Samsung announced today that it has begun mass producing a high-performance, low-powered PCIe solid state drive (SSD), the SM951, for use in ultra-slim notebook PCs and workstations. The SM951 boasts outstanding performance, supporting both PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 2.0 interfaces.
For use in the latest ultra-slim notebooks, it can read and write sequentially at 1,600 MB/s (megabytes per second) and 1,350 MB/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 SSD's random read and write speeds reach up to 130,000 and 85,000 IOPS (inputs/outputs per second) respectively.
Samsung's SM951 comes in the M.2 form factor (80mm x 22mm), which is only about one seventh the size of a 2.5 inch SSD. Also, it weighs approximately six grams. The drive's compactness is well suited for most notebook PC designs, freeing up space for other components including the battery. The SM951 lineup consists of 512, 256 and 128GB SSDs.
With its SM951 and other Samsung PCIe SSDs using a 10-nanometer class MLC NAND flash production platform, Samsung believes it is in an excellent position to rapidly expand the global PCIe SSD market. Samsung will also work on timely introduction of next-generation PCIe SSDs that support the NVMe interface, which will provide even further performance increases.