SSDs
When Western Digital introduced its Ultrastar DC SN861 SSDs earlier this year, the company did not disclose which controller it used for these drives, which made many observers presume that WD was using an in-house controller. But a recent teardown of the drive shows that is not the case; instead, the company is using a controller from Fadu, a South Korean company founded in 2015 that specializes on enterprise-grade turnkey SSD solutions. The Western Digital Ultrastar DC SN861 SSD is aimed at performance-hungry hyperscale datacenters and enterprise customers which are adopting PCIe Gen5 storage devices these days. And, as uncovered in photos from a recent Storage Review article, the drive is based on Fadu's FC5161 NVMe 2.0-compliant controller. The FC5161 utilizes 16 NAND channels supporting...
Silicon Motion SM2256 SSD Controller Preview: TLC for Everyone
The SSD industry has been talking about TLC NAND for over three years now. We published our first post, Understanding TLC NAND, back in early 2012, but in three...
35 by Kristian Vättö on 6/17/2015
JMicron SSD Controller Roadmap: JMF680 SATA 6Gbps & JMF815 PCIe Controllers Next Year
JMicron is getting ready to ship its new JMF670H controller to its customers and we also have reference design samples in for testing, but in its suite at Computex...
14 by Kristian Vättö on 6/12/2015
Plextor M7e PCIe SSD to Ship in Q3, M7V TLC SSD in 2016 & New Software Features
Plextor first showed off the M7e at CES earlier this year and at Computex we got an update on the release schedule. Plextor is now aiming for Q3 release...
16 by Kristian Vättö on 6/11/2015
SFF-8639 Connector Renamed as U.2
As SATA Express never took off because of the two-lane limitation, the SSD and motherboard industries have been looking for an alternative connector for connecting 2.5" SSDs over PCIe...
22 by Kristian Vättö on 6/10/2015
Seagate 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
Silicon Motion Displays Upcoming SM2260 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe Controller
Silicon Motion has remained relatively quiet about its plans for a PCIe controller. We have known that the company is working on one (well, it would be a major...
11 by Kristian Vättö on 6/9/2015
ADATA Displays XPG SX930 SSD, Two New TLC SSDs, Several PCIe Drives & USB Type-C Products
After a long week of meetings and over a day worth of traveling, I'm finally back from Taipei. Given our hectic schedule (it was just me and Ian at...
7 by Kristian Vättö on 6/8/2015
OCZ Announces Trion 100 TLC SSD & Shows Off an Upcoming NVMe Drive with Toshiba Controller
One of the things I've been expecting to see at this year's Computex is more TLC NAND based SSDs. So far only Samsung and SanDisk have been shipping TLC...
4 by Kristian Vättö on 6/2/2015
SanDisk Announces 2TB USB 3.1 External SSD
SanDisk is announcing the availability of a host of external flash drives at Computex 2015. Two of them are being marketed as external portable SSDs with a Type-C interface...
10 by Ganesh T S on 6/1/2015
SanDisk Releases Z400s SSD for Mainstream PCs & Embedded Applications
With Computex only a week away, SanDisk is taking a head start today with the release of Z400s SSD. SanDisk is aiming to cater two different markets with the...
25 by Kristian Vättö on 5/26/2015
Crucial MX200 (250GB, 500GB & 1TB) SSD Review
Last year Micron launched M600 SSD for the OEM market, but unlike in the past there was no simultaneous retail product release. We were told that the M600 firmware...
62 by Kristian Vättö on 5/22/2015
Inside OCZ's Factory: How SSDs Are Made
At CES I had the opportunity to sit down with OCZ's CEO, Ralph Schmitt, to discuss the state of OCZ after Toshiba acquired the company in late 2013. We...
64 by Kristian Vättö on 5/20/2015
OCZ Introduces Z-Drive 6000 Enterprise PCIe SSD Series with NVMe Support
Back at CES OCZ teased us by showcasing the Z-Drive 6000, but the drive was still under development, so the details were rather scarce. Today OCZ is finally lifting...
33 by Kristian Vättö on 5/20/2015
The Truth About SSD Data Retention
In the past week, quite a few media outlets have posted articles claiming that SSDs will lose data in a matter of days if left unpowered. While there is...
87 by Kristian Vättö on 5/13/2015
Intel Releases SSD DC S3510
In February Intel refreshed its enterprise SATA SSD lineup with the DC S3610 and S3710 SSDs, but left the entry-level S35xx series untouched. That changes today with the launch...
9 by Kristian Vättö on 5/5/2015
Samsung Releases Second 840 EVO Performance Fix
If nothing else, the odyssey of Samsung’s 840 EVO has not been lacking in excitement. After initially launching in 2013 to great fanfare as an excellent, strong-performing low-cost drive...
74 by Ryan Smith on 4/27/2015
More Pictures Of 2015 MacBook’s Apple-Built SSD Controller
The ever-excellent crew over at iFixit completed their initial teardown of the Early 2015 MacBook yesterday, creating some very nice shots of the Mac’s little logic board in the...
34 by Ryan Smith on 4/16/2015
New Samsung SSD 840 EVO Read Performance Fix Coming Later This Month
The Samsung SSD 840 EVO read performance bug has been on the table for over six months now. Initially Samsung acknowledged the issue fairly quickly and provided a fix...
81 by Kristian Vättö on 4/14/2015
Crucial BX100 (120GB, 250GB, 500GB & 1TB) SSD Review
Crucial has been doing very well in the client SSD market during the past year. Crucial's/Micron's ability to quickly roll out the 16nm NAND node definitely paid off because...
67 by Kristian Vättö on 4/10/2015
Samsung SM951 PCIe SSD Now Available
We reviewed Samsung's SM951 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD a little over a month ago and it ended up being clearly the fastest client-level SSD, beating its predecessor XP941 by...
29 by Kristian Vättö on 4/7/2015
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