IOPS performance will typically
vary greatly depending on the nature of the IO traffic, including the mixture
of Read and Write operations, and the mixture of Block Sizes (the size of the
IO operation’s data packet, also referred to as IO Size). This test is designed
to benchmark the IOPS performance profile for random IO operations for 56
different combinations of Read/Write mix % and Block Sizes when in a Steady
State, which are of interest to most users.
All of the SNIA’s test
specifications define a ‘required’ set of parameters that must be run for the
test and then allow the operator to elect to run additional tests with
different parameters of their choice. It is the mandatory test with the
required parameters that we run. Note that all of the mandatory tests must be
conducted with fully random data
As previously mentioned, a key
principle of SNIA testing is to provide a consistent basis for comparing
different solutions from different manufacturers.
To provide a consistent
basis for comparison with other drives we have tested we have run
the SNIA tests at a queue depth of 32. This is why we don’t see the
performance levels as specified by Intel.
Here are the results –
You can see here a visual confirmation that Steady State
Convergence was determined at the end of Round 6.
Here is a 3D and tabular presentation of the results. Users
can simply refer to the grid to obtain the R/W mix and Block Size value of
interest. For example, Online Transaction Processing applications
typically run at a Block Size of 8K and a Read/Write Mix of 65/35, and users
can quickly understand how the device might perform under Steady State for
these access characteristics.
You can see that the 4K 100% Read IOPS result is 271,930 and
that the 4K 100% Write IOPS result is a simply outstanding 154,414. These
results are simply awesome and are several orders of magnitude greater than for
anything we have reviewed before.
Product Comparison
For interest we present a comparison of the 4K 100% Writes
and Reads results with those of the other Enterprise SSDs we have tested –
Simply awesome!
Now let’s head to the next page, where we look at the
results of the SNIA Write Saturation Test…..
