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Faulty Marvell Chips Delay SATA 6G Launch

Posted by kdawson on from the speed-comes-to-him-who-waits dept.

Vigile writes "The SATA 6G standard offers more than simply a faster 6.0 Gb/s data throughput speed, to wit: improved NCQ support, better power management, and a new connector to support 1.8-inch drives. While modern-day, spindle-based hard drives struggle to keep up with SATA 3G speeds, modern SSDs are nearly saturating the existing standard, and a move to SATA 6G was welcome in the hardware community. It looks like that technology will be delayed, though. The only chip supporting the standard today, the Marvell 88SE9123, is having major issues. Motherboard vendors including ASUS and Gigabyte, which had planned on releasing SATA 6G technology using the chip on Intel Lynnfield platform motherboards later this summer, are having to remove the Marvell 88SE9123 and redesign their boards at the last minute due to significant speed and reliability issues."

90 comments

  1. Interface speed only by Hatta · · Score: 1, Informative

    This is silly. Current hard drives can't even max out the speed of SATA-2. There's no need for faster interfaces just yet.

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    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    1. Re:Interface speed only by Rayban · · Score: 3, Informative

      ... "modern SSDs are nearly saturating the existing standard" ...

      --
      æeee!
    2. Re:Interface speed only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *cough* port expanders *cough*

    3. Re:Interface speed only by Khyber · · Score: 1

      I have yet to see an SSD that can constantly saturate a 3.0Gbps link, please show me some that do.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    4. Re:Interface speed only by MartinSchou · · Score: 2, Insightful

      *cough*Doesn't increase bandwidth*cough*

    5. Re:Interface speed only by LordEd · · Score: 1

      *cough* Benadryl ...

    6. Re:Interface speed only by Chabo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      TFA said "nearly saturating", but regardless...

      http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=24

      250MB/s is just below the theoretical limit of SATA 3Gb/s, which is 300MB/s. It's possible that there are still other bottlenecks beside the hard drive.

      I also have seen SSD RAID benchmarks somewhere, but I don't remember where.

      --
      Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
    7. Re:Interface speed only by MartinSchou · · Score: 4, Informative

      Intel's X25-M seems to perform 200 MB/s constant throughput. Granted that's "only" 2/3rds of the 3 Gbps that SATA 2 delievers, but the quote was "nearly saturate".

      And if we're already at 2/3rds, that's a fairly compelling argument to upgrading. On laptops it can become an issue much quicker, as you usually only have 1 eSATA port, and port multipliers do not increase bandwidth. Hooking two X25-Ms onto a single eSATA 2 port can saturate it while doing non-random transfers easily but still have room left over on eSATA 3.

      But if we're merely talking SSD in general, we can always point to Fusion-io ioDrive which bottoms out at 429 MB/s.

    8. Re:Interface speed only by compro01 · · Score: 2, Informative

      The Fusion-io ioDrive Duo could, but connected directly into a PCI-E slot rather than SATA, but it is definitely possible to make a drive that will.

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      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    9. Re:Interface speed only by whowantscream · · Score: 2, Informative

      Fusion-IO has PCI-e cards that they claim sustain 570MB/s up to 1.5GBps

      Can't boot from them, but there you go.

      --
      Nobody? OK no cream.
    10. Re:Interface speed only by MartinSchou · · Score: 5, Funny

      *cough*Regular mints are better if it's just a cough. No point in taking allergy medicine if you aren't allergic.

    11. Re:Interface speed only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It will allow similar throughput on a per device basis for twice as many devices.

    12. Re:Interface speed only by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Take a long hard think about this.

      What manufacturer is going to make SATA SSD's that can saturate the fastest SATA port?

      Sounds to me like a bad idea. Surely there are some tradeoffs between speed and some other also important metric. Ex, faster might mean larger erase block sizes.

      It is likely that Intel could have made their product much faster, but without any benefit at all to doing so, they wouldn't.

      This new SATA, while important, it sort of too-little-too-late. We need a much higher ceiling, and we need it yesterday.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    13. Re:Interface speed only by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

      The AC is implying that one drive may only use ~80MB/s, but a four-port multiplier will saturate the bus. SSDs are not the only reason to push for increase bandwidth.

