SATA SSD Power Saving Modes

The SSD has been gradually maturing in the storage world, and users have begun replacing HDDs with SSDs because of their higher performance, lower weight, smaller dimensions, and lower power consumption. And with the current semiconductor shortage and chip shortage, it’s more important than ever to choose carefully when purchasing SSDs.

One of the most important things to consider when purchasing SSDs is power consumption. In the SATA low-power mode world of SSDs, developers control power consumption and extend battery life through the use of three states: Partial, Slumber, and DEVSLP (DevSleep).

Partial and Slumber

SATA specifications allow a host or device to place the interface (PHY) into reduced power states.

1. Partial: PHY is a reduced power mode where the exit time is less than 10 microseconds.

2. Slumber: PHY is in a reduced power mode, lower than Partial mode, and where the exit time is less than ten milliseconds.

Hosts and devices use the “In-band” command to switch between different power states. A host (HIPM, Host Initiated Power Management) or device (DIPM, Device Initiated Power Management) can initiate both partial and slumber modes.

A SATA device cannot respond as quickly to host commands when a device is fully powered if the device is switching into a reduced interface power state. This is because there’s a tradeoff between latency power savings when using partial and slumber power states. The lower the power mode state entered, the more time it takes to resume.

DEVSLP

DEVSLP is a new power management mode available to use with hosts and devices. With DEVSLP, a host or device can completely power down their PHY and subsystems. However, latency is longer than partial and slumber modes.

With DEVSLP, a device can completely power down its PHY and other subsystems to help it meet existing latency requirements.

The importance of efficient power consumption

Efficient power consumption is essential to users since it determines how long battery life can be extended. In SATA SSD, partial, slumber, and DEVSLP are the critical tools used to manage device power consumption. With Phison’s innovative design and guaranteed supply chain, SSD power is managed efficiently to ensure extended battery life, making Phison SSDs the perfect solution in the market.

Read: 3 Reasons SSD is Better than HDD for your Data Center