| Toshiba T6UG1XBG Solid State Drive Controller |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Storage | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Friday, 22 January 2010 | |
Toshiba T6UG1XBG SSD ControllerJust over two years ago there were only five companies involved in Solid State Drive technology, and as of January 2010 there are nearly 140 names in the business. Without doubt, the SSD market has enjoyed a powerful growth period with relatively painless consumer acceptance. Benchmark Reviews has been on top of the SSD scene since retail products were first introduced at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show In such a short amount of time, the entire SSD market has created and recreated itself several times over. Counting the generations of SSD processors has become difficult for experienced experts, and keeping-up with controller architecture has come with its own set of challenges. Benchmark Reviews has already tested dozens of Solid State Drive products, and we've seen everything from dual-SATA controllers in RAID-0 to large cache buffer modules used inside of them. In this article Benchmark Reviews inspects the Toshiba T6UG1XBG Solid State Drive controller, which is used in the second-generation Kingston SSDNow V+ SNVP325 (which replaces the older SNV225 series with Samsung controller). While the SSD industry grows daily, only a few select manufacturers offer popularly-accepted Flash NAND SSD controllers. The most popular consumer controllers at the moment are: Indilinx IDX110M00-FC "Barefoot", Intel PC29AS21AA0, JMicron JMF612, Toshiba T6UG1XBG, Samsung S3C29RBB01-YK40, Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2, and SandForce SF-1200/1500.
From the top-view image above you'll notice that Toshiba utilizes a close-knit layout for their SSD-controller and flash NAND modules, with few electronics to fill in the remaining space atop the printed circuit board. Toshiba optimized this design to better server the thermal envelope of their design, as the entire bed of IC components receives a 4mm thermal filler pad to transfer heat to the metal enclosure. This is the first time Benchmark Reviews has seen an SSD with improved thermal management considered in the design. With the circuit board turned over to expose the underside, it becomes obvious that Toshiba's ergonomic layout allowed for single-side construction, which reduces production time (and costs).
The Toshiba T6UG1XBG processor used in this architecture article was taken from the 2nd-generation Kingston SSDNow V+ Solid State Drive. This is the same control board used in the recently announced Toshiba HG2-series SSD (THNS512GG8BBAA), and both share firmware version AGYA0201 with identical NAND construction. The Toshiba T6UG1XBG SSD controller is a 43nm part with native TRIM support, and offers a maximum rated read speed of 230MBps and write-to performance peaking at 180MBps.
Toshiba launched their HG2-series SSD late into 2009, and a 32nm HG3 SSD is already scheduled to debut later into 2010. The Toshiba TH58NVG7D7EBAK0 flash NAND modules (TH58NVG7D series) used on the HG2 control board are rather new to the industry, and do not have detailed information available. These are lead-free RoHS-compliant 48-pin ICs, and use multi-layer cell 64Gb density that require 3.3V per module.
Toshiba, the original inventor of NAND Flash and world's most experienced NAND flash producer built and designed both the SSD controller and NAND modules used in the Kingston SSDNow V+ SNVP325, making it one of the few single-source units on the market (Samsung being another). A single 128MB Micron 9LA17-D9HSJ DDR DRAM module offers decent cache performance for fast transaction buffering.
While the Toshiba T6UG1XBG is an ambiguous component, we respect that our sample came inside the Kingston SSDNow V+ SNVP325 series. Please continue on for details and performance results for this Solid State Drive...
Kingston SSDNow V+ SNVP325Adding an SSD to a desktop already using a standard hard disk drive is a smart and efficient way to upgrade. Transferring the operating system and applications from the HDD to the SSD allows the SSD to be used as a bootable drive that takes full advantage of the Flash-based technology. The SSD and the HDD then co-exist to drive optimal performance in the upgraded desktop.
For notebooks, SSDNow drives are a perfect replacement for hard drives resulting in faster, more reliable performance. Making this change will improve a notebook's efficiency in a wide range of tasks, from booting up to running the most robust operating system and demanding applications. The addition of TRIM support helps keep the SSDNow V+ maintain optimal write speed throughout its lifespan. The SSDNow V+ is the latest addition to Kingston's SSDNow family of solid-state drives. It is available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities. As part of Kingston's goal to provide an easy upgrade path, the drive is also available with a bundle that includes cloning software, 2.5" USB enclosure, 2.5" to 3.5" mounting brackets and SATA data and power cables. The Kingston SSDNow V+ solid-state drive is backed by a three-year warranty, 24/7 tech support and legendary Kingston reliability. Kingston SSDNow V+ Features:
SNVP325 SSD Specifications:
Kingston SSDNow V+ Series Part Numbers:
Upgrade Kits:
In the next section, Benchmark Reviews reveals some initial performance test results using the 2nd generation Kingston SSDNow V+ SSD based on the Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller...
Toshiba T6UG1XBG PerformanceThe 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.
Using DISKPART with the clean all command to align the Kingston SSDNow V+ SNVP325, ATTO reported a maximum read-speed of 238 MBps and a respectable 188 MBps write performance. These results are better than Kingston's stated maximum speed of 230/180MBps. For operational input/output, HD Tune reports 4855 IOPS for 4KB reads and 2583 IOPS for write-to operations. At this level of I/O performance, the Toshiba T6UG1XBG SSD processor is best suited for high-performance consumer environments (notebook/desktop).
In the coming months, Benchmark Reviews will test several new Solid State Drive products based on Toshiba T6UG1XBG SSD processor. Our first is the Kingston SSDNow V+ SNVP325 MLC SSD 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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SSDNow uses a standard SATA interface but, unlike a regular HDD, SSD is very rugged and built with no moving parts, making it ideal for power users and road warriors who push the limits of their notebooks. Other benefits include reduced power usage, less noise and less heat generation.
