yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] xTRICKYxx:
I remember seeing early reviews on the TF201 that the internal memory is unusually slow.

Why would Asus put such a high build quality on everything but the storage speed?

I have a feeling this is not hardware related but rather software related. There is no logical explanation why the flash memory inside our devices is so much slower than the common average.

What I want to know is how much bandwidth is available for the internal storage?

For example: I purchase a 64GB SSD drive that is meant for internal 2.5" storage drives. I hook it up externally and plug it into a powered ESATA port. The max read/write speeds of the SSD are around 300mb/s but the port's max read/write speeds are only around 200mb/s.

Did Asus make some unnecessary sacrifices to make the price of the Prime reasonable? I really hope not.

On a different note:

Copying files from Windows 7 to the Prime is immensely slow.

On Mac OS X 10.7.2 (Hackintosh) copying the same file is MUCH faster.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] jwigginton:
Using AndroBench -

Seq Read 19.59 MB/s

Seq Write 4.01 MB/s

Random Read - 2.71 MB/s

Random Write - 0.25 MB/s

SQLite Insert - 14.17 TPS

SQLite Update - 16.68 TPS

SQLite Delete - 17.79 TPS

Really bad in the ranking compared to the other devices.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] yumms:
And anyone thry this benchmark tool and post the results? http://db.tt/6WHshUYt

Its J Disk Benchmark
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Phoneguy589:
Using androbench:

17.3 Sequential Read

6.46 Sequential Write

2.88 mb/s 739.12iops 4k random read

.28 mb/s 71.91iops 4k random write

15.01 TPS 19.98sec SQlite Insert

15.57 TPS 19.26sec SQlite Update

16.44 TPS 18.24 SQlite Delete

2510.25 msec Browser

4176.5 msec Market

5403.0 msec Camera

5284.0 msec Camcorder

Just noticed there is no /system/etc/init.d folder for any speed enhancements/tweaks
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] saturn_de:
Well, I wanted to test Bonnie++ also on a USB stick on the ATP, but somehow it took insanely long, so I canceled that. I also suspect it to be a S/W problem, which gives hope for it to be fixed in an update.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] chrisfu:
I've not got my Prime with me to perform the tests, but having seen the results posted in here, I have to say that my SGS2 absolutely *smokes* the Prime in terms of I/O throughput. Very disappointing, I think that this thread needs to be brought to the attention of Asus.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] xTRICKYxx:
I get the feeling they knew about this before launch.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] prewed:
Just for comparison

Origanal Transformer androbench results:

19.13 Sequential Read

6.06 Sequential Write

4.87 mb/s 1248.56iops 4k random read

0.25 mb/s 66.34iops 4k random write

19.93 TPS 15.05sec SQlite Insert

25.94 TPS 11.56sec SQlite Update

24.55 TPS 12.21 SQlite Delete

1479.0 msec Browser

1997.25 msec Market

3174.0 msec Camera

7364.0 msec Camcorder
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Kashban:
I get a bit over 20 MiByte /s sequencial read, but all in all the Prime has only 75-50% the speed of my Galaxy S2 on 1.4 MHz.

On the HTC Desire there was a major speedup by using ext4 partitions over ext3, so probably Asus took the wrong file system or screwed configuring it for speed.

Well, on the CF Bench it looks the other way round: The Prime is is way faster on MIPS and MFLOPS, as well as on Native and Java Memory read. (Scores 22960, 6419, 13035 vs 11255, 234, 6442 on the SGS 2). This is comparing Gingerbread to ICS, though.

Passmark shows internal Storage Read of 45MiByte/s for the S2 and 37,1 MiByte/s for the Prime. Prime gets about 500 points more than the Galaxy Nexus on the overall score.

So the results are not clear and differ vastly between benchmarks.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] e.mote:
I think the main culprit would be the MTP file system, which is much slower than FAT32 especially for small files. Most phones aren't yet using MTP.

Disk I/O is a major speed bottleneck, and it boggles my mind why Google chose MTP for HC and ICS (yes, I read the official explanation).

