Is it true that the speed of these ssd's is somewhat influenced by the available cpu power? I seem to remember that this was an aspect of IDE-based drives in the past. So, achieving modest disk access performance gains is usually not a problem, but dipping into the ultimate throughput will require a healthy dose of cpu resources (usually not a problem with the latest cpu's at the latest clockspeeds, but could be a bottleneck on older cpu's). Is it that SATA-based drives were a bit more autonomous to do what they do, or do they have fairly similar cpu requirements as the older IDE designs?
As for my own little ssd project on a mac mini, sometimes the file copy operations fly, but other times it really isn't much different than the original hdd. I haven't noticed any outright stalls, gladly. UI responsiveness is much improved in all instances, however. Menu response stays snappy (like reliving the os9 classic days) and applications start and retire pronto. It may be dipping into the vm (on ssd now, of course) to keep everything running, but it never feels like it. Essentially, page swaps are swift enough to feel as if in a state of persistent, infinite RAM.
On the face of it, that seems quite more effective and inherently scalable than if I had simply upgraded my 512 MB RAM card to 1 GB.
I did notice that there is a substantial amount of CPU load when a file copy is chugging away at decent pace. So that made me think that I am simply CPU-bound from greater throughput, just to host IDE communication. It is only a 1.2 Ghz G4, so it wouldn't surprise me.
The highest disk throughput I have observed is about 18 MB/s. I know - that's not very high, compared to theoretical capability (but far higher than I have ever seen with the oem hdd). More typically, it hangs around 5-8 MB/s. The write instances seem to hold their own, though (given that writes have been cited as an ssd achilles's heal). Ironically, it seems the reads have been consistently slower (but not necessarily slow) doing whatever, compared to the writes.
Transfers between usb thumbdrive and ssd were a bit underwhelming, though (whereas that should be the theoretical ssd nirvana case). Maybe it is just the limit of the thumbdrive (or just CPU overhead, as mentioned before), as well? It was about 5 MB/s.
The $50 usb external hdd I also got (to supplement my primary storage) is impressively speedy, though. I thought it would just be mediocre laptop-grade performance, at best, given the price. However, that was where I first observed sustained 18 MB/s throughput in conjunction with the ssd. Large-size files are definitely favored over many tiny files, when it comes to exploring throughput ceilings.
