Apple has some world-class SSD engineers. They’ve led the industry in integrating flash into their notebooks and in high bandwidth consumer SSDs in general.
I’m confident that whatever the problem users are seeing, Apple’s engineers will be on top of it in short order.
But where is the problem likely to be? In order of likelihood:
- The reporting software – based on SMART monitoring from hard drives – is mischaracterizing the SSD’s activity. SMART was a good idea haphazardly implemented across many – but not all – drive’s firmware.
- SSD controller firmware is misreporting write activity. SSD controller firmware is complex due to the limitations of NAND flash. Mitigating write amplification requires careful juggling of DRAM buffers in the controller to ensure that only necessary data gets written to flash.
- A bug specific to how recently ported pro apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro interact with the SSD controller.
March 01, 2021
By Robin Harris