SSDs with bigger capacities reliably publish higher efficiency numbers than smaller capability drives of the identical make and mannequin. For those who don’t know something about how SSDs work, this looks as if a thriller, however the purpose behind the slowdown makes excellent sense.
Bigger SSDs Have Extra Information Channels and DRAM
An SSD consists of NAND reminiscence chips organized in clusters, linked to an SSD controller. The controller is an clever gadget that decides the place to bodily retailer knowledge on the SSD.
With extra clusters of reminiscence chips, every linked to the controller by a devoted knowledge bus, the controller can learn and write knowledge in parallel. The extra clusters you will have, the extra unbiased paths there are to maneuver knowledge forwards and backwards. This has an additive impact on efficiency since every unbiased reminiscence module can ship and obtain knowledge with out affecting
Smaller Drives Get Fuller Quicker
SSDs are quickest when they’re new and comparatively empty. That’s as a result of an SSD has to erase a whole block of reminiscence cells earlier than writing to it. If all of the reminiscence cells are empty, the drive merely writes to the empty area. Nonetheless, if the block is partially crammed, the drive first has to repeat the prevailing knowledge right into a cache, erase the block, then write to the new empty block.
This provides overhead to the drive’s operations and slows issues down. That is why SSDs erase reminiscence blocks within the background which were marked for deletion and do “housekeeping” to consolidate knowledge, minimizing partially-filled reminiscence blocks.
The extra full your SSD is, the less empty blocks there are to write down to, and bigger SSDs are much less more likely to be as full as smaller drives. That is another excuse smaller drives might degrade in efficiency extra rapidly.
There’s Extra to SSD Efficiency
Whereas having extra reminiscence modules in parallel does improve efficiency, this is just one facet of SSD efficiency. The kind of reminiscence impacts the elemental pace at which reminiscence blocks may be erased and written, so if the 2 drives you’re evaluating additionally differ in the kind of reminiscence modules they use, that has an influence on any efficiency distinction.
The SSD controller is totally essential to efficiency as nicely. The intelligence of the controller on the subject of predicting which knowledge to cache or the way to shuffle knowledge round to make sure the drive is at all times performing nicely has important real-world results. In different phrases, an SSD’s mind issues simply as a lot as its brawn.
Talking of caches, bigger drives might have proportionally bigger allocations of cache reminiscence. The bigger a drive’s cache is, the sooner its efficiency can be when sustaining massive transfers or responding rapidly to frequent knowledge requests. The identical is true for mechanical exhausting disk drives (HDDs), the place two drives which are in any other case similar will carry out higher on the drive with extra cache reminiscence.
Why Not Make Small SSDs Extra Parallel?
Inevitably, one has to surprise why smaller drives aren’t given the identical variety of reminiscence modules as bigger drives. Merely make the modules smaller, proper? This is able to work in idea, however the financial realities of reminiscence manufacturing make this a nasty concept.
There’s a price flooring beneath which you can’t make a reminiscence module irrespective of how low its capability is, as a result of sure points of producing are mounted no matter module capability. You’ll see one thing comparable with conventional mechanical drives. There could also be no distinction in the price of making a 120GB and 250GB mechanical exhausting drive, for example. Meaning nobody goes to make the smaller capability drive.
The reminiscence modules used with smaller SSDs signify the very best stability between per-module price and capability. In different phrases, a drive with extra modules however much less capability per module would price the identical as a bigger drive with the identical variety of modules.