Computex 2011: Diskeeper ExpressCache Provides an Alternative to SSD Caching for OEMs

As we found out in our Z68 review, Intel's SRT (SSD Caching) is basically a software tool baked into Intel's RST driver - there's no real hardware requirement in the chipset, just an artificial one. Diskeeper provides OEMs with software that's designed to do the same thing, it's called ExpressCache.

The driver loads at boot and can apparently speed up boot time. Like Intel's SRT it will filter out some operations to avoid polluting the cache (e.g. sequential accesses). Unlike SRT you can manually pin applications to the cache. Ultimately how well it performs will be up to the algorithms Diskeeper implemented.

The company was present at SanDisk's booth showing a quick boot time demo with an 8GB SanDisk SSD used as an ExpressCache vs. a standard 5400 RPM HDD. Obviously the SSD enabled solution was faster. OEMs are expected to start shipping SanDisk + ExpressCache systems this year.]]>

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Z68 SSD Caching with Corsair's F40 SandForce SSD

I have to admit that Intel's Z68 launch was somewhat anti-climactic for me. It was the chipset we all wanted when Sandy Bridge first arrived, but now four months after Sandy Bridge showed up there isn't all that much to be excited about - save for one feature of course: Smart Response Technology (aka SSD caching). The premise is borrowed from how SSDs are sometimes used in the enterprise space: put a small, fast SSD in front of a large array of storage and use it to cache both reads and writes. This is ultimately how the memory hierarchy works - hide the latency of larger, cheaper storage by caching frequently used data in much faster, but more expensive storage.

I believe there's a real future with SSD caching, however the technology needs to go mainstream. It needs to be available on all chipsets, something we won't see until next year with Ivy Bridge. Even then, there's another hurdle: the price of the SSD cache.

For $110 today you can either get a 20GB Larson Creek drive from Intel, or a 40GB SF-1200 based SSD from Corsair. Given how well SandForce's SSDs perform on their own, I wondered how one would stack up as a SSD cache. Read on to find out!

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