The diversity of players in today's SSD market is astonishing. It seems that the SSD today does not offer only the lazy, and this is not far from the truth. It is enough to visit some large computer store or, for example, the Aliexpress site, and you can see for yourself that among the brands under which SSDs are offered, there are both names of companies that have not previously been seen in the manufacture of storage devices, and in general completely unknown names. Moreover, the rapid development of the industry and the rapidly growing demand have led to the emergence of a large cohort of "virtual manufacturers" who do not actually make SSDs, but sell under their own names drives manufactured by large ODM manufacturers. You don't need to go far for examples: this class includes a lot of drive models based on controllers from Taiwanese developers Phison and Silicon Motion - they are mass-produced at the facilities of contractors in Southeast Asia, and then various companies resell them under their own brands.
Russian firms also use this scheme. The most famous example is Smartbuy drives, which are distributed by Top Media trading company. Some federal retailers do not disdain a similar business model, in the assortment of which you can see SSDs under their own brands.
All this means that the diversity of the solid-state drive market is largely exaggerated, and in reality there are not so many manufacturers who have real factory facilities and produce their products on their own. And in this regard, we are especially pleased to tell you that among such real SSD manufacturers there is a completely domestic company - GS Nanotech.
Her name is already : we try to write about its successes, because a really working production of PC components in our country is a rarity. Today we decided to dwell on its activities in a little more detail and talk about how and for whom Russian SSDs are created and how GS Nanotech can surpass the traditional whales of the solid state drive market.
Russian SSDs? True, right?
It is worth starting right away with the fact that GS Nanotech does not yet seek to enter the wide market. She is content with working in the B2B segment, and the geography of her presence is limited to the territory of the Russian Federation. But if you look at how this company works from a technological point of view, then it is quite possible to put it on a par with eminent second-tier manufacturers of the same ADATA or Kingston.
Naturally, flash memory GS Nanotech buys on the side. There are only six NAND manufacturers in the world, and it is not possible to create such high-tech semiconductor enterprises in our country for a number of reasons. But even at this level, GS Nanotech tries to localize its production as much as possible. Flash memory suppliers for Russian SSDs are Micron, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) or SK Hynix, but it is purchased in the form of semi-finished products - silicon wafers. GS Nanotech performs part of the processes, including wafer cutting, testing and packaging of flash memory chips, at its own facilities. On the one hand, this allows you to reduce the cost of production, and on the other hand, it makes it possible to have full control over the quality of manufactured products.
The second basic component of solid state drives are controllers, and GS Nanotech also orders them from external suppliers. Among the main partners, the company names the well-known Taiwanese trinity Silicon Motion, Phison and ASolid. However, even at this stage, the engineering department of GS Nanotech makes its contribution: the company does not just use ready-made reference designs offered by controller developers, but does its own design work. Changes can be made at the level of both circuit solutions and microprograms. In other words, thanks to a full-fledged R&D department, the SSDs that GS Nanotech makes based on publicly available controllers are not just another clone of the reference SSDs that are flooding the market. These are quite deeply customized products, which, among other things, can be adapted in a special way to the needs of the local market or to specific customers.
Speaking about the SSD platforms used, it is impossible not to mention that GS Nanotech's immediate plans include the release of completely unique drives based on domestically developed controllers. As the representatives of the company told us, such projects do exist in Russia. One of them is just approaching the final stage, and GS Nanotech is expected to implement it at home.
All development, production and assembly of GS Nanotech solid-state drives takes place at the company's own enterprise located in the city of Gusev, Kaliningrad Region, on the territory of the Technopolis GS innovation cluster, owned by the GS Group holding. This production site may already be familiar to Russian consumers from General Satellite digital set-top boxes, which are produced (like SSDs, from chips to packaging) on ββneighboring lines.
