The SSD Review The Worlds Dedicated SSD Education and Review Resource | 
Random write performance in an enterprise SSD is critical as workloads rely heavily on processing thousands of small, scattered, and simultaneous data requests per second. These are measured in IOPS. Unlike sequential workloads, random writes do not write data in a contiguous line, making them much harder for the SSD to handle. SQL, Oracle and virtual machine hosts constantly write small transactions. These transactions and other small files have a definite effect on performance in everyday workload, as well as housekeeping maintenance where write amplification takes place on the SSD.
If you might believe, our coverage of Memblaze SSDs reaches as far back as 2014. More recently, we have compiled and posted detailed reports on the Memblaze 1DWPD Pblaze7 7A40 at 7.68TB, and also the 3DWPD PBlaze 7946 at 6.4TB. The 7A40 and 7A46 that we are reporting on today have exactly the same components, yet differ in over-provisioning as one can see through differing capacities. Similarities between the 7946 and 7A46 lie in the YMTC NAND and the fact that these are both configured as 3 drive-write-per-day (3DWPD) SSDs. Can you identify the business applications specific to each? Leave a comment!
The Memblaze PBlaze7 7A46 is a PCIe 5.0 x4 15mm U2 NVMe SSD available in 3.2TB and 6.4TB capacities. Our sample 6.4TB drive speaks to 14.1GB/s sequential read and 11.2GB/s sequential write throughput with 3300K read IOPS and and unbelievable 1000K write IOPS. 1000K write IOPS are the beauty of this SSD.
Our Memblaze PBlaze7 7A46 enterprise SSD sample has a black anodized aluminum outer casing with a ribbed top for effective heat dissipation. Within the casing lies a two-sided PCB which contains the T-Head Zhenyue 510 (also known as TH7700) 16-channel Gen5 SSD controller. This is based on an 8-core 64-bit RISC-V architecture. There are also 8-pieces (4 on each side) of YMTC Xtacking 3.0 (X3-9070) 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory capable of running at up to 2400MT/s.
There are five 2GB SK Hynix DDR4 DRAM modules with ECC support within. Performance for the 7A46 (and 7A40) is variable with highs of 14.1GB/s read and 11.2GB/s write and up to 3.3 million IOPS with a maximum power rating of up to 25 watts. Variable speeds are elaborated here:
Let’s get to some performance results…