Apple's MacBook Pro with 128GB SSD: Performance and Battery Life Investigated
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 15, 2008 4:20 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
The Drive
The drive is a simple black box, since there are no mechanical parts of the disk that need to be isolated from the environment the drive’s electronics are contained entirely within the drive’s casing.
Six screws hold the drive together, removing them gives us access to the sole PCB that in this case is the drive itself.
On the drive we have a total of 16 Samsung SLC NAND Flash chips, each one 8GB in size.
The front of the PCB is home to half of the Flash, a 128Mb (16MB) Hynix 166MHz SDRAM chip, an ARM7 microcontroller and an Altera Cyclone II FPGA. There's also a single capacitor on board to keep the SDRAM device charged.
The Altera Cyclone II FPGA, it can do anything you program it to do
16MB of Hynix 166MHz SDRAM buffers transfers
ARM7 at your disposal, oh and a capacitor
The back of the PCB holds the rest of the Flash and a Marvell PATA to SATA bridge.
Lost in translation, this chip converts the drive's internal PATA interface to an external SATA interface so we can use nifty cables
Judging by the chips on the PCB we can already see two areas of inefficiency: the drive isn't a native SATA device and it uses a FPGA instead of a custom IC for some functions. Lately Intel has been talking about its upcoming SSDs and how their controllers will give them the performance edge, these are both examples of places where Intel could innovate.
Despite a vastly different interior, the Memoright SSD appears just as any other hard drive to your computer - the MacBook Pro is no different.
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Timothy123 - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
The Honda Civic actually gets a 5 star depreciation rating.http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/alg/index.html#seda...">http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/alg/index.html#seda...
It being one of the cars that depreciates the least.
Look at the list, you will only find TWO American cars on it, a Viper, which is really an odd inclusion, and a Jeep Wrangler.
Really really really bad example in using the Honda Civic.
Really really bad to be honest with you. This lack of judgment and knowledge makes me question the entire worth of the article.
Really really bad.
hansmuff - Monday, April 21, 2008 - link
OMFG Hondagate!You're correct about the depreciation, but the JUST LEAVE HONDA ALONE response is quite silly.
niva - Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - link
A Honda owner scorned is apparently worse than a Mac Fanboy being told he owns an overpriced pos. GG!Duwelon - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
o rly?DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
We really really don't care. Really really not.whatthehey - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
Dear Timothy123,We at Honda Civic Owners Anonymous are here to help you. We know the pain you feel at having purchased and tricked out a piece of shit $15,000 car so that you can play gangsta pimp around the neighborhood, only to realize that what you now own is a $40,000 piece of crap that sane people laugh at. We can help you with your problems! Please call us:
1-800-CVCSHIT
Denithor - Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - link
That really is the funniest thing I've read all day.WTG!
Frumious1 - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
I also wanted to lend my support for your insightful comments Tim. There's nothing I appreciate more than someone that jumps to the conclusion, takes one sentence, and then posts a bitchfest in the comments. But then what should we expect from a Honda owner? "Anand made fun of my car. Waaaaaah! Moooooom!"Avalon - Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - link
That was really really really the silliest thing I've read all day. LOL.