All this means that in the field of SSD, GS Nanotech can provide what is now called the fashionable term "import substitution", that is, the maximum possible localization of production at this stage and the use of domestic components in products. Moreover, the entire project for the production of Russian SSDs is a completely private business that is successfully developing without any financial support from the state.
Features of GS Nanotech drives: this is not consumer goods for you
GS Nanotech assembled the first mass-produced solid-state drive in 2017, and mass production of SSDs has been launched since early 2018. Currently, the company's lineup includes several options for SATA drives in 2,5-inch and M.2 form factors, as well as a modification with a PCI Express 3.0 x4 interface with a capacity of up to 2 TB. However, despite the rather noticeable production volumes, GS Nanotech drives are not found either in Russian computer stores, let alone in any foreign markets. And this is a completely conscious choice of a manufacturer who decided to primarily focus on project orders and deliveries of its products to system integrators, assemblers of computers and other microelectronic devices for the banking, industrial or corporate sector.
Entering the highly competitive mainstream market would require drastic pricing maneuvers from any SSD vendor. And GS Nanotech at the moment cannot, and does not want to dump and try to attract the attention of the mass consumer with low prices. This niche is confidently held by foreign manufacturers of the second and third echelon, and GS Nanotech does not yet have the necessary resources to fight them. Therefore, the company has chosen a different strategy for itself and attracts customers with high reliability of products and wide possibilities for the production of special small-scale modifications of SSDs that meet some special requirements.
In particular, drives based on MLC 3D NAND chips occupy a significant place in the current assortment of GS Nanotech. But even if we are talking about memory with a TLC or QLC organization, the manufacturer is able to guarantee the reliability of products at a much higher level than is offered in mass consumer SSDs.
The bottom line is that the Russian manufacturer purposefully purchases flash memory of the best "grades", focused on long-term operation at high loads, and applies additional testing methods at the stage of cutting and packaging microcircuits. Memory of higher quality gradations is more expensive, while many manufacturers of mass SSDs, for reasons of economy, on the contrary, are increasingly installing second-rate and third-rate chips in their products, originally intended for flash drives and memory cards and not designed for any high loads. As a result, the cost of GS Nanotech drives is higher than the market average, but they are well suited for use where the safety of information and uninterrupted operation is of particular importance.
A separate category of GS Nanotech products is highly specialized solutions designed to meet the specific requirements of customers. By controlling the entire manufacturing process, from slicing wafers to final assembly of SSDs, the company is able to produce very specific products. For example, drives designed to work in an extended temperature range (they use special materials with a low coefficient of thermal expansion), or drives of non-standard form factors.
Although GS Nanotech, as a manufacturer of solid-state drives, has already managed to find its niche and its products are quite in demand on the Russian market, the company still has plans to enter the mass market. There is no doubt that SSDs will continue to become cheaper in the long run, the amount of data processed will increase, and the adoption of SSDs will only grow over time. Therefore, GS Nanotech plans to increase production volumes and expand the range of solutions offered. We can expect both the appearance of consumer models and the launch of new types of products - for example, memory cards. The GS Group holding, within which GS Nanotech operates, is ready to invest both in this and in the launch of additional production lines.
But this is all a matter of the future, but for now on The manufacturer provides information about three models with a SATA interface (both in 2,5-inch and M.2 versions) and one model in the M.2 form factor with support for the PCI Express interface. Most of these products, on the one hand, claim to be able to use both TLC- and MLC-memory, but, on the other hand, their speed performance does not look very impressive by today's standards. Moreover, the manufacturer avoids direct indication of the used controllers and flash memory types, speaking in the specifications only about some general things. Nevertheless, for each modification, a resource is mandatory, and in all cases it is noticeably higher than that of the average consumer SSD available on store shelves.
Apparently, the issue of data storage reliability really worries GS Nanotech engineers a little more than speed. And there is a certain logic in this. Offering solutions of this kind, the company moves away from direct competition with the generally recognized leaders of the global market, focusing instead on options that are different in terms of combination of properties. And since GS Nanotech sees its main customers, at least for the time being, not retail buyers, but manufacturers of various equipment, including information, communication and industrial equipment, or even government organizations, this approach has the right to life.
