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Intel Pulls SSD Firmware Day After Release
CWmike writes "Intel has pulled a firmware upgrade it released on Monday for its X25-M consumer solid-state drives after users complained that the software caused crashes. The company on Monday made available a software package called SSD Toolbox to monitor and manage the performance and health of X25-M SSDs on systems running Windows 7. The package included a firmware upgrade and software called SSD Optimizer that included diagnostic tools to help keep the Intel SSD running at high performance. 'We have been contacted by users with issues with the 34-nanometer Intel SSD firmware upgrade and are investigating. We take all sightings and issues seriously and are working toward resolution. We have temporarily taken down the firmware link while we investigate,' an Intel spokesman said in an e-mail. The spokesman declined to comment on when the company would issue updated firmware."
It was clearly run from an SSD.
And that's why I bought a Saturn.
I'm starting to think that the whole SSD market is a prime example of the modern corporate development mentality of pawning off beta testing to the general public. It's clear that SSDs are not ready for general release, but companies do not want to spend the time or money to validate them against specifications or ensure that they work properly for their particular purpose. Let the public pay for your beta test program. It's a lot cheaper.
I installed this firmware and I've never had more problems. My machine reboots 5-6 times a day and there is no end in si
Launch Manager: "AH SH*T".
You're a victim of the mental retards that are getting mod points these days.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sometimes a-holes get mod points. Just keep posting insightful, informative, and interesting posts, and it will work out. It may take months to get up to Excellent.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Say things that people like? I gave you my last mod point on an older comment, because somebody had obviously down-modded you inappropriately. Glad to help out.
So, they ever heard of a thing called beta testing?
I don't like the way how these days most things are just pushed out from the production as fast and cheap as possible, and then start fixing the bugs afterwards.
I'm not approaching karma like a high-score or anything, I'm just offended that someone is allowed to label several of my comments "troll" simply because they don't like me.
Crucial's M225 (I own the 128GB version) 1711 firmware had significant bugs and was quickly yanked. In order to upgrade to the latest 1819 you have to downgrade back to 1571.
http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx
Seems as if most consumer SSD products are still a bit in the "beta" stage.
Thanks,
--
Matt
First: prepare to be modded down again. This is simply the way of things.
I am a long-time visitor to Slashdot, who started by lurking, created an account, rose to the giddy heights and sank to the murky depths a number of times over an illustrious trolling history, only to return to lurking.
The one constant to this place is that nobody really gives a shit. It's not meant in a malicious way; no, it's more like the dispassionate indifference of nature towards its weakest strains, or corporate-provided tech support.
To survive -- indeed, to thrive! -- you must, too, not give a shit. Post facts that aren't true! Make courageous posts that start with "I know I'll get modded down for this, but..."! You'll have more karma than you know what to do with, and when you hit that tippity-top, start posting some real stinkers. I used to enjoy the occasional movie spoiler in the middle of a post regarding Java performance analysis, slightly misremembered Star Trek quotes, or letting people in on the real history of skyscrapers (the first was built in Japan to commemorate the southernmost part of the Great Wall.)
My favorite bit was watching my worst posts go up, go down, etc.; I think I got over thirty points spent on a post one time, and it wasn't long after that they would just show percentages spent in each moderation category. Boooo.
I don't know why it is, but the very worst thing you can do on here is try to hold an intellectual conversation. Though in my case, I suppose it would have helped if I was somewhat intellectual. Anyway, you can probably start getting the karma back up on your account by making smart-sounding comments to low-traffic stories. Just make stuff up if you don't happen to know anything, it works gangbusters.
It's a "feature" of the system. It means that there is no way to play favorites with official moderators. It does mean though that idiots occasionally get mod points and proceed to blow them all on modding someone down with whom they disagree.
But really, don't worry about it - idiots are still outnumbered by decent moderators without vendettas. Furthermore, this type of use is generally fixed by the metamod system: slashdot.org/metamod.pl.
I've been around for years, and this issue has always been around. After a while, you get used to it. Not to mention that your karma will get high enough to absorb drive-by moderation.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Go check again. No more troll ratings. You were right. Those were undeserved, and I countered them.
I'm just offended that someone is allowed to label several of my comments "troll" simply because they don't like me.
You must be n- oh, wait, never mind.
It's still new techonology. Compared to the evolution from the first hard-drives and the first 1x CD-ROMs on the market, the SSD technology is still somewhat more reliable. I myself find myself waiting for this technology to mature a bit more before introducing it on my company computers.
