Apalis T30 SATA speed

Technical Support
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1

What is real SATA speed (read or write) on the Apalis T30 module?

I run a test on our custom carrier board using SSD hard drive:

$ hdparm -t /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing buffered disk reads:  115 MB in 3.00 seconds = 39251 kB/s

But on PC with ICH10 chip it will give much more with the same disk:

$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 514 MB in  3.00 seconds = 171.23 MB/sec

At the moment I am unable to test the speed on Ixora board (I do not have mSATA disk nor do I have an adapter).

Does this ~40MB/s is upper limit or there might be a problem with electronic design on our carrier board?

2

Also there is this on Apalis:

$ hdparm -i /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
hdparm: ioctl 0x304 failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

 Model=TS128GSSD630I                           , FwRev=20130502, SerialNo=20131106B08323016232
 Config={ Fixed }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=576, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=(0) unknown, BuffSize=32767kB, MaxMultSect=1, MultSect=?1?
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=250069680
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 
 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: Unspecified:  ATA/ATAPI-4 ATA/ATAPI-5 ATA/ATAPI-6 ATA/ATAPI-7 ATA/ATAPI-8 ATA/ATAPI-9

 * current active mode

But on PC:

$ sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

 Model=TS128GSSD630I, FwRev=20130502, SerialNo=20131106B08323016232
 Config={ Fixed }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=576, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=unknown, MaxMultSect=1, MultSect=1
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=250069680
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6 
 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: Unspecified:  ATA/ATAPI-4,5,6,7

 * signifies the current active mode
3

Yes, you seem to be 10-20% below what should be possible. Here is what I am getting on Ixora:

root@apalis-t30:~# hdparm -t /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 198 MB in  3.02 seconds =  65.55 MB/sec

That with a Kingston mSATA drive:

root@apalis-t30:~# hdparm -I /dev/sda | head

/dev/sda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
        Model Number:       KINGSTON SMS200S330G                    
        Serial Number:      50026B724A0B583F    
        Firmware Revision:  541ABBF0
        Transport:          Serial, ATA8-AST, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0
Standards:
        Used: unknown (minor revision code 0x0110)

Please note that the T30 will never be able to achieve the same data rates as a modern PC. That said the TK1 has a much more tuned SATA implementation achieving in excess of 130 MB/sec.

4

@marcel.tx is there a way to benchmark for writing to the ssd? I tried using the dd command but it does not display the transfer rate speed.

5

If you have our regular LXDE demo image installed you may use the pre-installed gnome-disks application for benchmarking.

6

Thank you for the answer. I also just noticed that you mention the TK1 can achieve upto or in excess of 130MB/s. In your answer it seems that you tested on a TK1 not the apalis-T30 is this correct?

7

To be honest I don’t remember but agree that the root@apalis-tk1 part looked confusing. I just re-did the test on an Apalis T30 2GB V1.1B running BSP 2.8b5.