For a sampling of MTP issue on Android, http://google.com/search?q=mtp+speed+issue+on+android
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] saturn_de:
MTP is not a filesystem, but a protocol for file exchange.

I ran the original benchmark on a ext4 filesystem (the /data) partition. So, in theory it's one of the fastest option here.

I suspect the driver for the storage to be poorly written. We will have to analyze the kernel driver and the modifications asus made to the original linux kernel.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] chrisfu:
This is correct. In theory it should be fast considering it's using ext4, so the problem lies elsewhere. If it's software, all signs point to the kernel module; otherwise it could be that a ****ty flash device was sourced for the Prime.

Still, if Gary knows about this, he can file a bug with the engineers and hopefully get it fixed in the next OTA update.

---------- Post added at 10:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:41 AM ----------

I've passed this thread onto Gary Key via PM. Hopefully he'll bring this to the attention of the engineers.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] geinome:
Prime vs Desire HD

Guys im agreeing with the issues linking to the kernel modules.

Just performed a side by side test on my Prime and my desire HD.

Desire HD finished way before the prime and im using a custom ROM. Blackice is anyone's wondering.

here's the stats i got, and this is on an older device, Its pretty unacceptable that a new device is slower than an old one. :S

DESIRE HD:

Sequential Read:28.71 MB/s

Sequential Write:6.68 MB/s

Random Read:5.0, 1280.IOPS

Random Write:0.26, 68.13 IOPS

SQ Insert:356 TPS 0.84 seconds

SQ Update:222 TPS 1.34 seconds

SQ Delete: 291 TPS 1.02 seconds

Browser:152.0 msec

TRANSFORMER PRIME:

Sequential Read:22.19 MB/s

Sequential Write:0.97 MB/s

Random Read:5.52, 1280.IOPS

Random Write:0.27, 68.13 IOPS

SQ Insert:14 TPS 20.37 seconds

SQ Update:15 TPS 18.97 seconds

SQ Delete: 14 TPS 20.54 seconds

Browser:3928 msec

Can you see the differences! Its amazing how much quicker a customer Kernal can be on an older device. Either that or its a bottleneck in ICS itself. This could very well be the cause of alot of lockups or slow laggyness under the browser. Check that speed out! This really needs to be looked at by ASUS. Can anyone else confirm test under other apps to check these kind of speeds.

NOTE: I rounded down on the SQlite tests because its better to just see how many transactions a second were performed.

EDIT: I did some more tests.

Screenshots below:
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] benefit14snake:
My results. One run.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Mixy:
This is quite the dissapointment indeed. Just ran the test on my SGS2 and Prime side by side, and Prime got smoked by SGS2 (running newest CM9 build).

Prime in bold:

18,18 51,72

4,11 7,91

4,06 1036 IOPS 7,49 1919 IOPS

0,27 70,82 IOPS 0,24 63,15 IOPS

19,27 22,47

18,3 24,86

20,51 24,91

686 272

1709 666

2164 461

2464 1568
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] SirGarry:
Can anyone say for sure whether this is poor hardware or just poor software? Because poor hardware almost makes me want to cancel my order on the device... but poor software can of course be fixed. :)

And of course numbers are one thing, but does it feel slow? :confused:
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] parker7:
This explains a lot. The minor freezes etc.. are annoying and put me off using it. To be honest the novelty has worn off, it's not as slick as I had hoped. I suppose it's wait and see, and hope for an update to fix.

Great work on finding the problem, i'm sure it will certainly make the fix arrive sooner.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] vels13:
This to me is the biggest issue with my prime. If I'm doing any kind of disk activity in the background my prime becomes so laggy it's unusable. I really hope that this thread keeps alive and ASUS sees it as a major enough problem to take a look and and try and tackle with software updates.

I love just about everything else about the prime, but not being able to multi-task on this beast of a device is frustrating... especially when my older Mytouch 4g can do the same type of activities without lagging.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] yumms:
Yep, when installing a program from the market, everything slow down till the install is finished.