I don't know about anyone else, but I am getting damn sick and tired of devices that NEED firmware. Why does every little peripheral need to contain LOGIC!!! I want DUMB machines, damn it! Why can't an SSD simply be a "mass storage device"?? Let the OS worry about wear leveling, etc.
Sometimes, it makes sense to price of product so high at the beginning of its PLC, so the consumer who willing to pay for it is highly likely to be able to provide free in detail crash feedback...
yea, I don't comment much on here, but you don't have to read the posts for long to understand the "unwritten" rules around here...thick skin is NOT optional :)
Don't sweat it; like oodaloop said, just keep posting informative and interesting comments. As to the why, I suspect I know who the culprit is, as you only have one freak.
BTW, don't try for funny. Funny gains no karma, but attempted humor often gets modded troll or flamebait.
Free Martian Whores!
Why does the intel community forum use gray on white and gray on light blue text? Yuck!
Firmware on my desktop, 34nm X-25M 80GB in the mail. I hope they fix this quickly.
Have you tried directing it to /dev/null? They may be slow in offering up helpful suggestions, but boy are they great listeners!
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I love vigilante justice! Thanks!
I upgraded to the new firmware on my intel 80 gig ssd on windows 7 home premium. I guess I am lucky it worked. I would really reccomend a SSD drive for laptops.
I want to thank everyone who took an interest. I do have thick skin, and I can take the abuse, but in this case I felt compelled to fight for the principle of the thing. Anyway, I apologize again for the off-topic post. Thanks!
I had this problem with my X-25M yesterday. I updated the firmware, rebooted Windows 7 Ultimate, and everything was fine. Then I started playing around with AHCI mode on my motherboard (I had installed with Enhanced-IDE) in order to get instant-TRIM, and after that didn't work I switched back. Then the drive started getting SMART errors, so I switched around a few more times, and eventually SMART went away entirely, and the drive started showing up as a non-partitionable 7 MB drive. Intel gave me an RMA after getting my info (processor, motherboard, bios revision). I did make a backup beforehand though, because of the earlier intel bios snafu, so it really only cost me time and aggravation (and $11 shipping).
I apologize for my ignorance, but I don't know what "/dev/null" means.
He's just being a jerk. In Unix-like systems, /dev/null is a "null file" and disregards any data written to it.
It's a right of passage. Once the 8-digit newbs sign up, all your posts will be modded +5 funny and virgins will suddenly find you desirable.
That's what happened to me when the 7-digit newbs started appearing around here.
I'm typing this article on my trusty ThinkPad now equipped with a X-25 MLC 34nm SSD upgraded to the latest firmware. No problems whatsoever with Ubuntu. I'm wondering if the problem is related to some crappy OS that some people use...
Mmm.... you're right, I think. And sometimes you can pin down exactly who it is, too.... like, for example, if you suddenly have 5 posts modded as "troll" (that clearly aren't trolls) the day after you call somebody out for being a self-important twat with no clue what he's actually talking about... (look at my posting history for an example, you get a cookie if you can guess who it is)....
It happens. Some people are idiots. Theoretically the meta-mod system is in place to mitigate that kind of asshattery. Practically, though, Karma really doesn't serve a purpose at this place at all, except that when it gets high enough you have the option of turning off ads on the site without buying a subscription (as if you couldn't do the same thing with AdBlock Plus :P)
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
This post really needs a link to:
http://lwn.net/Articles/355149/
"Do you want to trust your data to a closed source file system implementation which you can't debug, can't improve and — most scarily — can't even fsck when it goes wrong, because you don't have direct access to the underlying medium?"
This is what you get with a flash drive at the moment unfortunately - a closed source filesystem that presents a single "file" as a block device over sata. And this firmware update is a filesystem driver change. Ouch.
This is slashdot, not "ubuntuforums.org". They actually reference the sort of stuff he alludes to in the FAQ, which you can click from this very page. That's why there is no place to complain to about getting bad Karma, and why I made the (probably bad) joke about directing complaints to /dev/null - see http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml Specifically -
If he can't do a simple task like read a FAQ or google random jargon, perhaps he should first contemplate why he is contributing posts to a site that bills itself as "news for nerds..."? Maybe he should consider reading http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html first (a great idea for any nerd in training), and perhaps participate in a more newb targeted web forum first?