      This may not be the case anymore, but I had thought support for port expanders on consumer grade chipsets were pretty poor.

    14. Re:Interface speed only by wagnerrp · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The only reason SSDs aren't capable of higher speeds is because the bus is not capable of more. There's no point making a controller capable of 2GB/s if you are only able to transfer at 300MB/s.

    15. Re:Interface speed only by blahplusplus · · Score: 1

      "Sounds to me like a bad idea. Surely there are some tradeoffs between speed and some other also important metric. Ex, faster might mean larger erase block sizes."

      But this has nearly no effect on reads, which is the majority of what most drives are doing. You want the fastest interface possible, we're talking about *flash memory* here.

      There is no drawback to faster interfaces, your concerns are irrelevant since you're talking about engineering flaws and the immaturity of solid state, the interface is immaterial to such concerns.

    16. Re:Interface speed only by blahplusplus · · Score: 1

      "The only reason SSDs aren't capable of higher speeds is because the bus is not capable of more. There's no point making a controller capable of 2GB/s if you are only able to transfer at 300MB/s."

      This is idiotic, every bus interface always has more bandwidth than most devices can take advantage of, the case was the same when we moved from ISA to PCI and then to PCIe (peripheral bus), from IDE to EIDE to ATA to SATA (hard disk bus).

    17. Re:Interface speed only by billcopc · · Score: 1

      I looked at the Fusion-io cards a while ago, the speed is mind-blowing but the fact that it needs a driver made it an immediate no-go. Bootability is not the issue, it's all about compatibility. Why they can't make it appear as a plain old SATA or SCSI controller, I do not know, but more importantly I don't care, especially when you consider the asking price for these things. Even the cheapo Gigabyte I-Drive pretended to be a SATA disk (it literally had a SATA output connector). I'd be happy if this thing posed as a pair of SATA disks to be RAID-0'ed. In its current form it just seems like a half-baked idea. I'm really hoping they will clean it up in the next incarnation.

      It seems they're releasing a "cheaper" version for so-called gamers, 80gb for ~$900. Four times the cost of an SSD, but four times the speed. I have to admit, at that price I might be willing to try one and see for myself if their drivers are worth a damn. I work with smallish high-churn databases, the kind of workload that eats spinning platters for breakfast. Something like this would be a godsend, as long as it's server-class reliable.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    18. Re:Interface speed only by AllynM · · Score: 4, Informative

      Most sequential throughput benches hit the drive with sequential requests, and are not multithreaded. You end up seeing throughput lower than the theoretical interface bandwidth because of the latency involved for each request. A queue depth of 2 or 4 will give an X25 enough heads up to truly saturate the bus. I've recorded as high as 285 MB/sec from an X25-M using an NCQ-capable benchmarking tool.

      Also, don't forget SATA uses 8/10b encoding, so you have to account for that overhead as well when calculating theoretical maximum throughput. Doing the math, you'll find 285 comes to 95% of a 3 GB/sec SATA interface. That's way higher than 200 MB/sec and close enough to call saturated.

      Allyn Malventano
      Storage Editor, PC Perspective

      --
      this sig was brought to you by the letter /.
    19. Re:Interface speed only by billcopc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What manufacturer is going to make SATA SSD's that can saturate the fastest SATA port?

      The same idiot manufacturers who deliver super-high sequential reads at the expense of everything else. There's a jumble of drives running off a particular J-Micron controller (or two :P), that deliver faster sequential reads than the Intel X25-E, but have random access times in the 50ms range (average). That's five times slower than a cheap 5400rpm notebook drive! They still sell like hotcakes because they're cheap, and we all know how much America loves cheap garbage. You could stick a SATA port out the side of a fresh turd, and if you price it low enough, some dumb fuck will buy it.

      SATA 6G is too slow, yes, but the companies involved seem to be interested in controlling their steady income by keeping everyone on an upgrade treadmill. If they had given us 6G at the very start, they would not have been able to milk the industry over the last six years with these minor upgrades and feature enhancements. Look at Firewire, ignoring Apple's idiocy, it was a very fast external bus that was far ahead of its competitors in terms of performance, reliability and ease of use. It was so good that even the 800mbit upgrade is considered redundant, the old standard is "fast enough" for most uses.