Its success is easy to see if you look at the list of GS Nanotech partners who actively use Russian-made SSDs. Here are some of them: Norsi-Trans, a manufacturer of SORM systems; MCST is a developer of domestic Elbrus processors and computer systems based on them; and, for example, NexTouch is a manufacturer of interactive touch panels and information kiosks.
In the process of getting to know what the GS Nanotech company lives for, we managed to study a couple of drives of its authorship a little closer. Namely, we got two mass-produced SSDs at our disposal: the base 2,5-inch SATA model GSTOR512R16STF and the SATA drive in the M.2 form factor GSSMD256M16STF.
GS Nanotech GS SSD 512-16 (GSTOR512R16STF)
At first glance, the GS Nanotech GSTOR512R16STF seems to be a typical SATA SSD in a 2,5-inch form factor, but a trained eye still clings to some characteristic details. So, the drive immediately stands out with a very rigid aluminum case, assembled on screws from two parts. Today it is almost impossible to meet such a well-built SSD among the products of manufacturers of the second or third tier: now preference is given to plastic and snap fasteners.
The case not only stands out for its quality of workmanship, but also bears corporate branding: the manufacturer's logo is placed on its front surface. At the same time, for more detailed information about the model, you can refer to the sticker on the reverse side: it contains the name, article number, some characteristics and technical information.
Looking at the label, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the SSD in Russian realities is called a solid-state non-volatile data storage device - TEUHD, but we will allow ourselves not to use this funny abbreviation in the future.
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The model name "GS SSD 512-16" encodes some additional information about the product in question. Two numbers - 512 and 16 - describe the amount of the full set of flash memory installed inside the SSD, and the redundancy ratio - the approximate share of memory allocated for service needs, including for replacement cells. Thus, in the GSTOR512R16STF model, about 480 GB will be available to the user after formatting. And here we are talking about βbinaryβ gigabytes, that is, in the operating system this volume is displayed as 471 GB.
The speed specifications of the model look like this:
- maximum sequential read speed - 530 MB / s;
- maximum sequential write speed - 400 MB / s;
- maximum random read speed - 72 IOPS;
- the maximum random write speed is 65 IOPS.
But the most interesting thing is the warranty conditions and endurance indicators. While the warranty period is typical for the consumer market of three years, the manufacturer allows 800 TB of data to be written to the drive during this period. By the standards of mass drives, this is a very solid mileage, because it turns out that the user can completely overwrite the contents of the drive one and a half times a day. There are very few consumer SSDs that are similar in endurance, for example, a smaller resource is claimed even for the Samsung 860 PRO, which is the unspoken default choice when it comes to reliability. As a result, only some specialized models for highly loaded environments can boast of endurance comparable to the GSTOR512R16STF.
It is worth adding to this that the GS Nanotech drive has a special subspecies of ETR, which, in addition, is able to operate in an extended temperature range - from -40 to +85 degrees.
High resource indicators of GSTOR512R16STF are provided with its hardware design. As you might have guessed, it is based on MLC NAND - memory with two-bit cells. Again, there are very few models based on MLC NAND among the consumer-class drives available on the market. And the GS Nanotech offer is also distinguished by the fact that it uses the good old planar MLC NAND manufactured by Micron, made according to the 16 nm process technology. Such memory disappeared from the mass market a few years ago, but this does not mean that it is obsolete - for certain purposes it is even better suited than newer varieties of NAND. And by the way, the official website of GS Nanotech even talks about 20nm MLC memory. Thus, the GSTOR512R16STF drive that got into our laboratory is, in some way, an updated version of the original product.
