Which SSD is Apple using?

[HDFan]

I was totally surprised by the aggressive price of Apple's 500 GB SSD drive. It was actually lower in price than the SSD's I saw on several websites. Now that I have it on my 12 core, I'm curious as to who makes it:

APPLE SSD TS512B:

Capacity: 500.28 GB (500,277,790,720 bytes)
Model: APPLE SSD TS512B
Revision: AGAA0206
Serial Number: 706M100CM4QZ
Native Command Queuing: No
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Medium Type: Solid State
TRIM Support: No
Bay Name: Bay 1
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)
Writable: Yes
BSD Name: disk0s1
Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 499.93 GB (499,933,818,880 bytes)
Available: 156.71 GB (156,707,323,904 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0

 

[jav6454]

They are Samsung or Toshiba drives.

 

[alphaod]

Yours is made by Toshiba.

 

[HDFan]

Yep, it's got to be Toshiba. Samsung's website doesn't list a 512 GB drive. I just did a google price search for the drive. The cheapest is $1000, the next cheapest is $1489. Apple charges $1400 for a second drive and $1250 for the first.

 

[barefeats]

Toshiba.

Strengths:
1. Faster than SATA HDDs.
2. Wear leveling.

Weaknesses:
1. No allocated space for real-time data redundancy and ECC error correction. This is called "over-provisioning." (This is obvious from the 512G capacity. If it had over-provisioning, it would be rated at 480G or 400G capacity.)
2. Sub par transfer speeds compared to the SandForce based SSDs from OCZ, Corsair, and OWC as shown when the Apple (Toshiba) 256G is compared to the OWC 200G:
http://barefeats.com/imac10d.html

 

[deconstruct60]

Toshiba.

Weaknesses:
1. No allocated space for real-time data redundancy and ECC error correction. This is called "over-provisioning." (This is obvious from the 512G capacity. If it had over-provisioning, it would be rated at 480G or 400G capacity.)

Exactly "512" Isn't really a definitive sign. a 25% over-provision ratio would be even on a power-of-2 number. (e.g., 512GB "usage" with a 128GB buffer for 640GB total would give you exactly the numbers. ). It is also very difficult to have very effective wear leveling mechanism without any buffer. ( only is cheesy disk completely empty context would it be effective without one for decent amounts of static data. )

They may not be doing any fancy EEC (to use cells after would normally consider them worn out) and duplication ( so can do RAID like cell access) but those aren't the only usages for an over-provision buffer.

2. Sub par transfer speeds compared to the SandForce based SSDs

It appears that Toshibas SSD may be a tad "old". The Toshiba site says that the newer HG3 series SSDs do support TRIM. The system profiler snipper above says no. Suggestive that this is one of the older models. That may be why the price is better than other quotes on the web.