      Better get used to it though, SATA is the new bottleneck, and it will be for years to come. There's just no way around it. It took this long for people to finally ditch IDE, even if there were a new contender to leave SATA's generationally-challenged performance in the dust, the industry simply is not ready to change interfaces again.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    20. Re:Interface speed only by symbolset · · Score: 1

      Sounds to me like a bad idea. Surely there are some tradeoffs between speed and some other also important metric. Ex, faster might mean larger erase block sizes.

      Progress is not made by people who concoct imaginary dangers over yonder hill, and then use them as an excuse not to set out at all.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    21. Re:Interface speed only by ddgconsultant · · Score: 1

      What you need is a Ricola.

    22. Re:Interface speed only by Penguinoflight · · Score: 1

      Even PCIe version 1 is highly capable - x8 cards are limited at 2GB/s theoretical, with version 2 doubling that, and version 3 will double it again.

      --
      "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
      1 John 4:14
    23. Re:Interface speed only by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      Why? You didn't take a long hard think about it at all.

      If you can't saturate the link with one drive, and the standard procedure is to hook one drive to one port, then why do we need something faster now?

      Something faster is fine, would even help burst speeds, but its not something we 'need' nor was it 'needed' yesterday for anything other than some silly setup that was never designed to be fast in the first place ... i.e. using a port replicator on a laptop.

      --
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    24. Re:Interface speed only by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      Better get used to it though, SATA is the new bottleneck, and it will be for years to come. There's just no way around it.

      You mean aside from faster storage topologies which exist for people who need them.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    25. Re:Interface speed only by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

      There are SSDs sold that connect using PCIe. OCZ and FusionIO have x4 units that run at over 500MB/s. FusionIO and PhotoFast have x8 units that run at over 1GB/s.

    26. Re:Interface speed only by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      That's an awful lot of words.

      Next time you could just say "SATA sucks".

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    27. Re:Interface speed only by Rockoon · · Score: 0

      If you can't saturate...

      Cart before the horse. I can't saturate it because nobody is making drives that can.

      I claim that it is no coincedence that SSD's, once performance became a comodity (thank you MTRON), quickly shot up from ~16MB/sec and leveled off at 200+MB/sec sequential read speeds. In this time there was no substantial technological breakthrough that made this possible, and we dont need one to go faster. What we need is a faster pipe.

      As evidence of this fact, I will draw your attention to the future. Once SATA600 is standard on more that a few motherboards, one of the major SSD manufacturers will put out a drive that does 500+MB/sec, and the others will quickly follow.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    28. Re:Interface speed only by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      I am not convinced that SATA600 is intentionally slow.

      I think its more likely that when SATA600 was on the drawing board, that nobody predicted this new market.

      Stupidity is more likely than malice.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    29. Re:Interface speed only by billcopc · · Score: 1

      As a hard drive interconnect ?

      Sure, you can RAID a bunch of drives in an external chassis and pipe the combined throughput over FC, but how many people do you know with an FC HBA in their gaming rig or media workstation ? Even ignoring the minor detail that an entry-level HBA costs more than most people's entire PCs, you simply cannot compare external vs internal storage solutions. Some of us just don't want another big noisy box under our desks. It's fine for a datacenter but certainly not for SOHO.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    30. Re:Interface speed only by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      SOHO users need more than 6Gbps?

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    31. Re:Interface speed only by kayditty · · Score: 0

      ...unless you want to get high.

    32. Re:Interface speed only by megabeck42 · · Score: 1

      Only 1, and he did it because he could keep the loud drive cabinet in the basement and use the drives from his bedroom. It was decent gear, too, LSI PCI-E 4GBps card with two multimode transceivers to a JBOD cabinet in the basement.

      --
      fnord.
    33. Re:Interface speed only by megabeck42 · · Score: 1

      I suck, I meant 4 Gbps.