The fact that the GSTOR512R16STF uses far from the most modern type of flash memory cannot be considered its drawback. The reliability of planar flash memory with two-bit cells is really high, and its speed performance is quite sufficient to match the capabilities of the SATA interface. There is only one problem here: modern SSD controllers cannot offer support for such flash memory. As a result, the manufacturer had to use a rather old basic controller in the GSTOR512R16STF hardware platform - Silicon Motion SM2246EN, which was introduced, scary to think, in 2013.
And it is precisely for this reason that we should not expect any breakthroughs from the point of view of performance from this drive: since then, controller developers have gone far ahead, and besides, seven years ago, Silicon Motion was not yet able to design such efficient controllers as it currently offers. time.
Therefore, the GSTOR512R16STF is in some ways like a guest from the past. Once upon a time, such drives were indeed widespread, but over time they ceased to be produced. As a typical example of an SSD based on the SM2246EN with planar MLC memory, we can recall the Mushkin Reactor, which disappeared from the public sale about four years ago.
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"Old school" emanates from the insides of the GSTOR512R16STF drive. It uses a full-sized printed circuit board, completely packed with chips on both sides. But on the other hand, it is immediately clear that the design of this board was carried out by GS Nanotech engineers, who made a significant contribution to the development, and did not just reproduce the reference design according to Silicon Motion patterns.
16 of the 19 chips that make up the GSTOR512R16STF hardware are flash memory. Inside each such microcircuit there are two 128-gigabit MLC NAND crystals, produced according to the 16-nm process technology by Micron. At the same time, the microcircuits themselves are made by GS Nanotech at their own enterprise. Recall that the company buys flash memory in the form of semiconductor wafers and independently cuts them into crystals, tests and packs them into microcircuits. That is why we see the GS Nanotech logo on the chips, and not Micron.
Thus, in total, the flash memory array of the drive in question is formed from 32 devices that are connected to the SM2246EN controller via four channels. The DRAM buffer used to store a copy of the address translation table helps the controller to work with flash memory. It is implemented by two DDR3-1600 chips with a capacity of 512 GB each, released by Samsung.
Despite the fact that the GSTOR512R16STF is a drive with a high resource, its hardware does not have an electrical βinsuranceβ for the power circuit (Power lost protection). Obviously, this SSD cannot guarantee the safety of data during power outages, and in this it is fundamentally different from server models. However, in this case, the manufacturer did not set himself the goal of making a completely βindestructibleβ drive.
From an SSD on a rather old quad-channel controller, which is the GSTOR512R16STF, it is difficult to expect high performance. And these suspicions are confirmed in benchmarks. For example, here is what CrystalDiskMark results look like:
At the same time, one cannot fail to note the rather high performance in linear operations - reading and writing. It helps a lot here that the drive is based on real high-quality MLC memory, which is not only reliable, but also obviously faster than the usual TLC 3D NAND. In fact, the relative weakness of GSTOR512R16STF appears only in small-block operations. With such a load, some Samsung 860 PRO, also built on two-bit memory, is able to offer one and a half to two times higher speed.
The random read and write speeds of the GSTOR512R16STF do not look too impressive even if we compare it with the flagship TLC drives. But, unlike SSDs based on TLC 3D NAND, the GS Nanotech solution does not have any accelerated write technologies in the form of SLC caching. It can provide a consistently high write speed throughout its entire volume, regardless of the size of files and directories that operations are performed on.
Performance drops during long continuous write operations of the GSTOR512R16STF are not inherent, and this is another important advantage of this model.
Thus, although the GSTOR512R16STF is somewhat peculiar and even archaic in its design, it has clear trump cards that can distinguish it from the bulk of the SATA SSDs on the market. Thanks to the use of MLC-memory, it is in demand where increased endurance and the ability to write large amounts of data at once and at high speed are required from the drive. Moreover, there is no doubt that such a combination of qualities could even make a quite successful retail product out of GSTOR512R16STF.
GS Nanotech GS SSD 256-16 (GSSMD256M16STF)
The GS Nanotech M.2 drive we got is from the newer GS SSD-3 family, which not only features a more modern and compact form factor, but also stands out for its use of XNUMXD rather than planar flash.
