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...
AMD Radeon R7 SSD (240GB) Review
In 2011 AMD took the first step in expanding the Radeon brand and partnered with Patriot and VisionTek to provide AMD branded memory. With the launch of the Radeon...
54 by Kristian Vättö on 8/28/2014OCZ ARC 100 (240GB) SSD Review
OCZ launched the Barefoot 3 platform and the Vector SSDs in late 2012, and with their new direction OCZ has been trying to change their image to become a...
54 by Kristian Vättö on 8/26/2014Measuring Toshiba's 15nm 128Gbit MLC NAND Die Size
Courtesy of Custom PC Review At Flash Memory Summit, Toshiba was showcasing their latest 15nm 128Gbit MLC NAND wafer that has been developed in partnership with SanDisk. I simply could...
12 by Kristian Vättö on 8/22/2014SanDisk X300s (512GB) Review
Back in May SanDisk announced the X300s, which is the company's first SED (Self-Encrypting Drive). The X300s is based on the same Marvell platform as SanDisk's client drives but...
34 by Kristian Vättö on 8/21/2014FMS 2014: Marvell Announces NVMe-Enabled PCIe 3.0 x4 88SS1093 SSD Controller
Two weeks ago Marvell announced their first PCIe SSD controller with NVMe support, named as 88SS1093. It supports PCIe 3.0 x4 interface with up to 4GB/s of bandwidth between...
23 by Kristian Vättö on 8/21/2014FMS 2014: Silicon Motion Showcases SM2256 SSD Controller with TLC NAND Support
A couple of weeks ago at Flash Memory Summit, Silicon Motion launched their next generation SATA 6Gbps SSD controller. Dubbed simply as SM2256, the new controller is the first...
8 by Kristian Vättö on 8/20/2014SanDisk Releases Ultra II SSD: Bringing More TLC NAND to the Market
It is a busy day in the client SSD space as earlier today AMD announced the company's first SSD, the R7, and now SanDisk is releasing the Ultra II...
22 by Kristian Vättö on 8/19/2014AMD Jumps Into the SSD Market: Radeon R7 Series SSD Launched
Back in 2011, AMD made a rather unexpected move and expanded its Radeon brand to include memory in addition to graphics cards. With today's announcement AMD is adding another...
43 by Kristian Vättö on 8/19/2014FMS 2014: HGST Announces FlashMAX III PCIe SSDs
Continuing with our Flash Memory Summit coverage, HGST announced their FlashMAX III enterprise SSD, which is the first fruit of HGST's Virident acquistion and continues Virident's FlashMAX brand. The...
18 by Kristian Vättö on 8/18/2014FMS 2014: SanDisk ULLtraDIMM to Ship in Supermicro's Servers
We are running a bit late with our Flash Memory Summit coverage as I did not get back from the US until last Friday, but I still wanted to...
30 by Kristian Vättö on 8/18/2014OCZ Launches ARC 100 Value SSD
The release of the Vector marked as a change in OCZ's strategy. With a new CEO, OCZ's goal was to change the company's brand image from being a low-cost...
15 by Kristian Vättö on 8/13/2014Transcend SSD340 (256GB) Review
A couple of months ago we reviewed JMicron's JMF667H reference design SSDs, which did relatively well in our tests especially when taking JMicron's older SSD controllers into account. As...
57 by Kristian Vättö on 8/4/2014Intel SSD Pro 2500 (240GB) Review
Last year Intel introduced the SSD Pro 1500, the company's first SSD for the business segment. The Pro 1500 brought support for hardware accelerated encryption in the form of...
43 by Kristian Vättö on 7/30/2014Best SSDs: July 2014
Given the recent product releases in the SSD industry, it is now a good time to do another purchase recommendation post. We did our first "Best SSDs" post in...
42 by Kristian Vättö on 7/23/2014Testing Samsung 850 Pro Endurance & Measuring V-NAND Die Size
Last week Samsung announced the 850 Pro, which is the first mainstream SSD to utilize 3D V-NAND. We already reviewed the drive and covered the fundamentals of V-NAND in...
39 by Kristian Vättö on 7/7/2014Samsung SSD Global Summit 2014: 845 DC Pro with V-NAND, SM951 with NVMe Support
Every year for the past three years, Samsung has flown a bunch of media from all around the world for their SSD Global Summit. The Summit serves as an...
17 by Kristian Vättö on 7/4/2014Samsung SSD 850 Pro (128GB, 256GB & 1TB) Review: Enter the 3D Era
Over the last three years, Samsung has become one of the most dominant players in the SSD industry. Samsung's strategy has been tight vertical integration ever since the beginning...
160 by Kristian Vättö on 7/1/2014ADATA Premier SP610 SSD (256GB & 512GB) Review: Say Hello to an SMI Controller
The ADATA Premier SP610 is the first SSD with a new Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller to enter our test labs. This is a drive going after the lower cost...
24 by Kristian Vättö on 6/27/2014SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD (240GB, 480GB & 960GB) Review: The Fastest Just Got Faster
The SSD market is currently going through the biggest change in its history. Ever since consumer SSDs started appearing around 2006, SATA has been the dominant interface, but now...
85 by Kristian Vättö on 6/16/2014SanDisk To Acquire Fusion-io
It looks like the SSD industry is going through some serious consolidation. Only a couple of weeks ago, Seagate announced that they have acquired LSI's flash division (i.e. SandForce...
12 by Kristian Vättö on 6/16/2014