      --
      fnord.
  2. Failure by Mendoksou · · Score: 1

    Hardware failure is just Marvellous. ;D

    --
    DISCLAIMER: I am very rarely serious. If the above comment seems asinine makes no sense, it is most likely a bad joke.
  3. Maybe they should stick... by camperdave · · Score: 3, Funny

    Faulty Marvell Chips...

    Maybe they should stick to comic books.

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    1. Re:Maybe they should stick... by maxume · · Score: 1

      I welcome less sophomoric word play.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    2. Re:Maybe they should stick... by Gilmoure · · Score: 4, Informative

      Um, Billy Batson would have you know it was Tesla and Edison, not Einstein, arguing over type of current.

      Nice try.

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
    3. Re:Maybe they should stick... by orngjce223 · · Score: 1

      Yes, but then we'd have more WHOOSH moments, you insensitive clod :P

      --
      Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
    4. Re:Maybe they should stick... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      oh boy ! a new smaller version of an already rotten connector design
      maybe 3M will come up with conductive SATA glue.

  4. Listen, and understand. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That SATA chip is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until your product is delayed.

    1. Re:Listen, and understand. by CarpetShark · · Score: 1

      Unlike like their ethernet chip, which absolutely will stop on a 64bit machine with over 4GB.

    2. Re:Listen, and understand. by megabeck42 · · Score: 1

      Noone's surprised. Marvell's had a track record of faulty, ill-documented, or bug-plagued parts. Sometimes, I wonder why they still bother. I suppose, someone has to make Realtek look good.

      --
      fnord.
    3. Re:Listen, and understand. by inject_hotmail.com · · Score: 1
      I know I'm a bit late to the Marvell bashing party, but I had to say something.

      A couple years ago when Asus first started puting Marvell network chips on their boards, every single one that I saw (I or friends bought) had a faulty NIC. The symptom? It was slow...paaaaainfully slow...definitely not 1Gbps. More in the range of 10Kbps. I called up suppliers and Asus directly...they all said to RMA the motherboard, no DOA replacement. Joy. So, spend a stupid amount of time to remove the board, live without a running PC for 2 weeks (!) and pay $30 or more for shipping for a $20 solution (put in an add-on NIC).

      No one wanted to act in good faith...I guess I'm the stupid one, I still buy their crap.

  5. Don't Delay, Just Rename by neonprimetime · · Score: 4, Funny

    >> The only information we have gotten from anyone revolves around some hardware AND software issues that are preventing the SATA 6G speeds from actually reaching 6.0 Gb/s

    Instead of delaying the launch, they could just rename the chip. SATA 5.5G for example.

    1. Re:Don't Delay, Just Rename by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1. promote 6g product
      2. rename to 5.5g product
      3. ????
      4. PROFIT!!!

    2. Re:Don't Delay, Just Rename by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Dammit.

      I've got 12 2Tb SATA6 HD's here just waiting to be hooked up to a bus that can handle their speed!

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    3. Re:Don't Delay, Just Rename by ddgconsultant · · Score: 1

      Perhaps we could just call it 6gS and add video capabilities!?

    4. Re:Don't Delay, Just Rename by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Instead of delaying the launch, they could just rename the chip. SATA 5.5G for example.

      Or sell them to Apple.

  6. Faulty Marvell Chips?? by CyberSlammer · · Score: 0, Funny

    Does the Justice League know about this????

  7. Faulty Marvell Chips, eh? by gambit3 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wonder if The Green Gobllin had anything to do with it...

    --
    Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
    1. Re:Faulty Marvell Chips, eh? by Mendoksou · · Score: 3, Funny

      Joke detection fail.

      --
      DISCLAIMER: I am very rarely serious. If the above comment seems asinine makes no sense, it is most likely a bad joke.
    2. Re:Faulty Marvell Chips, eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Whooooosh!

    3. Re:Faulty Marvell Chips, eh? by maxume · · Score: 1

      Or perhaps joke fail. I sure didn't think it was hilarious.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    4. Re:Faulty Marvell Chips, eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      gambit3, you of all people should be able to tell us that.

    5. Re:Faulty Marvell Chips, eh? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      Or perhaps joke fail. I sure didn't think it was hilarious.

