Samsung Shows Off SM961 and PM961 SSDs: OEM Drives Get a Boost

At Samsung’s annual SSD Forum Japan, the company has demonstrated two previously-unannounced high-performance client SSDs. The new SM961 and the PM961 drives are based on the company’s Polaris controller as well as V-NAND flash memory. Samsung promises that the SSDs will increase sequential read speeds to 3000 – 3200 MB/s and will also significantly boost random read and write performance. The drives are projected to ship inside PCs in the second half of the year, while it’s anyone’s guess if and when these will filter into retail (ala the 950 series).

The Journey Continues

Samsung is the world’s largest producer of NAND flash memory and SSDs. Moreover, it is also one of the companies, which raise the bar of SSD performance and feature-set. In the recent years, Samsung has been an instrumental driving force in popularization of PCIe and NVMe SSDs. Samsung’s XP941 was one of the first high-end PCIe M.2 SSDs aimed at OEMs and it greatly helped to promote the form-factor among PC makers in 2014. The SM951 SSDs significantly increased performance of flash storage sub-systems compared to its predecessor and introduced NVMe to numerous OEMs a year later. In fall 2015, the Samsung 950 Pro finally brought NVMe and performance of the SM951 to retail market.

When introduced, the XP941 and the SM951 were for their respective times Samsung’s top-of-the-range SSDs designed for OEMs and their flagship PCs. Last year, the company decided to alter its strategy regarding high-performance SSDs aimed at PC makers. Instead of offering just one lineup of fast PCIe drives, Samsung introduced its second family of advanced SSDs with lower price and TLC NAND — the PM951. While the latter drives were still rather fast, the price/performance trade-off meant that they were considerably behind the SM951 in terms of sequential read and write speeds. This year, the company plans to change its approach to OEM SSDs once again. Samsung will offer two product families with slightly different characteristics: the SM961 and the PM961. The new lineups will further raise performance bar of Samsung’s SSDs, but the PM961 is expected to make the new speed levels accessible to a broader audience. The tactics should help Samsung to increase its share of the premium SSD market.

Samsung SM961 and PM961: First to Use Polaris Controller

The new OEM SSD lineups from Samsung will be the company’s first standard high-end SSDs for PC makers, which use 3D/V-NAND memory. The new drives rely on the all-new Polaris platform and will come in M.2-2280 form-factor with PCIe 3.0 x4 interface while utilizing the NVMe protocol. Right now, the company is not revealing too many details about its new SSDs. For example, it is unknown whether they rely on Samsung’s third-gen 48-layer V-NAND or its second-gen 32-layer V-NAND. While using newer memory for new SSDs is logical, so far Samsung has not confirmed anything.

Samsung SM961 SSD. Image by PC Watch.

The Samsung SM961 will be Samsung’s new top-of-the-range M.2 SSD line for OEMs, which will be offered in 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB configurations (by contrast, the SM951 family did not include a 1 TB option). The drive will be based on Samsung’s MLC V-NAND as well as the company’s Polaris controller. Samsung is specing the SM961 at up to 3200 MB/s for sequential reads and up to 1800 MB/s for sequential writes, but does not specify which models will boast with such numbers. The new SSDs can perform up to 450K random read IOPS as well as up to 400K random write IOPS, which looks more like performance of server-grade SSDs.

Samsung PM961 SSD. Image by PC Watch.

The Samsung PM961 will be based on the company’s TLC V-NAND flash and the Polaris controller. The PM961 lineup will consist of four models: with 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB capacities (the PM951 also did not include a 1 TB model). The PM961 SSD supports sequential read speeds of up to 3000 MB/s as well as sequential write speeds of up to 1150 MB/s. Random read/write performance of the PM961 is up to 360K/280K of read/write IOPS, but Samsung does not specify exact models that offer such performance.

The PM961 should be more affordable than the SM961, but even with the use of TLC, according to Samsung’s specifications it should be only slightly slower than the flagship model when it comes to sequential read speeds (6% difference is negligible). Sequential write speeds should be lower compared to those offered by the SM951 and the 950 Pro, but should still be considerably higher than sequential write speed of its direct predecessor, the PM951. Moreover, the new PM961 should also be considerably faster in random read and write operations versus its ancestors, according to specifications released by Samsung.

It remains to be seen how the PM961 drive will behave in real-world applications versus enthusiast-class PCIe SSDs from other manufacturers. But its 3000 MB/s sequential read performance as well as very high random reads and writes should probably play positive roles here.

Samsung has not formally introduced the SM961 and the PM961 SSDs, but PC Watch reports that the company expects computer makers to use the new drives in the second half of the year. Moreover, since the SSDs demonstrated at the event already feature actual labels with all the certification stamps and even serial numbers, it looks like development of the storage devices is very close to its completion.

