The hype train for Samsung might be overwhelmed with quantum-dot TVs and Galaxy smartphones, but that’s not the only major breakthrough Samsung has been working on. The Korean giant has announced the SM951, a PCIe based SSD that’s exceptionally small, capable of 2.2 GB/s reads (PCIe 3), is 80 x 22 mm and weighs just 6 grams. In standby mode, it consumes only 2 mW and could allow a notebook computer to sleep for months. It’s rumored to be slated for the new MacBooks.
The SM951 supports both PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 2.0 interfaces. For use in the latest ultra-slim notebooks, it can read and write sequentially at 1,600MB/s (megabytes per second) and 1,350MB/s respectively based on PCIe 2.0. This performance level is approximately three times faster than that of the latest SSD with a SATA interface and about 30 percent faster than that of the Samsung XP941, its predecessor. In addition, the new SSDs random read and write speeds reach up to 130,000 and 85,000 IOPS (inputs/outputs per second) respectively.
With its SM951 and other Samsung PCIe SSDs using a 10-nanometer class MLC NAND flash production platform.
Samsung will also work on timely introduction of next-generation PCIe SSDs that support the NVMe interface, which will provide even further performance increases.
