A methodology for extracting performance parameters in solid state disks (SSDs)

TLDR

Solid‑state drives (SSDs) are increasingly used in laptops, desktops, and enterprise servers, offering superior reliability, performance, durability, and power efficiency compared to hard disk drives, yet their internal hardware and software organization varies widely, causing performance differences. This paper proposes a methodology to extract key performance‑influencing parameters of SSDs. The method targets five parameters: read/write unit size, erase unit size, NAND flash type, read buffer size, and write buffer size. By obtaining these parameters, users can better understand SSD architecture and apply SSD‑specific optimizations to maximize performance.

Abstract

Solid state disks (SSDs) consisting of NAND flash memory are being widely used in laptops, desktops, and even enterprise servers. SSDs have many advantages over hard disk drives (HDDs) in terms of reliability, performance, durability, and power efficiency. Typically, the internal hardware and software organization varies significantly from SSD to SSD and thus each SSD exhibits different parameters which influence the overall performance. In this paper, we propose a methodology which can extract several essential parameters affecting the performance of SSDs. The target parameters of SSDs considered in this paper are (1) the size of read/write unit, (2) the size of erase unit, (3) the type of NAND flash memory used, (4) the size of read buffer, and (5) the size of write buffer. Obtaining these parameters will allow us to understand the internal architecture of the target SSD better and to get the most performance out of SSD by performing SSD-specific optimizations.