      Your response is a common and erroneous defensive response.

      Just because you did not find a joke to be funny does not mean it was not still a joke. Your post that marvel comics only has one 'L' was not a criticism of the humor in the joke, it was an attempt to correct a perceived error. If you knew it was a joke you would have known the error was intentional and would not have attempted to correct an error that was not really an error at all.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    6. Re:Faulty Marvell Chips, eh? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      s/you/he/g

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    7. Re:Faulty Marvell Chips, eh? by MrMista_B · · Score: 1

      You missed his joke!

      He didn't say it wasn't a joke, just that it was a bad one.

    8. Re:Faulty Marvell Chips, eh? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      He didn't say it wasn't a joke, just that it was a bad one.

      Context.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  8. 6G a stop-gap solution for high-end SSDs, anyway by Tumbleweed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even the 6G standard won't hold for high-end SSDs (which seem to be raid striped in one unit, AFAIK). The long-term solution for those are ones that connect via PCIe, so this doesn't seem to be that big a deal, really.

  9. Marvell announces total recall of faulty chip. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Give those people ERROR!

  10. Re:6G a stop-gap solution for high-end SSDs, anywa by MartinSchou · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The PCIe versions of SSDs I've see so far doesn't seem to support booting. That's a major crimp in their usefulness. Also, they're not all that useful in laptops.

  11. This is surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    To be bad enough that these low-end board shops would reject it this Marvell part must be truly heinous. Asus et al. usually don't hesitate to ship boards with badly flawed components. Cox talked about this a few years ago.

    If you want good SATA avoid the third party chips these board makers integrate. Especially the RAID crap. Wait for Intel to build it into their regular chipsets.

    1. Re:This is surprising by pathological+liar · · Score: 1

      I agree Marvell is garbage but it's not like "high-end" board shops (whoever you think those are) are above including shitty parts. My Intel desktop board (D975XBX2)'s primary SATA controller is Intel, the second group of four is powered by some Marvell piece of shit though... 88SE6145 I think. The 4 drives on the Intel chip have no problems. The 4 drives on the Marvell chip randomly reset and have generally poor performance.

  12. Re:6G a stop-gap solution for high-end SSDs, anywa by frosty_tsm · · Score: 2

    Nitpick:

    I'll bet they implemented striping a different way than RAID. Since all they need to do is act like a standard hard drive to the machine, they can implement something faster and more specific to flash memory (since every optimization counts).

  13. Re:6G a stop-gap solution for high-end SSDs, anywa by Tumbleweed · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The PCIe versions of SSDs I've see so far doesn't seem to support booting. That's a major crimp in their usefulness.

    True, but that's temporary. I've heard the next major crop of them coming out over the next quarter or so will be bootable. I certainly wouldn't buy one until they ARE bootable.

    Also, they're not all that useful in laptops.

    Laptops have PCIe connections available, too; that shouldn't be a problem.

  14. Re:6G a stop-gap solution for high-end SSDs, anywa by Tumbleweed · · Score: 1

    Nitpick:

    I'll bet they implemented striping a different way than RAID. Since all they need to do is act like a standard hard drive to the machine, they can implement something faster and more specific to flash memory (since every optimization counts).

    Pedantic-Man(tm) Approved(tm)! :)

  15. Re:6G a stop-gap solution for high-end SSDs, anywa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whew, good.

  16. Well diddums for Marvell. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well AMD's implementation is meant to be pretty good, demoing 590MB/s transfers earlier this year. Sadly that implementation is part of a southbridge coming out in Q1'10 (SB850) and the SB810 has been delayed further to H2'10.

    Maybe AMD should have made a standalone SATA3 chip with a PCIe interface and made a few bob on the side.

  17. Build it and they will come... by DJRumpy · · Score: 1

    Beat me to it ;)

    There is no way a manufacturer is going to produce a drive with Sata 2 specs that would exceed 300 Mb/sec. It would be a waste of money on their part (pearls before swine). Give a proper pipeline and room to breath and watch competition force the issue. ANY increase in pipeline is a good thing because the manufacturer's will move in to fill the pipe or lose out on the performance game.

