Today Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd announced that they are mass-producing the industry’s first NVMe PCIe M.2 SSDs made specifically for PC and workstations, the SM951-NVMe. Samsung also announced that it has begun shipping the SM951-NVMe to OEMs for the PC market. This is the same technology HP announced last week in its Z Turbo Drive and Omen Pro workstation.
Today Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd announced that they are mass-producing the industry’s first NVMe PCIe M.2 SSDs made specifically for PC and workstations, the SM951-NVMe. Samsung also announced that it has begun shipping the SM951-NVMe to OEMs for the PC market. This is the same technology HP announced last week in its Z Turbo Drive and Omen Pro workstation.
Samsung had been offering an AHCI-based PCIe 3.0 version of its SM951 for a few months now. By adding the NVMe version, Samsung is looking to strengthen its overall SSD portfolio. In the future Samsung plans on incorporating its 3D V-NAND technology into the SM951-NVMe. This incorporation will give the drive higher density and even better performance.
Looking at performance, Samsung has some impressive claims. In most cases it outperforms other M.2 SATA drives three or four times over. And with random read throughput it is twice as fast as the AHCI-based PCIe.
Performance:
- Random read throughput: 300,000 IOPS
- Sequential read/write performance: 2,260MB/s / 1,600MB/s
- Data transfer rates: 32Gbps and maximum throughput of 4GB/s.
The SM951-NVMe is less than 4mm thick and weighs less than 7 grams. It comes in 128GB and 256GB capacities. And like the AHCI-based PCIe model, the SM951-NVMe also adopted the L1.2 low power standby mode. The L1.2 low power standby mode allows all high-speed circuits to be turned off when a PC is sleeping or in hibernation. This reduces the SM951 power consumption to under 2mW, which is about 97% decrease from the 50mW consumed using a L1 state.
Availability
The SM951-NVMe is shipping to OEMs for the PC market now. Samsung has yet to reveal pricing.
Update: Our review of the SM951-NVMe