Initially, Samsung will use its Polaris platform only for the drives intended for OEMs, but it is plausible to expect the company to utilize the same controllers for its retail SSDs eventually. As is usually the case, Samsung isn’t commenting on whether we’ll see retail Polaris drives in the future, though if 950 Pro is anything to go by, we wouldn’t be surprised. Nonetheless, keeping in mind how easy is to get both SM951 and PM951 SSDs from stores like Amazon and RamCity, it should not be a problem to obtain these new OEM SSDs from online stores as well.

Looking Ahead: PCIe 3.0 x4 May Become a New Performance Limiting Factor for SSDs

Looking at Samsung’s specifications, it’s interesting to note that the 3200 MB/s sequential read speed of the Samsung SM961 is very close to actual maximum bandwidth of the PCIe 3.0 x4 bus. A PCIe 3.0 connection supports transfer rates of 8 GT/s (GigaTransfers per second) per lane, for a total of 3.94 GB/sec for an x4 connection after factoring in overhead. As it appears, the bandwidth offered by four lanes of PCIe 3.0 – the maximum bus width supported by the M.2 standard – is close to being saturated by high-end client SSDs.

If this ends up being the case, then the SM961 may be Samsung’s fastest sequential transfer SSD for client PC applications for quite a while (i.e., until PCIe 4.0 arrives). Consequently, if the company plans to introduce its successors with the same PCIe 3.0 interface, it will have to improve other domains of SSD performance (e.g., performance in mixed workloads, endurance, power efficiency, etc.). Keeping in mind that Samsung’s retail 950 Pro SSDs were a little faster than the company’s SM951 despite using the same controller, it will be interesting to see how Samsung might differentiate its hypothetical enthusiast-oriented Polaris and MLC V-NAND-based SSD from its OEM offering (if such SSD is in the company’s plans at all, of course).

With that said, while certain Samsung’s SSDs may eventually hit a sequential transfer performance barrier in the form of PCIe 3.0 x4 bus, the bandwidth provided by this interface will still be enough for the vast majority of SSDs from different manufacturers going forward. Moreover, since real-world performance does not entirely depend on just sequential read or write speeds, there are a plenty of ways to improve performance of actual drives in real-world applications.

The ADATA Premier SP550 SSD Review: A Second Look At Silicon Motion’s SM2256 Controller

Today we’re taking a look at ADATA’s Premier SP550 SSD, the company’s latest entry-level drive. The Premier SP550 gives us a fresh look at Silicon Motion’s SM2256 controller by pairing it with updated firmware and a different choice of TLC flash supplier. As an entry-level SSD it has very attractive pricing but no room to be skimping on performance.

Mushkin Impact 256GB and Atom 128GB USB Flash Drives Capsule Review

Flash drives are a dime a dozen these days, and most of them carry uninteresting specifications. In particular, flash drives advertising smaller physical footprints have tended to carry disappointing performance numbers. At CES 2016, Mushkin had two USB Flash Drives (UFDs) on display belonging to the ‘small footprint’ club, the Impact 256GB and the Atom 128GB. We have reviewed the Atom 64GB version before. Though we were unimpressed with the Atom’s performance, the form factor was very intriguing. Last month, Mushkin showed that they had doubled the capacity while retaining the same form factor. Along with the Atom 128GB, Mushkin also showed off one of the smallest 256GB UFDs in the market, the Impact 256GB.

Hardware Design and Internals

The industrial design of the Atom 128GB is the same as that of the 64GB version. It has a small hole at one end to secure it to a keychain or anything similar. The Impact is small too, and the picture below brings out the relative sizes.

The smalled 256GB UFD that we have reviewed as yet is the Patriot Supersonic Rage 2. The Impact 256GB is of the same length, but has a slightly smaller width. It is highly improbable that the Impact 256GB might end up blocking any USB port adjoining the one it is connected to.

Unlike the Atom’s plastic casing, the Impact also has an aluminum housing, and despite the lightweight nature, feels solid in hand. It also has a plastic tab at one end for attachment purposes.

Without opening up the unit, it is possible to identify the controller and flash inside the units.

The Atom 128GB has a Phison PS2251-07 single-channel USB 3.0 flash controller and uses Toshiba TLC flash. On the other hand, the Impact 256GB comes with the dual-channel high performance Phison PS2251-08 controller and Toshiba MLC flash.

Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology

Evaluation of DAS units on Windows is done with the testbed outlined in the table below. For devices with a USB 3.0 (via a Type-A interface) connections (such as the Mushkin Impact 256GB and Atom 128GB that we are considering today), we utilize the USB 3.0 port directly hanging off the Z97 PCH.

The full details of the reasoning behind choosing the above build components can be found here. The list of DAS units used for comparison purposes is provided below.

• Mushkin Impact 256GB
• Mushkin Atom 128GB
• Corsair Voyager GTX v2 256GB
• Mushkin Atom 64GB
• Mushkin Ventura Ultra 120GB
• Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 256GB
• SanDisk Extreme 500 240GB – USB 3.0
• SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GB
• VisionTek Pocket SSD 240GB

Synthetic Benchmarks – ATTO and Crystal DiskMark

Mushkin claims read and write speeds of 400 MBps and 310 MBps respectively for the Impact 256GB. The corresponding numbers are 180 MBps and 40 MBps for the Atom 128GB. These are unfortunately not hit with our default ATTO benchmark settings. In any case, these access traces are not very common in real-life scenarios.

