NVMe
The excitement in the client SSD space recently has understandably been on the Gen 5 front. However, cooling requirements have made it difficult for vendors to bring effective M.2 NVMe Gen 5 SSDs to the market. In that context, it appears that Gen 4 M.2 SSDs will continue to have a much longer runway than was previously estimated. In order to better serve that market segment, Silicon Motion is introducing a new product in their PCIe 4.0-capable NVMe SSD controller lineup. The company's roadmap is not much of a secret, as we do expect their Gen 5 client controllers to land in Q4 2023 - in fact, an end product based on it from ADATA was already demonstrated by ADATA at the 2023 CES...
The Samsung 960 EVO (1TB) Review
Last month the Samsung 960 Pro broke most of the performance records for a consumer SSD and often by a surprisingly large margin. But as impressive as it was...
87 by Billy Tallis on 11/15/2016The Samsung 960 Pro (2TB) SSD Review
A year ago, Samsung brought their PCIe SSD technology to the retail market in the form of the Samsung 950 Pro, an NVMe M.2 SSD with Samsung's 3D V-NAND...
72 by Billy Tallis on 10/18/2016Samsung Announces 960 PRO And 960 EVO M.2 PCIe SSDs (Updated)
UPDATE: New features unveiled during the presentation and Q&A session are described below. Here at Samsung's SSD Global Summit in South Korea, the company has just officially unveiled their next...
138 by Billy Tallis on 9/21/2016Micron Cancels Ballistix TX3 NVMe SSD
At Computex in June, Micron announced that Crucial's Ballistix brand was being promoted to a standalone brand for gaming-oriented products. Their exhibit included three tiers of Ballistix DRAM products...
7 by Billy Tallis on 8/18/2016Intel Optane And 3D XPoint Updates From IDF
At Intel Developer Forum this week in San Francisco, Intel is sharing a few more details about its plans for their Optane SSDs using 3D XPoint memory. The next milestone...
36 by Billy Tallis on 8/16/2016Evaluating the Toshiba OCZ RD400 M.2 NVMe SSD on a Skylake NUC
The Skylake NUCs have faced plenty of issues since their introduction late last year. However, stability has improved with the latest BIOS updates. One of the issues with the...
16 by Ganesh T S on 7/5/2016Samsung SM961 Price And Availability Outlook
The SM961 is Samsung's latest high-end client PCIe SSD for OEMs, but as with its SM951 and XP941 predecessors there will be distributors selling the SM961 online to consumers...
50 by Billy Tallis on 6/21/2016The Toshiba OCZ RD400 (256GB, 512GB, 1TB) M.2 PCIe SSD Review
Having recently assimilated OCZ and turned it into an enthusiast-oriented consumer brand, Toshiba has released their first M.2 PCIe SSD into the consumer market. Initially previewed by OCZ as...
42 by Billy Tallis on 5/25/2016Micron Announces 9100 & 7100 Series PCIe Enterprise SSDs
Micron entered the PCIe SSD market in 2011 with the formidable P320h. Using generously overprovisioned 34nm SLC NAND and a controller with 32 NAND channels and a PCIe 2.0...
21 by Billy Tallis on 4/12/2016Intel Rolls Out New PCIe SSDs for Cloud Datacenters
Intel on Thursday introduced several new PCIe SSDs designed for cloud datacenters. The new drives increase capacities, shrink latencies and offer higher throughput in order to follow demands of...
21 by Billy Tallis & Anton Shilov on 3/31/2016Seagate Announces PCIe x16 SSD Capable Of 10GB/s
At the Open Compute Project Summit this week in San Jose, Seagate will show off a pair of upcoming enterprise NVMe SSDs with impressive throughput specifications. The drives will...
30 by Billy Tallis on 3/9/2016ZOTAC Announces SONIX PCIe SSD Price & Availability
ZOTAC has formally announced its PCIe SONIX SSD, which was first demonstrated at CES earlier this year. Confirming the final specifications and design, the company said that the new...
21 by Anton Shilov on 3/2/2016CES 2016: Phison previews upcoming SSD controllers
Phison may not be a household name, but they're a major player in the SSD market. Where Marvell's SSD controllers are typically sold to drive vendors who then pair...
7 by Billy Tallis on 1/21/2016Silicon Motion at CES: 3D NAND support for SM2246EN and roadmap update
2015 was a great year for SSD controller designer Silicon Motion. Their SM2246EN controller was at the heart of some of the best mainstream and value SATA SSDs, while...
2 by Billy Tallis on 1/21/2016Marvell Implements Host Memory Buffer for DRAM-less 88NV1140 SSD Controller
The first version of the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) standard was ratified almost five years ago, but its development didn't stop there. While SSD controller manufacturers have been hard...
33 by Billy Tallis on 1/12/2016The Samsung 950 Pro PCIe SSD Review (256GB and 512GB)
Samsung's new flagship consumer SSD is here to wrap up all the latest technology from Samsung in a small package, with the goal of raising the bar beyond the...
142 by Billy Tallis on 10/22/2015Micron acquires SSD Controller Designer Tidal Systems, Inc.
A year ago, several veterans of SSD controller design firms SandForce and Link_A_Media Devices formed a new startup called Tidal Systems, Inc. to focus on developing NVMe SSD controllers...
12 by Billy Tallis on 10/9/2015Samsung Announces 950 Pro SSD, Their First Consumer V-NAND + NVMe SSD
We’re here at Samsung’s SSD Global Summit, the company’s annual SSD technology reveal. This event is typically held mid-summer, however with MERS concerns in South Korea this year, the...
49 by Ryan Smith & Billy Tallis on 9/22/2015Samsung SM951-NVMe (256GB) PCIe SSD Review
Samsung has always been an early adopter in the SSD space. The company was the first one on the market with a PCIe 2.0 x4 M.2 SSD the (XP941...
74 by Kristian Vättö on 6/25/2015Seagate Announces SandForce SF3500 SSD Controller Series: Mass Production Expected in Q4'15
The SandForce SF3000 series has become the unicorn of the SSD industry. For the past two years there has been a lot of hype about the new controller, but...
22 by Kristian Vättö on 6/10/2015