Today Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) announced its next generation single-package ball grid array (BGA) solid state drive (SSD) product line based on Toshiba’s latest 64-layer, 3-bit-per-cell TLC (triple-level cell) BiCS FLASH, the BG3 series. The new series is designed for mobile storage with the benefits of higher performance in a smaller footprint versus traditional SATA devices. Another important aspect of mobile use the BG3 series tackles is power usage; the new technology has a cost-effective DRAM-less design to reduce power requirements.
Today Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) announced its next generation single-package ball grid array (BGA) solid state drive (SSD) product line based on Toshiba’s latest 64-layer, 3-bit-per-cell TLC (triple-level cell) BiCS FLASH, the BG3 series. The new series is designed for mobile storage with the benefits of higher performance in a smaller footprint versus traditional SATA devices. Another important aspect of mobile use the BG3 series tackles is power usage; the new technology has a cost-effective DRAM-less design to reduce power requirements.
The DRAM-less design is achieved by leveraging the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) feature in NVMe Revision 1.2.1. This allows for higher performance without the power drain from the integrated DRAM. This also allows for a very powerful SSD in a much smaller form factor making them a possible alternative to server boot storage, which in turn could allow for more storage capacity or connectivity on the server. The smaller size is also ideal for ultra-thin notebooks as the BG3 series creates SSDs that are only 1.3mm high and use less power overall.
The BG3 series is offered in three capacities 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB. The series is offered in either a surface-mount BGA (M.2 1620) or a removable module (M.2 2230) form factor. From a performance perspective the new series utilizes PCI Express (PCIe) Gen3 x2 lane and NVMe Revision 1.2.1 architecture for quoted speed of up to 1520MB/s sequential read (2.7 times the theoretical maximum bandwidth of SATA 6Gbit/s) and up to 840MB/s sequential write (1.5 times the theoretical maximum bandwidth of SATA 6Gbit/s). The new series will also feature a SLC cache to aid in accelerating burst type workloads. Self-encrypting drive options (SED) with TCG Opal Version 2.01 will also be available.
Availability
The BG3 series is currently sampling with select customers. Toshiba will be demonstrating the technology at Flash Memory Summit 2017 in Santa Clara, CA, from August 8 to 10 in booth #407.
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