  18. Well, what did you expect from Marvell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What would you expect from a company that has greed at its core from the top down. e.g. CEO lays off staff then takes pay bump

    Third world upbringing and asian-american wife is a pretty much terminal combo as far as ones charity goes, and while I'm not saying it always takes a charitable person to do proper quality control and swallow the bitter pill of respins/delays/repairs when it is required, it certainly helps.

    Anyone who expects a marvell product to be a quality one is off his rocker.

  19. Marvell == suckage in Si form by dbc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Honestly, Marvell chips have cost me more grief on Linux installs than all other vendors combined. If this gets mobo vendors to design out Marvell, then I say: "Grand!".

    1. Re:Marvell == suckage in Si form by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      Honestly, Marvell chips have cost me more grief on Linux installs than all other vendors combined. If this gets mobo vendors to design out Marvell, then I say: "Grand!".

      The linux gigabit ethernet driver bites.

      The current one - sky2 - frequently dies under heavy loads and seems to rely on an internal watchdog timer to kickstart it back to life within 60 seconds or so, making a gigabit nic no faster than a 10mbps nic on average.

      The Marvell provided one - sk98lin - worked until recent kernels changed a couple of structure definitions - I manually tweaked it myself to get it up and running, but jumbo frames don't work (turn them on and it seems to lose any packet larger than the non-jumbo size of ~1500 bytes).

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  20. Powered eSATA? by MartinSchou · · Score: 1

    Anyone know if/when powered eSATA is supposed to come online? As in power and data in the same single cable?

    It feels somewhat silly that I have two options with my 2½ eSATA/USB:
    USB - single cable, low speed
    eSATA - two cables, high speed

    Might even result in some interesting new types of flash storage devices. HD speeds in USB key sizes.

  21. nVidia nForce 4, Silicon Image, and JMicron by JakFrost · · Score: 1

    I had a very bad experience with my old nVidia nForce4 Chipset motherboard RAID chip while using it and just recently found that none of the old or new drivers work correctly when the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD is plugged into the motherboard causing my Windows OS to freeze during boot-up when the driver is initialized or the RAID capability just doesn't work at all. I even wrote up an entire account of this problem in a few threads, one on nVidia's forum and another on HardOCP Forum to warn users about trying to use Intel SSDs with their older nForce4 hardware that I linked to below.

    The Silicon Image 3114 PCI to SATA 1 controller chip has serious issues also that caused it to drop my RAID-5 and destroy the 2 TB array. It has issues with PCI bus contention and also is incompatible with the Creative Labs X-Fi PCI sound card on the same bus causing audio stuttering and pops. A few people mentioned that the issue might be IRQ sharing but I tried the sound card in all different PCI slots with different IRQs and the problem was still there. Jet another bad experience with off-brand storage chips.

    My current Asus P6T motherboard for Intel Core i7 with the JMicron JMB363 PCIe to SATA chip and JMicron JMB322 SATA 1 to 2 Port Multiplier chip are also having issues with the internal SATA ports where one of them is port-multiplied and if a hard drive and an LG Blu-Ray optical drive is connected at the same time to the internal ports the optical drive will randomly disappear and re-appear in the operating system.

    So Marvell is not the one and only manufacturer of storage interconnect chips to have these problems. My experience is that pretty much all of them have issues to varying degrees driving users mad when they realize after purchasing the motherboard and trying to use these chips.

    [H]ard|Forum > [H]ard|Ware > Data Storage Systems - The Hidden Cost of an SSD Upgrade (Intel SSD + nForce4 Chipset = No RAID! -> Upgrade)

    [H]ard|Forum > [H]ard|Ware > Motherboards - nVidia nForce MediaShield 15.23, .25, .26 - Does Not Install!

    NVIDIA Forums > nZone > Hardware > nForce Mobos > nVidia nForce MediaShield 15.23, .25, .26 - Does Not Install!, MediaShield installer does not install services, GUI, or files

    OverclockersClub Forums Hardware Processors, Motherboards and Memory - Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi and Silicon Image 3114 on DFI SLI-DR

  22. Re:6G a stop-gap solution for high-end SSDs, anywa by GigsVT · · Score: 1

    Are we really all the way back to hardcards?