And btw I do not have any issues with the OP, and as far as I know, I have not modded the OP's posts one way or another. I just saw the opportunity for the gag so I went for it. I'm fairly sure I have had people do the exact same targeted moderation towards myself as the OP, but they always lose interest if you don't acknowledge them. And who cares, really? A lot of people browse at -1, and will read your posts regardless.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
It's definitely funny now that I get the joke. I usually would have gone to Google, but I assumed /dev/null was just a Slashdot thing that I didn't know about. I've only recently started learning about Unix.
I'm not a hard-core nerd, but I have my areas.
That's "rite of passage".
So the first X-25M were blazing fast reads and pretty amazing at small file writes but somehow ground to a halt at 75 MB/s - about the speed
of a really good hard disk 3 years ago.
I hear the G2 drives can do 100 MB/s with a firmware update. Now, I know that you want to save the really fast writes for your SLC version
cause that much more moo-lay but c'mon - 100 MB/s for a $400 drive, that's artificially limited.
No thanks, until you let the drive perform to its proper capability ( i'm guessing 160 MB/s sequential writes) it's OCZ or Patriot for me ( I already own at least
one from each of them )
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Don't go all googly-eyed and install an update two minutes after it's released. Wait a few days until the idiots have tested it. ...but you knew that, right?
No sig today...
This is Slashdot. Most people here are a-holes, including you. We also have a nice collection of idiots, zealots, morons, and outcasts.
I take it that you mean that Slashdot newbs find you sexually desireable? That's not necessarily a good thing, regardless of your gender or sexual orientation...
let's see: You have a 10 channel device. You are probably using this device: http://www.numonyx.com/Documents/Datasheets/NAND64GW3D4A.pdf That lists typical program time for 2 pages at 800 uS. A page is 4KB. So the data rate per device should be: 1 write/800uS * 4KB/page * 2 pages/write ~= 9.77MB/s (2^20) We have 10 in parallel so that should give ~97.7MB/s. Seems to me they are pretty close to the limit. By the way that was typical writes since sometimes the controller tells you that the write didn't take correctly and you would have to redo possibly the whole bank.
I would think "allknowingfrog" would, you know, be all-knowing.
Or at least know how to Google.
Cool. I think many hard-core geeks have been told to RTFM at least once in their lives, maybe not in those exact words. I know I have (early college years, at least probably 2-3 times) and I think I'm better for it. I started realizing a lot of the issues that ESR describes in the article I linked to, especially as I realized that if I didn't start reading manuals I'd literally be taking up all the time of these people. For a lot of things, you just have to study the material, and you get more confident the more you learn on your own. As a bonus, I almost always get my questions answered any time I do ask them, because I have probably spent days at that point trying to nut something out and it will show in the question.
The barriers to DIY learning really have dropped since I was growing up - for a lot of domain specific knowledge you had to know what book to get, you had to know a good technical bookshop, and you had to have the cash to buy it. For kids this usually meant their dad had to be a geek. Now you can just google most of the time. You probably get free info that was as good as the average book you used to find in stock at the technical book store (no amazon to find the very best book by wading through reviews).
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Not so fast. SSDs don't write a page at a time but a BLOCK ( or several). Also, your calculations are for writing but you didn't factor in the erase time which is 3 times as long.
So, if your math is right, the max speed would be a lot lower - which is clearly wrong.
Also, you don't explain how the other controllers which have fewer channels can have such higher sequential write speeds.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
There are extremely few read-world apps that require sequential writes at speeds even reaching 80MB/s, much less 100MB/s. Sure, you can do it with a file copy, but how often does that come up as something you're waiting for? You certainly can't reach that speed with anything network-based. The fact that Intel optimized for smaller writes instead was absolutely the right thing. Sure, the Patriot or OCZ drives manage fast write speeds just as you describe. But they're mundane on random reads and writes, and on everything but the heaviest workloads Intel dominates. They made the right trade-offs here for most situations compared to the competition.
Tradeoff my ass. It's an artificial limitation.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I'd made a typo in the original post - it should have been WRITE speed not READ.
Anyway, if you still disagree with me, have a look at http://hothardware.com/Articles/Intel-34nm-X25M-Gen-2-SSD-Performance-Update/?page=1
Amazing what Intel managed with a firmware update - up to THIRTY PERCENT improvement in write speed.