Mushkin Impact 256GBMushkin Atom 128GBCorsair Voyager GTX v2 256GBMushkin Atom 64GBMushkin Ventura Ultra 120GBPatriot Supersonic Rage 2 256GBSanDisk Extreme 500 240GB – USB 3.0SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GBVisionTek Pocket SSD 240GB

CrystalDiskMark, despite being a canned benchmark, provides a better estimate of the performance range with a selected set of numbers. Here, we can see things closer to Mushkin’s claims – 375 MBps reads and 286 MBps writes for the Impact 256GB, and 191 MBps reads and 26 MBps writes for the Atom 128 GB. The native USB 3.0 flash controllers have always sruggled with very low IOPS for 4K random accesses (writes in particular). We see the Impact 256GB fall to 0.013 MBps for 4K random writes, while the Atom 128GB comes in at 0.071 MBps for that access trace.

Mushkin Impact 256GBMushkin Atom 128GBCorsair Voyager GTX v2 256GBMushkin Atom 64GBMushkin Ventura Ultra 120GBPatriot Supersonic Rage 2 256GBSanDisk Extreme 500 240GB – USB 3.0SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GBVisionTek Pocket SSD 240GB

Benchmarks – robocopy and PCMark 8 Storage Bench

Our testing methodology for DAS units also takes into consideration the usual use-case for such devices. The most common usage scenario is transfer of large amounts of photos and videos to and from the unit. The minor usage scenario is importing files directly off the DAS into a multimedia editing program such as Adobe Photoshop. Since these are not portable SSDs, we will be disregarding the latter use-case.

In order to tackle the first use-case, we created three test folders with the following characteristics:

• Photos: 15.6 GB collection of 4320 photos (RAW as well as JPEGs) in 61 sub-folders
• Videos: 16.1 GB collection of 244 videos (MP4 as well as MOVs) in 6 sub-folders
• BR: 10.7 GB Blu-ray folder structure of the IDT Benchmark Blu-ray (the same that we use in our robocopy tests for NAS systems)

The benchmark numbers show a wide spread – for certain use-cases such as Blu-ray folder writes, the Atom and the Impact have top numbers in their respective capacity classes, but they also come in with disappointing numbers for use-cases such as copying over lots of photographs. Further down, we will see if the pricing can act as a redeeming aspect.

Performance Consistency

Yet another interesting aspect of these types of units is performance consistency. Aspects that may influence this include thermal throttling and firmware caps on access rates to avoid overheating or other similar scenarios. This aspect is an important one, as the last thing that users want to see when copying over, say, 100 GB of data to the flash drive, is the transfer rate going to USB 2.0 speeds. In order to identify whether the drive under test suffers from this problem, we instrumented our robocopy DAS benchmark suite to record the flash drive’s read and write transfer rates while the robocopy process took place in the background. For supported drives, we also recorded the internal temperature of the drive during the process. Unfortunately, neither the Atom nor the Impact expose the temperature details. The graphs below show the speeds observed during our real-world DAS suite processing. The first three sets of writes and reads correspond to the photos suite. A small gap (for the transfer of the videos suite from the primary drive to the RAM drive) is followed by three sets for the next data set. Another small RAM-drive transfer gap is followed by three sets for the Blu-ray folder.

An important point to note here is that each of the first three blue and green areas correspond to 15.6 GB of writes and reads respectively. Throttling, if any, is apparent within the processing of the photos suite itself. The good thing here is that neither the Impact nor the Atom suffer from thermal throttling.

Mushkin Impact 256GBMushkin Atom 128GBCorsair Voyager GTX v2 256GBMushkin Atom 64GBMushkin Ventura Ultra 120GBPatriot Supersonic Rage 2 256GBSanDisk Extreme 500 240GB – USB 3.0SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GBVisionTek Pocket SSD 240GB

Concluding Remarks

Coming to the business end of the review, the Impact 256GB and Atom 128GB continue Mushkin’s tradition of improving the performance and capacity of their USB 3.0 flash drives every year, while retaining the same physical footprint.

The performance of the drives indicate suitability for write-once read-many scenarios. There are 128GB and 256GB portable SSDs (not in the same form factor, obviously) that have much better overall performance.Can the pricing save the day for Mushkin? We took a look at the online pricing of the various UFDs that we have evaluated so far and compared their cost per GB.

The Impact 256GB (priced at $85) is simply the most economical 256GB flash drive that we have seen so far. Given the $0.33/GB pricing, it is hard to not recommend it provided the use-case is appropriate. The Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 does provide better overall performance, but it comes in at $0.55/GB. At $40, the Atom 128GB is also the cheapest UFD in its capacity class that we have looked at in detail.

Overall, the Mushkin 256GB and Atom 128GB don’t impress with their benchmark numbers. However, the pricing aspect more than makes up for the average performance.