SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD

SanDisk’s new Ultra Plus has at its heart a Marvell Van Gogh Lite 88SS9175-BJM2 4 channel Flash Storage Processor and SanDisk’s own new 19nm 400Mb/s interface All Bit Line (ABL) Architecture Toggle Mode 2bit per cell NAND Flash Memory. This new NAND flash provides superior performance and reliability.

Information from RW Labs:



SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB SSD Review

Summary

Beginning with HD Tune Sequential Reads our SanDisk Ultra Plus performed very well smoking the competition by a good margin. HD Tune Sequential Writes were middle of the road. Access times as measured with IOmeter were very good; both read access and write access latency. HD Tach showed off great burst speed in-fact the highest for any drive we’ve tested to date. ATTO performance displayed good top end speed but what really stood out was the Ultra Plus’s phenomenal 4k performance. Vantage empty performance was excellent easily exceeding specification. Our Ultra Plus performed remarkably in the read portion of AS SSD showing its elite status when reading incompressible data at 4KQD1. AS SSD’s incompressible reads were good in the sequential and 4KQD1 categories but tailed off at high 4KQD levels. CDM incompressible performance was just like AS SSD showing class leading sequential and 4K read performance but, write performance that tailed off at 4KQD levels above 1. Anvils compressible performance was middle of the road and incompressible performance was good. Our Ultra Plus turned in a pretty solid 43,000 point Vantage performance at 50% filled. PCMark 7 showed that the Ultra Plus can deliver great real world performance even after the drive has been hammered.



Conclusion

SanDisk has really delivered with the Ultra Plus. Most notable is the introduction of nCache technology. This technology is simply a brilliant way to mitigate an MLC Based Drives worst enemy; write amplification. We are not entirely clear exactly how or where SanDisk has implemented this new SLC based caching tier on the drive but the concept is something that’s very exciting. This tiered caching approach is very similar to techniques utilized in the enterprise sector which bodes well for the Ultra Plus’s long term performance curve. SanDisk is driving storage innovation forward and the Ultra Plus is a prime example of this fact. We recommend you own one of these cutting edge hi-performance low power drives

 

See:
AnandTech - SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD Review (256GB)


4 Channel controller in 2013? Not impressed.


See:
AnandTech - SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD Review (256GB)

 

I'm curious as to how reliable that drive is in the long-term. With all the horror stories from the 32nm -> 25nm switch (turned out not to be a big deal, but the principle of smaller = less durable is sound), I'm suspicious of the 19nm NAND.