Thumb Drive Meets Massive Capacity

Silicon Energy’s flash storage product line caters extensively to the entry-level market. In October 2023, the corporate launched two new moveable SSDs in a thumb drive form-factor. The MS70, with a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-A interface, is now accessible in capacities starting from 250GB to 2TB. The DS72 (additionally accessible in the identical capacities) has a dual-interface design with each Sort-C and Sort-A interfaces. Efficiency claims of 1050 MBps reads and 850 MBps writes land the MS70 and DS72 within the high-capacity high-performance UFD section.

The corporate has historically relied on introducing merchandise into well-established market segments, with specs that don’t sometimes make them stand out. Nevertheless, the 2 new merchandise caught our consideration, as they occur to be one of many first cheap 2TB thumb drives within the retail market.

The high-performance USB flash drive (UFD / thumb drive) section has been steadily gaining extra entrants for the reason that introduction of Kingston’s DataTraveler Max in late 2021. Transcend’s ESD300 and ESD310, together with Silicon Energy’s MS70 and DS72 are attempting to differential themselves from the remainder of the pack by providing 2TB SKUs. This evaluate takes an in depth have a look at the efficiency and worth proposition of the 2TB model of the Silicon Energy MS70.

Introduction and Product Impressions

USB flash drives have grown each in storage capability and speeds over the previous few years. Due to the appearance of 3D NAND and fast iterations with efficiency enhancements within the USB specs, we at the moment are seeing SSD-in-a-stick merchandise able to delivering 1GBps+ speeds.

The thumb drive type issue is engaging for a number of causes – there isn’t any separate cable to hold round, and the items are often mild and compact. Excessive-performance thumb drives based mostly on SSD platforms have been launched within the mid-2010s, however the thermal answer and dimension made them unwieldy. The class was made viable solely after the introduction of high-performance native UFD controllers from Phison and Silicon Movement. We’ve got already reviewed a number of PSSDs based mostly on these two controllers, together with the Transcend ESD310C and the OWC Envoy Professional Mini within the thumb drive class.

The brand new Silicon Energy MS70 goals to distinguish itself from different high-performance thumb drives based mostly on two elements – accessible capability factors, and compact case design. Regardless of its thumb drive form-factor, the MS70 takes full benefit of its USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-A connector by promising speeds of as much as 1050 MBps. The corporate sampled us the 2TB model to place via our direct-attached storage take a look at suite.

The thumb drive is the one element within the bundle, and all the utilization and guarantee info is printed on the again. Our pattern got here from an early batch, as the identical SKU at present being offered additionally features a Sort-A to Sort-C adapter.

There are not any value-additions like lanyards or bundled software program, however that’s mirrored within the aggressive pricing technique adopted by Silicon Energy – round 5¢ per GB for the best capability SKU. In any case, the goal marketplace for these thumb drives is unlikely to be enticed by backup software program or {hardware} encryption-supporting password functions.

The casing is fabricated from rubber and aluminum, with the previous in place across the edges and the connector’s protecting cap. The product has a sturdy really feel to it, not like the comparatively flimsy building of the Transcend ESD310C. The MS70 is barely bigger, however the dimensions are nonetheless sufficiently small to keep away from issues with port blocking.

There was no apparent option to tear down the pattern for the aim of figuring out the controller and the flash getting used. Nevertheless, CrystalDiskInfo offers a fast overview of the capabilities of the storage machine. A have a look at the firmware model (UHFM00.6) and a cursory on-line search revealed that the Silicon Energy MS70 is powered by the Phison U17 controller. Silicon Energy confirmed using SK hynix 3D TLC NAND in our pattern, however did point out that they reserved the suitable to make use of any NAND with comparable efficiency in future manufacturing runs.

S.M.A.R.T Passthrough – CrystalDiskInfo
Silicon Energy MS70 2TBOWC Envoy Professional Mini 1TBTranscend ESD310C 1TBKingston DT Max 1TBKingston DTMAXA/1TB	OWC Envoy Professional Mini 1TBTranscend ESD310C 1TBKingston DT Max 1TBKingston DTMAXA/1TBSilicon Energy MS70 2TB

The desk beneath presents a comparative view of the specs of the completely different thumb drives offered on this evaluate.

Previous to wanting on the benchmark numbers, energy consumption, and thermal answer effectiveness, an outline of the testbed setup and analysis methodology is supplied.

Testbed Setup and Analysis Methodology

Direct-attached storage gadgets (together with thumb drives) are evaluated utilizing the Quartz Canyon NUC (primarily, the Xeon / ECC model of the Ghost Canyon NUC) configured with 2x 16GB DDR4-2667 ECC SODIMMs and a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD – the IM2P33E8 1TB from ADATA.

Essentially the most engaging facet of the Quartz Canyon NUC is the presence of two PCIe slots (electrically, x16 and x4) for add-in playing cards. Within the absence of a discrete GPU – for which there isn’t any want in a DAS testbed – each slots can be found. In reality, we additionally added a spare SanDisk Excessive PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the CPU direct-attached M.2 22110 slot within the baseboard in an effort to keep away from DMI bottlenecks when evaluating Thunderbolt 3 gadgets. This nonetheless permits for 2 add-in playing cards working at x8 (x16 electrical) and x4 (x4 electrical). For the reason that Quartz Canyon NUC would not have a local USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port, Silverstone’s SST-ECU06 add-in card was put in within the x4 slot. All non-Thunderbolt gadgets are examined utilizing the Sort-C port enabled by the SST-ECU06.

The specs of the testbed are summarized within the desk beneath:

The testbed {hardware} is just one section of the analysis. Over the previous few years, the standard direct-attached storage workloads for reminiscence playing cards have additionally developed. Excessive bit-rate 4K movies at 60fps have develop into fairly widespread, and 8K movies are beginning to make an look. Recreation set up sizes have additionally grown steadily even in moveable sport consoles, due to excessive decision textures and paintings. Conserving these in thoughts, our analysis scheme for moveable SSDs and UFDs entails a number of workloads that are described intimately within the corresponding sections.

• Artificial workloads utilizing CrystalDiskMark and ATTO
• Actual-world entry traces utilizing PCMark 10’s storage benchmark
• Customized robocopy workloads reflective of typical DAS utilization
• Sequential write stress take a look at

Within the subsequent part, we have now an summary of the efficiency of the Silicon Energy MS70 in these benchmarks. Previous to offering concluding remarks, we have now some observations on the UFD’s energy consumption numbers and thermal answer additionally.