Performance in Intel IOMeter

Sequential Read & Write

IOMeter is sending a stream of read and write requests with a request queue depth of 4. The size of the requested data block is changed each minute, so that we could see the dependence of the drive’s sequential read/write speed on the size of the data block. This test is indicative of the highest speed the drive can achieve.

The numeric data can be viewed in tables. We’ll discuss diagrams.

IOMeter: Sequential Read results

The X25-M doesn’t deliver the promised 250MBps or even those 134MBps that we saw in the data-transfer graph. This doesn’t seem to be the controller’s fault only but we will only be sure of that when we retest Intel’s SSD. Anyway, Intel has something to be proud of. Its MLC-based drive is as fast as the best of 3.5-inch HDDs and only inferior to the 15,000rpm SAS drive even under our imperfect test conditions. This is a tremendous progress since early SSDs that used to be slower than 2.5-inch HDDs. Interestingly, the speed of the X25-M keeps on growing till the right edge of the diagram, contrary to the graphs of the HDDs. It seems that if we used even larger data chunks, Intel’s SSD would overtake the SAS drive as well.

IOMeter: Sequential Write results

The X25-M is somewhat worse at writing because such operations are the most difficult for MLC-based memory. It is not a failure, though. The 3.5-inch HDDs deliver higher top speeds but 70MBps of the X25-M is quite a high speed for many applications. This is especially conspicuous on small data chunks where the X25-M is ahead of the Samsung F1 and close to the Fujitsu which has a huge cache, optimized firmware and very fast platters. Yes, buffer memory and a good multi-channel controller make wonders to flash drives!