I seriously hope its a software problem.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] saturn_de:
Hmm, turning on the "completely fair queue scheduler" seems to help. No more stalling/hangs.

Install the modules from: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1455382

# insmod cfq-iosched.ko
# echo cfq >/sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/scheduler
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] yumms:
How do you do that? Put the module in /data/local/modules and then run the command via terminal emulator?
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] benefit14snake:
So....why do these companies not want us to run our own software??.... seems like OUR devs are better than theirs lol.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] justing1319:
I decided to test this out and it turns out it makes a huge difference. I ran AndroBench for a before and after enabling the kernel modules.

Before:

After:

4.5x increase in Random Read IOPS

2.8x increase in Random Write IOPS

3.5x better performance on the SQLite benchmarks

Asus really needs to hire some new developers.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Aluminous:
That's great if its just a software issue. Does anyone know why this works though? The default is noop, which I thought was best for flash memory...
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] saturn_de:
I wouldn't give too much on this benchmark. Run it several times and your results vary a lot.

What's really important to me, is that it does not lag anymore under heavy I/O. Feels slicker.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] SirGarry:
At least it feels faster! I really hope someone will be able to bring this to the next level and make it even faster. :)
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] jupppo:
I compared my batch backup with titanium. Yesterday without modification it took 9 min (approx 1.5 GB) and today it was done in 2.5min.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] YoMarK:
I have about the same performance without loading this module, so something strange is going on.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] geinome:
No changes

I have to admit, after getting it to work i havent seen any real speed increase. Did a couple of tests and pretty much the same as before. However ill give it a proper test this evening when i run torrents and try and watch an HD video at the same time. when doing that i normally get alot of issues. And really shouldnt :|
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] geinome:
Yep its working now, has speed it up a bit. moving stuff from internal memory to my pc has improved, speeds better. But still AndroBench showing same results :S
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] demandarin:
Its crazy how some other benches n stats we blow away other tabs. But with androbench I/O scores, we are lagging severely. Has to be poorly written S/W. At least the Macro Browser, Camera, n other one is way higher than others. Another category also but forgot which one. Some of them was so low, like Random write, that it seemed unbelievable to be that slow.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] saturn_de:
Like I already said, I don't trust the androbench results much.. test with the more reliabel Bonnie++. Or with the "CF-Bench" app.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] demandarin:
Will do, I have chainfire
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] erasure88:
CF Benchmark scores

same here...modding manually and the apk. didn't change my sqlite scores.

dloading cf-bench...attached are my results WITH the mod

any input/comparisons? not sure how to interpret but the overall score seems pretty nice to me =P
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] saturn_de:
Only evaluate the "Native disk..:"
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] demandarin:
Here is mines in stock setup and Performance mode and CFQ I/O mod applied

Now this one is with the 1.6ghz overclock and CFQ I/O mod applied

So it seems with overclock, it dramatically improves the scores. I think overclock with I/O mod yields the best/optimal results. Scores will vary with tests but overall overclock brings out this mod more, IMO.

P.s. I've scored even alot higher than this on overclock.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] TalynOne:
Background I/O seems a little better with the other scheduler, but it's so slight it might just be the placebo affect. My Epic 4G Touch feels much faster when it comes to I/O. Doing something as simple as loading a new level in Where's in My Water takes 3-4 seconds on the Prime while it takes less than a second on my Epic. Also I can download/install 3-4 apps at a time from the market and still use my device with only minimal slow down, on the Prime installing one app pauses all other app downloads and makes the Prime almost unusable while it's processing the I/O. Something else is for sure up.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] jaypm:
i would love for this to be a software problem because that would mean we have a shot at fixing it. what i'm scared of is this being hardware. has anyone seen the chip markings for the internal flash memory in any of the teardowns? if we get the markings then we may be able to find the specs.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] xTRICKYxx:
The new .13 update

I'm happy.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Expliciate:
My results before the .13 update.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] tshoulihane:
I'd noticed that too. Maybe a driver taking most of the time rather than the i/o?
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] NeoteriX:
Someone else noticed improvement in memory IO after the update:
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] demandarin:
That isn't a big enough improvement to say update caused it. Multiple test runs will show deviance of scores by more than that. So multiple test runs would have to be made then averaged out. Not just him testing once before n after.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] tshoulihane:
Maybe benchmark when under-clocked too... might be interesting?
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Kashban:
I tested with the Passmark-Benchmark which shows some awkward results for the internal flash memory speeds: Writing is 24,1 MiByte/s while Reading is only 3,65 MiByte/s?

