X-bit labs

27 Card Readers Roundup (page 13)

Category: Multimedia

by Aleksey Meyev

[ 03/23/2008 | 11:11 AM ]

Performance with SDHC Cards

Intel IOMeter Sequential Read and Write

Four out of the six controllers passed the test at the same speed. The AU6377 has a twice lower speed. The AU6362 couldn’t cope with small data blocks altogether and had a very low speed on large data blocks.

The AU6362 has zero writing speed but didn’t issue an error. Running a little ahead, I should tell you that this chip passed the tests one way or another, so it is not completely incompatible with this card format. Among the other card-readers, the AU6377 chip, which has been very fast in the Compact Flash tests, is a disappointment. The other four controllers are similar, but the AU6333 and SanDisk MicroMate have somewhat higher speeds on 8KB and 16KB data blocks.

Intel IOMeter Disk Response Time

The first thing to catch your eye in the diagram is the very low write access time of the AU6377 controller. This must be some flaw in the test program because the result is beyond the capabilities of flash memory. The AU6362 with firmware 01.29 is thus the leader of this test. Comparing this diagram with the diagram for the same test with the SD card, you can see that the write access times are somewhat higher.

Intel IOMeter Random Read and Write

The AU6362 seems to have problems in this test judging by the time it took to perform the random-address read operations. The AU6377 differs from the others, spending two times more time to process blocks of every size than its opponents do.

The AU6377 is, on the contrary, ahead of everyone, having a much better result. It is worse than the others, except for the AU6362 (which had problems again), on large data blocks, but I’m more interested in small blocks as it is in such blocks that data are written to the card in real applications.