I'm betting their design still has significant headroom left in the sequential writes department but , as I said before, they're protecting their premium SLC, the X-25E
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I took a look at the AnandTech link you posted and from the data shown, I wonder if you quite truly understand the meaning of "mundane".
Here's a definition from dictionary.com:
2. common; ordinary; banal; unimaginative.
The link
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667&p=6
shows that, for HDDs, the random write rate at 4kb is 0.8 MB/s ( Seagate Momentus 5400.6 ) and 1.5 MB/s ( Velociraptor 300 GB).
Now, since I use primarily a notebook, the Velociraptor is a non-starter.
I'm also excluding all the SLC drives as they are just too expensive right now for a given capacity.
The Intel MLC drives rate at 36-40 MB/s and the Indilinx-based are 13 MB/s - an impressive 3x advantage for Intel.
But, mundane? That would be an accurate description of the HDD performance where the much-vaunted Velociraptor is 3x SLOWER than the Samsung-based MLC and almost 9x slower than the Indilinx ones.
The picture for laptop users like myself is even worse ( or better depending on where you stand ).
The Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500GB can barely manage 1/5th the random write speed of the Summit and a mere 6% of any of the Indilinx drives.
Now, THAT is "mundane"
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Yes, I was replying to what you meant, not what you said. A week ago, I'd have been completely with you; the 80MB/s cap was obviously a locked speed rather than a design limitation, as pointed out back in April. I'm not so sure there's as much headroom in the current 100MB/s limit though. While we know that it's possible to hit closer to 160MB/s in raw speed here based on similar units, the approach Intel is using to deliver its higher random performance has to hurt sequential performance too; that's the trade-off I was alluding to, the things the design is good at has some amount of overhead. I can't seem to find it right now, but one of the reviews I was reading about the new firmware suggested that Intel admitted to product segmentation by artificial limits in the past, but that didn't think there was any significant throttling left to unlock here. It's quite possible they just can't go past 100MB/s while still keeping the rest of their design and its background operations going to spec.
Regardless, I still wouldn't by any other drive on the market but Intel's. For the kind of apps I run, sequential write performance is secondary to the random work that their drives excel at, and the increase from 80MB/s to 100MB/s means they're at least now competitive with decent regular hard drives.
I'm glad you're visiting dictionary.com to improve your reading comprehension. While you were occupied insulting me for no good reason, you seem to have missed that the discussion context here was comparing among the somewhat similar MLC drives on the market right now. The post I replied to might lead a reader to believe that the superior write speed of the OCZ and Patriot drives translated into them being better overall than Intel's design. I was pointing out that while they excelled at that category, no question about that, their performance in a broader context wasn't so exceptional. Their overall real-world performance is in fact quite ordinary compared to the other drives on the market. (And look at that, there's one of the words on the list!)
That wording might have been a bit generous, because as you point out Intel's drives have a 3X advantage in some benchmarks. I was giving the benefit of the doubt to my parent poster (something you could use some practice at). They certainly might prioritize one of the workloads where Intel's drives don't have a clear advantage, which certainly exist. I can't say they made the wrong decision for them, I was just pointing out that the logic used for that purchase might not extrapolate very well to others. It certainly doesn't apply to what I do, work which is heavy on random I/O, making the Intel drives the only reasonable product available in this segment--write capped or not.
And considered in the correct context here, it would be wrong to call the performance of the Velociraptor or Momentus drives mundane. Only achieving 6% of good performance isn't mundane at all. Those drives are downright terrible performers by the standards of the MLC SSDs we were comparing. (terrible: extremely bad, horrible)
I hope this clears up your vocabulary questions for today.
My reading comprehension is just fine but thank you all the same. And, if you thought I was being insulting, then you're easily offended.
But, since some clarification appears to be in order, I'll give it a shot.
You wrote: "they're mundane on random reads and writes" and linked to (http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667&p=6), which compared 2 of the better performing HDDs with a number of SSDs, as you well know. ,who has only ever used PCs with HDDs, try any of the SSDs on that list who be to change his or her entire concept of what using a computer is all about. Of course, the higher price and lower capacity would quickly dissuade the average user from purchasing one but to have them then go back to their everyday PC would quickly remind them just how "mundane" their daily experience truly is.
Since SSDs are still quite the expensive novelty, notwithstanding the growing popularity of netbooks, then the common i.e. "mundane" experience would be that of PCs with HDDs.
To have a user
I hope this has been sufficiently clear.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body