[Brian]

We have posted a review of LSI's second generation PCIe application accelerator, the Nytro WarpDrive.

LSI Nytro WarpDrive WLP4-200 Enterprise PCIe Review

[Computurd]

Do you test with 100% fill on the SSD?

[Kevin OBrien]

Our enterprise tests utilize the full LBA space on each offering unless noted. At times we might only work with a smaller segment, but for these reviews that is generally for add-on sections.

[Computurd]

By utilizing the full LBA space, are you indicating that there is a file (or just data of some sort) written to the full LBA range? Or is the test just ran against the full LBA range while it is empty?
Basically the gist of the question is whether there is a 100% fill level of the device (with data of some sort) when tested for the evaluation?

[Kevin OBrien]

We interact with devices directly, outside of a file system and more importantly uncached by system resources. So in a sense you could say we are operating with am empty disk after the stage of secure erase that is slowly being filled until data is overwritten during the random access of each test. We have found this method to give the most consistent results when available, although certain tests do require an alternative solution. For example that method doesn't turn out well when testing SMB/CIFS object shares.

[Computurd]

Thanks for the detailed response. The level of granularity that you provide is excellent, and the idea of operating outside of file systems and their caching is a good way to eliminate possible performance variances. I enjoy your articles and the preconditioning graphs illustrate very well that you do a great job of getting the drives into steady state