Marvell's 3rd Generation 88SS9187 SSD Controller
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 14, 2012 12:23 PM EST
Today Marvell is announcing its third generation SSD controller with the 88SS9187. Its predecessor, the 88SS9174 was used in many drives including Crucial's m4 and Intel's SSD 510. The 9187 appears to be mostly a feature update, adding support for the following:
- SATA 3.1
- On-chip RAID (allowing for failure of defective NAND block, plane, die or device)
- DDR3 memory interface (up to 1GB external DRAM supported)
- ~500MB/s sequential write speed
- 6Gbps SATA limited sequential read speed
- "best-in-class" random read/write speed
Details are scarce but it sounds like the 9187 is simply a higher performance (potentially lower power?) version of its predecessor. Marvell is expecting the 9187 to be used by manufacturers in Ultrabooks among other designs this year. Marvell's SSD controllers have always been priced competitively, but they've often required a lot of custom firmware work to get the best performance/compatibility/reliability out of them. I see no indication that Marvell's business model has changed, so you can expect to see the 9187 used similarly to its predecessor.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
24 Comments
View All Comments
codedivine - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
I wonder who comes up with these model numbers. Why couldn't they simply name it as Marvell Controller v3 or something?tilandal - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Since they are not selling to end users they don't care about having a memorable name. The number is probably generated based on a code that tells some specifics about the chip such as chip family, date of design, revision, process, voltage, package, etc. Its very useful when dealing with a large catalog of parts.130773 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
At least its easy to google :)Peanutsrevenge - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
<trollRant>People like this should be banned from Anandtech!
Infact, just take their internet away, they're just wasting precious bandwidth!
</trollRant>
Einy0 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Marvell makes so many products a name as simple as Marvell Controller v3 would be confusing. Marvell Controller v3 for what?... Ethernet?, SATA Host?, RAID ?, Insert_Device_Name?88 Seems to be their moniker for silicon devices. SS for storage then model number....
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
SS stands for SSD processor with SATA interface - Marvell also has a PCIe SSD processor 88NV9145 (I know I'm nitpicking ;-)).Oftentimes just the number part (i.e. 9187) is used, though (e.g. in a review).
blanarahul - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
Marvel also has another PCIe controller: 88"SS"9183 which is PCIe controller. Judging from the names of these controllers, I am willing to bet that Marvell's second PCIe controller i.e. 9183 was released before the 9187, which means that we should have been seeing these before 2013. But we are only seeing them now.The first Marvell PCIe Controller was: 88NV9145. But you already know that.
lyeoh - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
1) People who actually build the stuff.2) No. Because it's a model number not a product or marketing name. Product names are by those trying to sell the stuff.
The two different names are to satisfy different needs and requirements.
Perhaps you can complain to Apple about the S5L8945X?
Metaluna - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
This is the first time I've heard of a 3.1 revision to the SATA spec, so I Google'd it. It looks like the most interesting new feature is the addition of "TRIM queuing", which I gather allows the SSD to defer processing of the TRIM request to improve performance. Anyone know if this chip supports it?B3an - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
I hadn't heard of SATA 3.1 either until now.Do any motherboards support it? Can it be supported on 3.0 boards, even partially, with a BIOS/UEFI update?