows the design of several past products. The Marvell 88SS8014 SATA processor is joined by up to sixteen flash NAND modules (Samsung K9HCG08U1M-PCB0 here), and a single Hynix HY5DU121622 chip for buffered transactions. The top and bottom views of the Da-Vinci SSD printed circuit board reveal some versatility in the overall capacity. Although only 32, 64, 128, and 256GB capacities are presently in production, anything is possible as demand grows with the development of Samsung's 0.6mm-thick 8-chip Memory Package.
Let's begin with the printed circuit board (PCB), which is labeled "Da Vinci 2.5 INCH SOLID STATE DRIVE". The Da-Vinci PCB receives part number 69P34128M1S301X. Although it's difficult to ascertain the specifics so early in the pre-launch product cycle, we've got enough background to build an early anatomy article on the individual components.
At the center of the Da-Vinci PCB is a single Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2 SATA controller, with the marking YPM21495 beneath the chip's model number. At the time of this writing (14 January 2010), there was very little information available online regarding the Marvell 88SS8014 SSD processor. The features and specifications listed in this technical brief were provided by PLDS for their LiteOn 32GB Strong-Page LA-32M1S storage solution.
While the internal NAND flash DRAM used in SSDs is usually a decision left to the OEM's (such as OCZ, Crucial, Intel, and Kingston), the Plextor LA-32M1S 'Strong-Page' and LA-64M1S MLC SSDs each use Samsung K9HCG08U1M-PCB00 IC parts (pictured below and branded with K9HCG08U1M-PCB0). These lead-free RoHS-compliant 48-pin ICs are multi-layer, with one IC directly atop another to offer 64GB in 16x organization for 256GB total capacity.
A single 128MB Hynix HY5DU121622DTP-D43 module offers 200MHz CL3 (3-3-3) DDR400 buffer space for the Marvell 88SS8014 processor. The Hynix HY5DU121622DTP is a rather old part from late 2006, but still offers a low power envelope of 2.6 volts typical.
While the Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2 is an ambiguous component, we respect that our sample came inside the LiteOn 32GB Strong-Page LA-32M1S storage device. Please continue on for details and performance results for this Solid State Drive... LiteOn Strong-Page Features
LA-32M1S Specifications
Plextor/LiteOn SSD ModelsStrong-Page MLC
MLC SSD
LA-32M1S Performance ResultsThe ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.34 program measures interface transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. ATTO Disk Benchmark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested, and for testing purposes we format using NTFS after SSD partition alignment. The charted results illustrate bandwidth speed using various file size chunks, and can be used as a general performance indicator. 
HD Tune is a low-level test that will not operate on a drive which contains a partition, so Benchmark Reviews uses DISKPART to prepare hardware and remove any partitions before conducting these tests. Random Access tests are divided into 512b, 4KB, 64KB, 1MB and random size test files sizes. The Random Access test measures the performance of random read or write operations. The amount of data which will be read varies from 512 bytes to 1 MB. Performance is reported in operations per second (IOPS), average access time, and average speed. Because it is our intent to compare one product against another, Benchmark Reviews has focused on random transfer size IOPS performance.
ATTO reported a maximum read-speed of 145 MBps and 71 MBps write performance. For operational input/output, HD Tune reports 4128 IOPS for 4KB reads and 1222 IOPS for write-to operations. Because of relatively low comparible speeds and I/O performance, the Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2 SSD processor is best suited for end-user computer systems.
In the coming months, Benchmark Reviews will test several new Solid State Drive products based on the Marvell 88SS8014 SSD processor. The first will be the LiteOn 32GB Strong-Page LA-32M1S used for testing in this article. Our entire collection of SSD articles is available in the Benchmark Reviews Featured Reviews: Storage section. Questions? Comments? Benchmark Reviews really wants your feedback. We invite you to leave your remarks in our Discussion Forum.
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