However, in appearance, this SSD is similar to a lot of other similar products, and only stickers add individuality to its exterior. There is not much useful information on them, but the words about βsolid-state non-volatile storage deviceβ, of course, are present. As the place of production is indicated - Russia, Gusev.
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In this case, there is no information about the speed characteristics on the label, but it is easy to find them on the manufacturer's website. For the GSSMD256M16STF model, the following are promised:
- maximum sequential read speed - 560 MB / s;
- the maximum sequential write speed is 480 MB / s.
How this SSD performs in arbitrary operations with 4 KB blocks, the manufacturer does not disclose, but based on the indicated linear speeds, the M.2 drive promises to be faster than the GSTOR512R16STF, which we talked about above.
Model number GS SSD 256-16 stands for the same as in the previous case: the capacity of the flash memory array is 256 GB, while about 1/16 of it is reserved for service purposes. Thus, the owner of the GSSMD256M16STF gets at his disposal 236 "honest" gigabytes - this is how much space on the drive after formatting the operating system will show.
The main trump card of the SATA model GSTOR512R16STF was also inherited in the GSSMD256M16STF - the endurance of this SSD is such that it can also be overwritten one and a half times a day. With a three-year warranty period, this means that a quarter-terabyte model can take on 400 TB of data over its entire life cycle. This is quite an impressive volume for a 256-gigabyte drive. And here again, it must be emphasized that consumer SSDs with such endurance are very rare in the mass market, and what GS Nanotech offers is more like a solution for data centers. True, there is again no data protection in case of power failures in this drive, therefore, in the end, the GSSMD256M16STF should rather be considered as a highly reliable general-purpose model.
It is easy to guess that in this case the developers of GS Nanotech decided to rely on memory with two-bit cells, but, unlike the 2,5-inch counterpart, the GSSMD256M16STF uses more modern hardware stuffing. This is directly indicated by the Silicon Motion SM2258H controller, peeking out from under one of the stickers. Varieties of this controller can still be found in many popular models of mass SSDs, for example, in or BX500.
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However, unlike what is now sold in stores, the Russian SSD in question uses memory with two-bit cells, and more specifically Micron's MLC 3D NAND. It seems that the hardware combination of Silicon Motion controllers and Micron flash memory appealed to the developers of GS Nanotech, but at the same time they invariably resort to choosing not the most modern memory for this combination, which belongs to past generations.
In particular, the 3D Micron 256D NAND in the GSSMD16M32STF belongs to the very first generation, meaning it has a 2016-layer design. Such memory appeared on the market in 2258. But it's not its age that's terrible, but the fact that it's far from the best choice in terms of performance: all drives based on it that passed through our laboratory received rather modest ratings. True, in the case of the GS Nanotech product, the fact that the memory here works in high-speed MLC mode can play a positive role, while most mass drives with the SMXNUMX controller were and are equipped with TLC memory.
The usable capacity of the memory chips in the GS Nanotech drive is 256 Gb, and this allows you to assemble a 256 GB SSD based on eight NAND devices. They are located in the GSSMD256M16STF on two sides of the M.2 board in four chips, each of which contains two semiconductor crystals inside. As in the case of the 2,5-inch drive, flash memory chips on the GSSMD256M16STF are marked by GS Nanotech itself, and this again serves as a reminder that the Russian manufacturer cuts semiconductor wafers, sorts and packs chips locally, at its own facilities in the city of Gusev.
The SM2258H controller controls the thus formed flash memory array in four-channel mode. Each controller channel has two 256-gigabit MLC 3D NAND devices. In addition, to buffer small-block operations and speed up work with the address translation table, the controller uses an additional 512 MB DDR3-1600 SDRAM buffer.