Since CF Bench also states writing is faster than reading (about 1,5x) this is really some strange finding, since usually flash is much faster on reading than writing?

Anybody have any explanation for this? Write Cache perhaps?
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Spidey01:
I believe the way the file system on these systems is made, the OS is allowed to say "Yes, write done, move along" and flush it a while later, so maybe it's semi-lying.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] royredman:
has anyone noticed a disk speed performance increase since the .21 update? hopefully it was just a software issue :/
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] tylermaciaszek:
My Scores running stock .21 with Motleys newest OC 1.8GHz with OC GPU kernel:

Seq Read - 15.18 MB/s

Seq Write - 4.06 MB/s

Random Read - 5.1 MB/s

Random Write - 0.29 MB/s

SQLite Insert - 14.11 TPS

SQLite Update - 17.73 TPS

SQLite Delete - 16.66

As you can see most scores either got worse or stayed about the same
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] benefit14snake:
I noticed this as well on ANtutu . I used to be able to get over 50mbs read speads, now it is about 30mbs.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] tylermaciaszek:
I notice better performance overall though
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Johnny0906:
OK!

So instead of pointing out the error and repeating it over and over and OVER again, maybe its time to start thinking, can we resolve or change this?

Start a petition to Asus (long shot)

Self-mod by changing the SSD (not an easy task but what the hey)

So? Come on get going! Out with the ideas!
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] demandarin:
has anyone done any recent tests with Shaky new custom kernel? maybe if someone could do a comparison between stock speeds, motley kernel, and shaky kernel. I'm not unlocked so I can't test the updated newer custom kernels.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] tylermaciaszek:
My Scores running stock .21 with Motleys newest OC 1.8GHz with OC GPU kernel:

Seq Read - 15.18 MB/s

Seq Write - 4.06 MB/s

Random Read - 5.1 MB/s

Random Write - 0.29 MB/s

SQLite Insert - 14.11 TPS

SQLite Update - 17.73 TPS

SQLite Delete - 16.66
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] BarryH_GEG:
For giggles, I just got a One X. Here's something else Teg3 based for you guys to compare against...

Seq Read 20.76

Seq Write 11.53

Random Read 8.02

Random Write .6

SQLite Insert - 55.02

SQLite Update - 55.21

SQLite Delete - 58.35
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] aznmode:
Wow huge difference in sqlite. Primes really suck in this department
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] htcplussony:
Thanks BarryH_GEG for the One X benchmarks.

Prime really sucks in this area.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] demandarin:
I wonder if developers are able to compare One X kernel or drivers to the prime. to see what the differences are and what could be ported to prime. that one X phone is pretty good.

@Barry now that you own a Tegra3, you're assimilated and part of the collective now ;)
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] beto113:
The test Ive done is by no stretch of imagination a scientific testing process

Having that said, 3 days ago I downloaded an app called SD Card Tester from the market. The reason I got this app initially was to check out the SD card Ive bought and see if its was a real class 10. Then after running it on the SDcard I tested the internal storage and that was giving me between 4,5mb to 5,2mb and after a few seconds of writing the internal storage lagged for 0,2 to 0,5s and start again writing the data the app was asking. No need to say that it was horrible. I noticed this hangging while I was browsing and using my tablet here and there and was annoying as f.

So yesterday I decided to give it a go to that AOKP project. Installed the rom 1.1. Running the same app, after a fresh restart I noticed a dramatic improvement. The hanggings are MUCH MUCH faster, and the writing speed improved also from, 4,5mb to 5,2mb using the stock rom to 8,2 to 9,0mb using the AOKP 1.1 rom.

