Performance

At the heart of the X210 is a high performance controller and SanDisk’s own 19nm All Bit Line (ABL) architecture. All Bit Line architecture offers twice the parallelism of conventional Half Bit Line (HBL) architectures; increasing both performance and endurance.

The drive also supports a unique feature to improve random write performance and ensure a very positive user experience. Modern operating systems mostly access the storage device using small access blocks, with the majority being 4KB access blocks. The small logical access blocks conflict with the physical block structure (>1MB) for the newer generation flash memory technology. To bridge this difference, the X210 employs three storage layers:

• Volatile cache – DDR DRAM cache
• nCache™ – A non-volatile flash write cache
• Mass storage – MLC NAND flash

The nCache is used to accumulate small writes (called segments) at high speed and then flushes and consolidates them to larger MLC sections of the NAND flash memory array.

Power Management

The X210 employs DEVSLP SATA low power mode, which further reduces the device’s power consumption in the IDLE state. This is important as extending the time between battery charges has become critical in mobile devices. DEVSLP enables the device, and optionally the host, to completely shut off their SATA PHY, resulting in much lower power consumption compared to Slumber SATA lower power mode.