    I guess fads really do go in cycles.

    --
    I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  23. Ho hum by jspenguin1 · · Score: 1

    Wake me up when SATA speeds pass SAS.

    Wait, that's never going to happen. By the time 6Gbit SATA takes off, SAS will be at 12Gbit.

    Not that I'm dissing SATA -- It's cool to be able to connect a boatload of SATA disks to a SAS expander for a (relatively) cheap SAN with half a petabyte of storage.

    1. Re:Ho hum by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      I think it's best that you remain asleep.

  24. Re:Don't Delay, Just Rename LOL!!!! by davidsyes · · Score: 1

    ROTF, LMMFAO.... Made my day, neonprimetime...

    That's really kewl....especially in light of the recent story about companies manipulating or avoiding or playing games with certain release numbers.

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
  25. Re:Faulty Marvell Chips, eh? Wha... u jusst cain't by davidsyes · · Score: 1

    get no SATAs...faction? Awwww...

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
  26. Regular HDDs saturate SATA 3.0Gbps links by this+great+guy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This lack of knowledge on /. is sickening. Not only a single SSD already almost saturates a SATA 3.0Gbps link (300MB/s with 8b-10b encoding), but even regular hard drives do. Transfers to/from the on-disk buffer chips are bottlenecked by the 300MB/s speed. And SATA enclosures placing multiple (3 or more) drives behind a SATA port multiplier also easily saturate SATA 3.0Gbps links (the sequential read speed of a 1TB Seagate 7200.11 is 120MB/s, so 3 of them do 360MB/s).

    1. Re:Regular HDDs saturate SATA 3.0Gbps links by FreakyGreenLeaky · · Score: 1

      This lack of knowledge on /. is sickening

      That's because it's become a warren for sub-29 year olds who use bing.com as their SE of choice and actually brag about it :D.
      [yawns/arches back] it's about time for my cuppa tea and afternoon nap.

  27. "Me too", not just Linux. by GeekDork · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have to agree there. Marvell chips have given me nothing but grief, both in Windows and Linux, both network and ATA. They made me buy a SATA DVD writer to replace the fully functional PATA device, as well as a Silicon Image-based SATA controller to attach harddisks (couldn't use the Intel controller, because MSI still insists on placing the "good" SATA connectors under the GPU cooler).

    All in all, I'm happy about anything bad happening to Marvell.

    --

    Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.

  28. "a new connector to support 1.8-inch drives" by ScottCooperDotNet · · Score: 1

    a new connector to support 1.8-inch drives.

    For the love of heaven, WHY?

    1. Re:"a new connector to support 1.8-inch drives" by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      a new connector to support 1.8-inch drives.

      For the love of heaven, WHY?

      Probably because the SATA power connector plus SATA data connectors are so physically large, that you can get the PATA drives in a smaller form factor? (PATA drives use a 44-pin ZIF socket that's really small and low profile. It's also a touch fragile...).

      I wish I could find SSDs easily in a PATA connector - 1.8" drives usually have PATA interfaces and I'd like to upgrade one of my computers to SSD. BUt the Intel ones are SATA only, and the only ones I find ohterwise are some noname chinese ones on eBay...

    2. Re:"a new connector to support 1.8-inch drives" by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      GP beat me to it. If the power connector is too big, I'd say use a smaller power connector. I mean it's nearly 3X the size of the data connector and it's usually only using 4 of those pins (photo). Or maybe they could stack the connectors on top of each other to save horizontal space, they'd be well under 1cm tall stacked.

      All you'd need is a different adapter to use the small-connector drives in existing desktop PCs. Changing the data connector seems totally uncalled for.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  29. Marvell by xmvince · · Score: 1

    Asus p6t deluxe has the WORST marvell SAS controllers and WORST ethernet i've ever seen.. not sure if its the marvell hardware or asus's drivers but they suck big time. took me half a year to realize my $2,000 i7 was running like shit because of these drivers that I had to disable in the BIOS.