It appears that Apple is taking steps to appease critics that their implementation of SSD is only half baked â€" due to missing TRIM support. TRIM support, for those who aren’t familiar with the term, is a system in which the SSD is maintained by efficiently removing garbage (ie: old data), so that id doesn’t hamper the writing of new data. In Windows, pre-TRIM SSDs slow down considerably as the drive fills.
How bad has it been in OS X without TRIM? Apparently not too bad according to this Bit-tech article in which they look at SSDs in the current generation MacBook Air. Their findings were that SSD performance is more or less the same even after strenuous usage. Part of this, they speculate, could be because OS X’s use of HFS+ is more efficient at garbage collection, or, TRIM is supported in some type of fashion under the surface.
Whatever the case may be, gaining official TRIM support certainly can’t hurt. The only sour point we see at this time is that it appears that Apple is only supporting TRIM for in-house SSDs shipped with Apple hardware â€" not third party SSDs. Though given how Apple operates their business, this move isn’t entirely all too surprising. We’ll have to keep an eye on Lion development as it progresses to see just how robust Apple makes TRIM within OS X.
Via: AppleInsider
Tags: Apple lion osx ssd trim
