U.2 sustained bandwidth question

[Philip Brink]

Consumer nvme typically runs at stated 'up to' speeds on read/write until cache runs out. U.2 drives are advertised with 'sustained' speeds. So, the newbie question I can't seem to find an answer for is: Do U.2 drives display the same behavior as consumer drives and drop to a lower bandwidth when cache is full? Im sure the answer is 'it depends', but just looking for a generalized answer.

Thanks in advance. The question is been on my mind for far too long.

 

[i386]

U.2/u.3 ssds are usually "enterprise"/"datacenter" ssds with end-to-end powerloss protection (plp), designed to deliver consistent (and predictable) performance and therefore should not drop in performance.
If your workload matches the workload and conditions defined by snia for the sequential workloads (TP (Throughput) Test | SNIA) you should see numbers similar to the advertised ones.

(I wrote "usually" in the first sentence because intel (and probably some other manufacturers) had some consumer oriented ssds in the u.2 format without plp)

 

[Philip Brink]

Thank you. That is about what I was thinking as well. Without having one to test and articles basically skipping the topic, I wanted to make sure I wasn't making wild assumptions while reading 'sustained'.