OCZ Announces Next-Generation Trion 150 Series SSD

[btarunr]

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed technology leader, announces the availability of the new Trion 150 SSD series, an affordable performance upgrade for mainstream notebooks and desktops. Built with the Toshiba's 15 nm Triple-Level Cell (TLC) NAND flash technology from Toshiba, the Trion 150 series continues to deliver the superior balance of reliability, endurance and value of its predecessor, Trion 100, with increased real world performance.

Offering an easy and affordable way for entry-level users to enhance their mobile or desktop systems, Trion 150 SSDs provide a superior computing experience, enabling increased multitasking and productivity over traditional hard drives. Rated for sequential read speeds up to 550 MB/s, sequential write speeds up to 530 MB/s and random write I/O performance up to 91,000 IOPS, the Trion 150 series help improve boot time, system responsiveness and optimize storage operations.



Designed for value oriented mainstream consumers with varying storage needs, the Trion 150 will be available in capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB. Additionally, Trion 150 SSDs provide ample endurance with up to 240 TB total bytes written (TBW), providing peace of mind when using more write-intensive applications.

"Our Trion 100 series solid state drives quickly became a top seller for us and are popular among end users seeking a performance boost over hard drives at a very reasonable price," said Steve Fingerhut, Sr. Vice President and GM of SSD BU, at Toshiba America Electronics Corporation. "We are continually looking for ways to improve both SSD real world performance and value to end users and are pleased to introduce the new Trion 150 series which leverages the latest Toshiba 15nm Triple-Level Cell NAND flash to deliver an even better storage solution for value oriented mobile and desktop users."

Stringent reliability and quality procedures are incorporated into every OCZ series drive; however, in the unlikely event that a drive needs to be replaced, Trion 150 is protected by OCZ's ShieldPlus Warranty for 3 years. This industry-leading approach to service provides peace of mind with an elite, worry-free customer service experience which eliminates all the hassle and cost surrounding traditional support and warranty claims consumers often have to deal with.

For more information, visit the product page.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[newtekie1]

So it looks like these drives have the same specs as the Trion 100 drives, the 150 just use the 15nm flash while the 100 uses 19nm. It would be nice is this meant a 480GB drive under $100...

 

[Xzibit]

So it looks like these drives have the same specs as the Trion 100 drives, the 150 just use the 15nm flash while the 100 uses 19nm. It would be nice is this meant a 480GB drive under $100...

Toshiba did mention at CES that they upped the sustain write speed to 180 compared to 115 of the Trion 100. They do have to be price competitively though since those Samsung 850 EVOs keeps dropping in price.

 

[hojnikb]

15nm TLC flash seems like a really terrible idea in an SSD.

Yeah, they can keep them.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

No prices are mentioned... if a 256GB SSD at this day and age can't be priced reasonably, you can keep them.

 

[hojnikb]

i would kinda tolerate their TLC flash, if 240gig was priced 50€ or below

 

[bug]

"Trion 150 will be available in capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB. Additionally, Trion 150 SSDs provide ample endurance with up to 240 TB total bytes written (TBW), providing peace of mind when using more write-intensive applications."

"Endurance up to" = you can write 240TB on the 960GB unit. That's 250 P/E cycles. Which is both terrible and about right for 15nm TLC that's not V-NAND.

 

[hojnikb]

"Trion 150 will be available in capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB, and 960 GB. Additionally, Trion 150 SSDs provide ample endurance with up to 240 TB total bytes written (TBW), providing peace of mind when using more write-intensive applications."

"Endurance up to" = you can write 240TB on the 960GB unit. That's 250 P/E cycles. Which is both terrible and about right for 15nm TLC that's not V-NAND.

Thats assuming write amplification of 1. Which unless its using some fancy compression techniques and does very little static wear levelling just isn't the case. I wouldn't be surprised if its close to 2 (you need to do garbage collection, shuffle data from slc to tlc, do wearlevelling, take care of read disturbs, take into account small 4K writes and plenty more)

I'm guessing this flash is "rated" for around 400-500 p/e

 

[newtekie1]

No prices are mentioned... if a 256GB SSD at this day and age can't be priced reasonably, you can keep them.

Looks like from what I'm seeing at Newegg, they are $10 more than the 100. But I think the 150s will come down once the stock of 100 drives runs out.