I found that its definitely some driver/ optimization issue with the stock rom. So theres some room for improvement. Yet I was hopping to see much faster writing speed something about 10mb to 15mb. After all this machine is highly priced at $500 for the low end model and the bottle neck being the storage due lack of quality is a shame.

Not sure this would make any diference but Im using a 64gb model with dock and s/n BC0
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] benefit14snake:
Ive been saying this since day one. I REALLY feel it is a software issue.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] demandarin:
well we need to get the test numbers together with theories of what could be causing it and forward it to Gary. pretty sure its a driver/software issue that Asus or Nvidia could improve. is the op even still around? if not, someone could make a new thread addressing it directly for a fix needed.

we do have a firmware update coming in a week or 2 ;)
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] beto113:
True we need to get numbers together and gather a real amount of testing data to claim a fix.

I have my prime running AOKP atm. So If someone run me through a step by step i can get some real numbers with this kernel drives and stuff that im definitely seing a massive improvement over the stock
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] scrapee:
painfully slow disk performance

hi

I recently noticed very slow writing speeds to the internal memory because I'm travelling with it and put photos on it or rather I try to put photos on it since it is so slow.

I ran androbench multiple times and also killed all background processes and deinstalled a lot of apps I don't use a lot.

The write speeds are under 1MB/s most of the time but for some runs they increase to 4-5 MB/s but real life performance is horrible. Read speads are around 22 mb/s which is not good but I can life with it.

Would you install another ROM or is this a hardware issue? I don't want to void my warranty if this is not fixable.

I'm running the latest .28 version.

Thanks for any help
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] dagrim1:
Seems to be hardware... at least no solution at this time unfortunately :/
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] sjrixon:
I did a test.. About 18 on the reads.. My little Desire S is 24!

Anyone tried a benchmark on an alternative rom?
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Tempie007:
This bench shows what we allready know: IO performance on prime is plain terrible.

It doesn't matter which ROM you are on. AOKP, cm9, stock , stockbased.

Asus probably knows this by now... they are trying to fix the ANR and browser issues (.29) and all this is caused by the internal memory... we allready know

Some fixes i use as workaround are: browser2RAM for the browser, and the sqlite patch (read the warnings) general boost in various apps. Also i use cfq io scheduler in motley kernel which is a big improvement.

All in all these are workarounds ... raw speed is not influenced.

I hope for some kind of miracle... i hope its not hardware... device has a realy big bottleneck.. my desire hd outperforms it IO wise.. by far!!

All those reviews on the web say this device is a beast .. but its not.

The cpu is waiting for stuff to happen... but there is nothing happening.... ANR ... lags....
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] htcplussony:
Since that new Microsoft Surface uses some type of Nvidia arm soc, I like to think i/o is some what ok on that version of the chip.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] s1lenz:
.29? i thought they were trying to fix it in .28
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] sjrixon:
Let's pray it's not a cheap storage device in there.. That this can be resolved with software!

We will not be happy!
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] saturn_de:
Bonnie++ with CM nightly 20120618

Version 1.96 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
localhost 2G 144 95 11353 11 7677 9 985 95 22731 18 253.8 64
Latency 888ms 9426ms 5169ms 60770us 245ms 2099ms
Version 1.96 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
localhost -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 782 80 +++++ +++ 6354 22 918 90 +++++ +++ 2347 62
Latency 1643ms 2136us 3844us 338ms 152us 2019us
1.96,1.96,localhost,1,1340081689,2G,,144,95,11353,11,7677,9,985,95,22731,18,253.8,64,16,,,,,782,80,+++++,+++,6354,22,918,90,+++++,+++,2347,62,888ms,9426ms,5169ms,60770us,245ms,2099ms,1643ms,2136us,3844us,338ms,152us,2019us
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] Tempie007:
Well actually I do think this is hardware related since CWM backup/restore takes ages too.. but let's wait for next Asus build and see if Asus has some neat surprises for us.
[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] saturn_de:
Yes, I think you are right. But maybe there is hope: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=27486716#post27486716