Silicon Power has announced its new lineup of stylish external SSDs. The SP Bolt B80 family of drives comes in a rugged UFO-shaped chassis, which is IP68 dust and waterproof. When it comes to performance, the Bolt B80 resembles other external SSDs tha…
The Toshiba TR200 finally brings Toshiba’s 3D NAND to the retail SSD market. Where Western Digital and SanDisk chose to go after Samsung’s performance with their 64L 3D NAND SSDs, Toshiba’s TR200 is an entry-level DRAMless SATA SSD that will have to compete solely on price. The TR200 does not bring any performance improvement over the TR150 it replaces, but it may bring respite from the past year’s price increases.
ADATA likes to produce a broad range of SSDs, sampling from all the controller and NAND manufacturers. To that end, they have wholeheartedly embraced the use of 3D MLC NAND even as most brands are using the 3D NAND transition to entirely remove MLC from their consumer product lines or relegate it to niche models instead of treating it as the mainstream default.
The ADATA XPG SX950 is their top of the line SATA SSD. Technologically, it is very similar to their Ultimate SU900: both use the same Micron 3D MLC NAND and Silicon Motion SM2258 controller. The SX950 is distinguished by reserving more spare area (yielding usable capacities like 480GB instead of 512GB) and a six-year warranty instead of five. The SU900 has a 2TB model listed but not yet available, while the SX950 line only goes up to 960GB, with limited availability of the largest model.
From a performance standpoint, the ADATA XPG SX950 tries to be a premium SATA SSD by using 3D MLC in a market dominated by TLC NAND. The SX950 offers the highest SATA performance ADATA could deliver, but it’s still not fast enough to match Samsung’s SATA SSDs, and ADATA made too many sacrifices for the sake of maximizing peak performance.
ADATA has announced its new SSD aimed at the very high end of the market. The new flagship XPG SX9000 drives are based on the Marvell 88SS1093 BTB2 controller and are paired with Toshiba’s 2D MLC NAND flash memory. Later on, the company plans to switch to Toshiba’s 3D MLC NAND for a product that will succeed the SX9000 SSD series.
The ADATA XPG SX9000 SSDs use the Marvell 88SS1093 BTB2 controller, which sports three processor cores and 8 NAND channels, with 4 banks per channel for 32 targets in total. The IC is an improved version of the 88SS1093 with higher frequencies and performance to boost speeds of higher-end SSDs. The 88SS1093 BTB2 supports a Marvell’s third-generation ECC technology based on the LDPC algorithm and uses PCIe 3.0 x4 interface.
The new XPG SX9000 drives are to be available in 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB configurations in the M.2-2280 form-factor. The SSDs use DRAM buffers for additional performance, and come with a very basic heat spreader to further prop up performance in systems that provide adequate cooling. Speaking of performance, ADATA promises up to 2.8 GB/s sequential read speed as well as up to 1.45 GB/s sequential write speed for the top-of-the-range 1 TB model. As for random read/write performance, ADATA lists 310K/240K IOPS for the most advanced model.
Reliability is another thing that ADATA is taking serious when it comes to the XPG SX9000. The drives are rated for up to 1 PBW (terabytes to be written) and two million hours MTBF, which in turn is coupled with a five-year warranty.
| ADATA XPG SX9000 Specifications | |||
| Capacity | 256 GB | 512 GB | 1 TB |
| Model Number | ASX9000NP-256GM-C | ASX9000NP-512GM-C | ASX9000NP-1TM-C |
| Controller | Marvell 88SS1093 BTB2 | ||
| NAND Flash | 2D MLC NAND | ||
| Form-Factor, Interface | M.2-2280, PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.2 | ||
| Sequential Read | 2700 MB/s | 2800 MB/s | |
| Sequential Write | 990 MB/s | 1450 MB/s | |
| Random Read IOPS | 200K IOPS | 300K IOPS | 310K IOPS |
| Random Write IOPS | 220K IOPS | 220K IOPS | 240K IOPS |
| Pseudo-SLC Caching | Supported | ||
| DRAM Buffer | Yes, capacity unknown | ||
| TCG Opal Encryption | No | ||
| Power Management | DevSleep, Slumber | ||
| Warranty | 5 years | ||
| MTBF | 2,000,000 hours | ||
| TBW | 250 TB | 500 TB | 1000 TB |
ADATA has not set recommended prices of the XPG SX9000 series just yet. What we do know is that the drives are hitting the shelves in the coming weeks and expect their prices to be competitive against the obvious rivals — the Samsung 960 Pro and the Samsung 960 Evo families of SSDs.
Otherwise, as previously stated, ADATA is also looking at releasing 3D NAND versions of the drive farther down the line. 3D NAND has a number of advantages over 2D NAND, but it’s not ideal for all possible applications at the moment, particularly due to its high density, which conflicts with the need for multiple NAND packages to maximize parallelism and performance on high-end SSDs. All things considered, this is why ADATA decided to go with a new Marvell controller as well as Toshiba’s 2D MLC NAND for the XPG SX9000 SSD. Eventually, the company promises to use the same controller for a high-end 3D NAND-powered drive, but that is something that is going to happen towards the end of the year at best.
Related Reading:
Today we’re taking a look at Corsair’s Neutron NX500 SSD . This is the company’s second PCIe SSD, again based on the Phison E7 controller, but this time distinguishing itself with a custom heatsink, larger overprovisioning than almost any consumer SSD, and twice the DRAM cache of a typical consumer SSD. The price tag matches the premium specifications, but the real-world performance does not justify the premium.