Trion 100 480GB - $130
Trion 150 480GB - $140
Trion 100 120GB - $40
Trion 150 120GB - $50

I don't really have a problem with TLC drives, I've got a few of the 120GB Trion 100 drives. The write endurance isn't really an issue on consumer drives. I've got 3 year old Corsair SSDs that have been in RAID0 as the C drive of a heavily used daily driver PC and they are just now reaching 6TB written.

 

[hojnikb]

More than endurance, there is an issue with data degradation (ie leakage).

Anyone remembers 840evo read bug fiasco ?

 

[newtekie1]

More than endurance, there is an issue with data degradation (ie leakage).

Anyone remembers 840evo read bug fiasco ?

It isn't like data is lost, the data doesn't degrade, it is just harder for the SSD to read if the data has be sitting on the drive for a long period of time. But the firmware fixes have been in place for a good long while now. These fixes affect endurance(because they have to re-write data to refresh it), which is why TLC drives have a lot lower write endurance. But, for cheap ass drives, that will still likely last 5 years before running out of write cycles, it shouldn't really matter.

OCZ rates their MLC drives at 50GB/Day for 5 years, and the TLC drives at only 25GB/Day for 3 years(for the 120GB models). The TLC issue is fixed, but at the cost of endurance.

 

[hojnikb]

...

>It isn't like data is lost, the data doesn't degrade

Actually, it does. Electrons in nand cells leak and at a certain threshold data in that cell simply becomes invalid. So yeah it does degrade and with every die shrink and additional bit per cells this becomes much more apperent.


>it is just harder for the SSD to read if the data has be sitting on the drive for a long period of time.

Yeah, because ssd needs to do some aggressive ecc to recover that data.

>But the firmware fixes have been in place for a good long while now

Those are not fixed, but merely patches for an underlying problem. If you let the drive sit unpowered long enough (or at a high enough temperature) some data will get lost.


>These fixes affect endurance(because they have to re-write data to refresh it), which is why TLC drives have a lot lower write endurance.

Thats not the reason why tlc has bad endurance. TLC has bad endurance, regardless of what kind of schemes you do. But write amplification is gonna get higher because of this "fix".

>But, for cheap ass drives, that will still likely last 5 years before running out of write cycles, it shouldn't really matter.

This is true. But still, one has to be informed of what could potentially go wrong.

>The TLC issue is fixed, but at the cost of endurance.

Its not.

 

[newtekie1]

Yeah, because ssd needs to do some aggressive ecc to recover that data.

It isn't doing ECC, it actually takes longer for the controller to a degraded cell. It would only need to do ECC if the cell had degraded to the point of not being able to be read at all.

Actually, it does. Electrons in nand cells leak and at a certain threshold data in that cell simply becomes invalid. So yeah it does degrade and with every die shrink and additional bit per cells this becomes much more apperent.

Those are not fixed, but merely patches for an underlying problem. If you let the drive sit unpowered long enough (or at a high enough temperature) some data will get lost.

Technically true, but these aren't SSDs meant for long term unpowered storage of data. The problem is fixed in terms of the usage these drives see. In fact, considering leakage and deterioration is an issue with all types of NAND, I'd say no SSD is meant for cold storage of data.

Thats not the reason why tlc has bad endurance. TLC has bad endurance, regardless of what kind of schemes you do. But write amplification is gonna get higher because of this "fix".

That is the reason these drives has significantly worse endurance. Without the bug fix TLC's endurance is not that much worse than MLC.

Its not.

It is in the use scenario these drives are meant for, and fixed the point that the problem isn't any worse than an MLC drive.

 

[hojnikb]

That is the reason these drives has significantly worse endurance. Without the bug fix TLC's endurance is not that much worse than MLC.

thats just plain wrong. shuffling data because it degrades represent only a minor increase of write amplification. tlc is just bad (3-5 worse on a comparable node), no other way around it.
again, write amplification has nothing to do with with tlc being poor.

--It is in the use scenario these drives are meant for, and fixed the point that the problem isn't any worse than an MLC drive

thats not fix, but a workaround. fix would be increasing the cell size or move to different tech altogether


--Technically true, but these aren't SSDs meant for long term unpowered storage of data. The problem is fixed in terms of the usage these drives see. In fact, considering leakage and deterioration is an issue with all types of NAND, I'd say no SSD is meant for cold storage of data.


quality slc can withstand numerous decades of data retention, if its stored right.


--It would only need to do ECC if the cell had degraded to the point of not being able to be read at all.

and that happens all the time. you'd shocked how bad "data" looks on flash, before you apply ecc and all that magic trickery that controllers do nowadays.