In the end, from a hardware point of view, the GSSMD256M16STF turned out to be very similar to the consumer model. , and therefore it is natural that the performance of the GS Nanotech M.2 drive is approximately at the same level, which is relatively good by modern standards and taking into account the dominance of bufferless SATA SSDs.
For example, CrystalDiskMark rates the GSSMD256M16STF as follows.
If we take into account the fact that we are talking about a 240 GB drive, the results look quite acceptable. Sequential read and write speeds approach the throughput of SATA interface, and in terms of performance of small-block operations, the GS Nanotech drive is closer to the level of budget solutions, despite the fact that it is based on MLC 3D NAND.
However, there is nothing surprising in this: Micron's first-generation 32-layer three-dimensional memory does not shine with performance, even if it operates in two-bit mode. But the GSSMD256M16STF even uses SLC caching technology for MLC memory: the drive controller first writes all data to memory in the fastest single-bit mode, and switching cells to MLC mode with simultaneous compaction of previously stored information occurs in the background, at moments of SSD idle .
The size of the SLC cache in the GSSMD256M16STF is determined dynamically based on the amount of unused space in the flash array. Ideally, this means that at high speed, this SSD can write an amount of data that takes up to half of the free space on the drive. Then, if write operations are performed continuously, the speed drops noticeably, as the drive controller is faced with the need to service the main workflow along the way with re-storing previously written data in MLC mode.
How it looks in practice is clearly seen when the entire storage capacity is consistently and continuously filled. The first half of the SSD is recorded at a good speed, then the linear recording performance decreases several times, to a level of about 80 MB / s.
However, in real life, it is almost impossible to encounter such a βslowβ recording mode. The only thing to keep in mind is that the GSSMD256M16STF is not well suited for intensive workloads, despite the use of MLC 3D NAND in it. For such scenarios, it is better to take another GS Nanotech drive - the 2,5-inch "base" GSTOR512R16STF, in which no such algorithms are used.
Ultimately, the reviewed M.2 drive GSSMD256M16STF can be described as a completely normal general-purpose SSD, without discounting its Russian origin. It has its own specifics associated with the use of not the most successful MLC 3D NAND, but this SSD boasts unprecedented endurance and a clear superiority over numerous bufferless SATA models.
Conclusion
The fact that Russia has its own production of solid-state drives, you could learn from the news earlier: information about GS Nanotech products periodically seeps into the computer press. However, at what high level this production is organized, it causes both surprise and pride. The fact is that GS Nanotech can be put on the same level with second-tier manufacturers, whose names are well-known to everyone: with the same ADATA, Kingston or Transcend. The scale of the business, of course, is still incomparable, but the main thing is that GS Nanotech can do almost everything that large and world-famous manufacturers of solid state drives do.
In the city of Gusev, Kaliningrad region, they not only and not so much engage in simple βscrewdriverβ assembly of solid-state drives, but also design their own SSD designs, as well as independently test and package flash memory. And this is a significant set of technological stages, which allows us to speak of GS Nanotech drives as a truly Russian product. Moreover, in the future, the company plans to even start using domestically developed controllers, which will make its drives even more localized.
However, even those products that the Russian manufacturer can currently offer, even if they are based on publicly available Silicon Motion controllers and Micron flash memory, cannot be called regular clones repeating reference designs. They are made according to original designs, and therefore have unique properties. In particular, in its drives GS Nanotech prefers to rely on MLC-memory, which global manufacturers of mass SSDs are gradually moving away from, and due to this, it achieves a significant superiority of its own proposals in terms of resource characteristics.
Unfortunately, GS Nanotech products are currently not available on the open market. The company focuses on corporate customers and primarily adapts the SSD to their needs. However, we have no doubt that if (when?) she wants to offer her products to the mass user, her SSDs will be not only in demand, but also popular. And the point here is not the patriotism of Russian buyers, but the fact that GS Nanotech has both the desire and the ability to produce products that differ from the products of major competitors and meet some specific needs of local consumers.
Source: 3dnews.ru